openBalena – IoT management platform for Linux devices

Balena, formally known as Resin.io has released an open source version of its IoT fleet management platform for Linux devices called openBalena. It is aimed at Intel NUC, Jetson TX2, Raspberry Pi, and a new RPi CM3 carrier called the balenaFin. Resin.io aimed to create a “git push for devices” and develop lightweight Docker containers for Linux devices to create easy security updates and IoT device management. Ever since, it has expanded beyond that to provide an in-depth, scalable platform for IoT fleet management. The company announced a name-change to Balena in conjunction with the release of an open source openBalena version of its software.

openBalena – IoT management platform for Linux devices

The change of name is due to trademark issues, to cannabis references, and to people mishearing it as ‘raisin

explained the founder and CEO Alexandros Marinos in a blog announcement.

The new branding is based on the company’s balena container engine, now called balenaEngine, which derives its name from the engine’s underlying Moby Project container technology. The openBalena is an open source version of the Resin.io server/cloud platform for managing fleets of Linux-based IoT devices, now referred to as balenaCloud. The open source ResinOS distro is now referred to as balenaOS. Resin.io’s Etcher software for fast image writes to flash drives is now called balenaEtcher and the Project Fin carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, which is now available starting at $129, is now called balenaFin.

The balenaOS is an open source spinoff of the container-based device software that works with balenaCloud, the new openbalena, on the other hand, is an open version of the balenaCloud server software. Users can now choose between letting balena manage their fleet of devices or building their own openBalena based server platform that manages fleets of devices running balenaOS. openBalena is a limited feature version of the commercial product. However, the components shared by both commercial and open versions are closely similar.

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