Nubix has just launched the developer edition of its edge-native tiny containers for IoT application development and analytics that target microcontrollers and single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi 3/4 and BeagleBone Black.
Typical cloud solutions such as Docker are often too large with tiny IoT devices, and to solve these issues, Nubix tiny containers are sized in kilobytes, instead of megabytes, or about 100 times smaller than a Docker container, in order to be small enough to run at the edge.
Nubix.io provides access to a library of sensors, analytics and tiny services that leverage open source languages and pre-packaged functions to easily create IoT applications in a few minutes.
Analytics is commonly done in the cloud, which may cause issues in environments with limited or intermittent connectivity, so to solve this issue, Nubix provides analytics functionality directly on the IoT device, eliminating the latency, bandwidth, connectivity and cost constraints of moving data from a large number of connected sensors/nodes.
The Developer Edition of Nubix.io specifically features:
- Application Development Platform – Pre-packaged, drag-and-drop components and functions
- Prepackaged sensor support – Developers can start working on their app and analytics immediately with having to work on low-level hardware drivers or firmware. The solution support basic GPIO & timers control, as well as various sensors including:
- BME280 environmental sensor (temperature, humidity & pressure)
- SGP30 air quality sensor
- ADXL345 3-axis accelerometer
- ADS1015 4-channel ADC chip
- Simplified high-level programming with no C/C++ programming knowledge required
- Container-Based Deployment Over the Air (OTA) with Hardware Abstraction. Develop-once, deploy-anywhere capability for IoT applications.
- Supported Boards – Raspberry Pi 3B and later, BeagleBone Black
- Tiny Services for Edge-Native Applications
- Tiny Analytics – Cumulative Moving Average, Simple Moving Average, Exponential-Weighted Moving Average
- Tiny Data Services – Store and Forward via a Durable Ring Buffer, Coalesce, Downsample, Spark contexts via Stuart, Nubix.io’s Lua-based Apache Spark runtime for embedding and edge computing
- Tiny Scripts – Hundreds of open-source functions, custom application logic using Lua full-featured, open-source language
As pictured above, the solution relies on a Nubix Orchestration Hub drag-an-drop interface to define “Pipelines” and “Containers” , and generate Lua code that looks like:
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function M.execute(stageContext, metricsBatch) metricsBatch:foreach(function(measurement) local x = measurement:field('x') local y = measurement:field('y') local z = measurement:field('z') --print('** shock measurement: ', tostring(measurement)) local magnitude = math.sqrt(x^2 + (y-1)^2 + (z-0)^2) --print('** mag: ', magnitude) if magnitude > 1 then measurement:field('shock', 'hard') elseif magnitude > .5 then measurement:field('shock', 'medium') elseif magnitude > .08 then measurement:field('shock', 'soft') else measurement:field('shock', 'none') end --print('** shock: ', tostring(measurement:field('shock')) ) end) return metricsBatch end |
Nubix.io Developers Edition is free of charge for up to 5 API keys, and you can register for a free account if interested in getting started. The company is also working on a paid Professional Edition for the solution that will support more platforms and features. Visit the company website or/and read the announcement’s blog post for more details.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Most IoT use case don’t really need a single board computer near the sensors, instead (for power consuming purposes, to bring battery autonomy near the lifecycle of the sensor itself) is better to have a microcontroller, lowering the TCO.
I hope that this container can also fit on ESP8266/ESP32, in their 4/16Mbit flash storage, leaving the analytics and scripting part on an external host (a Single Board computer, or on the cloud); this would be really great.
Nubix’s website is currently broken.
1. When one tries to register, it spits an error saying “Error: Failed sending confirmation email: Cannot send confirmation email without an Origin header”
2. When opening the ‘Terms of Service’ link, it again spits a “404 Page Not Found” error.
They should get basic things in place before trying to attract users!
Hi Jay, This is Tom from Nubix. 1. Thanks for your interest in Nubix. 2. Our “Terms of Service” was off-line for a wee bit, but is back in place now. 3. As for your email issue, we had dozens of registrations on day one. The only issues we’ve seen are that verification emails are getting caught in Spam filters. We’ve made a few updates to our mail service to try and improve that; we’ve also made a change to help with authenticated domains, which could involve the origin header. Could you open a support case? Just email [email protected] with… Read more »
@Jay,
It’s a Wix/Parastorage site. I’m not sure if it is possible to “get basic things in place” at a mess like that. Just my humble opinion though…