IoT / edge runtime on AI-64?

General Discussion
1

Has anyone gotten a runtime for IoT / edge with a cloud-based management backend running on BB AI-64? Something like AWS Greengrass / IoT core, Azure IoT hub, BalenaOS / cloud? What I am doing is very early and nothing is set in stone yet, so I am surveying what’s already been done in this area as a first step.

The hardware features of BB AI-64 are an awesome fit, but I am trying to make sense of the software support. Any pointers or advice would be highly appreciated!

2

An update on this. I am trying to get Azure IoT Edge running on AI-64. But I immediately ran into an OS issue. Microsoft’s IoT Edge support for Debian is currently limited to ARM32, but there aren’t any ARM32 kernels available on BeagleBoard.org. And while Microsoft has IoT Edge Linux support for ARM64, it is limited to Ubuntu Server 22.04, 20.04, or 18.04 and RHEL8.

Is anyone aware of any of these Ubuntu Server releases running on AI-64, or is someone working on it or planning it? I’ve looked but found nothing.

3

that’s kinda weird, can you share a link? If they support Ubuntu Server 22.04 it shouldn’t take much to add support to Debian 11.x…

Regards,

4

Thanks, and I am referring to IoT Edge supported platforms | Microsoft Learn. There are tables there that show Tier 1 OS’s (actively tested and maintained support for Azure IoT edge) and Tier 2 (not tested or maintained).

Actually there is ARM32 Debian 10 listed as a Tier 2 OS, as well as other Tier 2 distros including 32 and 64 bit CentOS and Yocto. But I think sticking with the Tier 1 options (which exclude all of the available AI-64 kernels) seems like the better path forward.

The install of IoT Edge on AI-64 fails pretty sure due to the OS issue.

5

They have Debain 11 ARM64 here… Releases · Azure/azure-iotedge · GitHub

wget https://github.com/Azure/azure-iotedge/releases/download/1.4.9/aziot-identity-service_1.4.3-1_debian11_arm64.deb
wget https://github.com/Azure/azure-iotedge/releases/download/1.4.9/aziot-edge_1.4.9-1_debian11_arm64.deb

sudo dpkg -i aziot-identity-service_1.4.3-1_debian11_arm64.deb
sudo dpkg -i aziot-edge_1.4.9-1_debian11_arm64.deb

===============================================================================

                              Azure IoT Edge

  IMPORTANT: Please configure the device with provisioning information.

  Please create a new system configuration.

  You can quickly configure the device for manual provisioning with
   a connection string using:

    sudo iotedge config mp --connection-string '...'

  For other provisioning options, copy the template file 
  at /etc/aziot/config.toml.edge.template to /etc/aziot/config.toml,
  update it with your device information, then apply the configuration to
  the IoT Edge services with:

    sudo iotedge config apply

===============================================================================

Regards,

6

Thanks! I’ll try it out and post how it went.

7

Hello @RobertCNelson, I was able to install the Azure IoT Edge release for Debian 11 ARM64 you found on the BB AI-64, and it works. Thank you very much, I really appreciate your help!

FYI, I’m using the BeagleBone AI-64 Webinar (2023-01-02 image) kernel.

I manually provisioned the device using the connection string from my Azure IoT Hub and then added an IoT module from the Azure marketplace and got it communicating with the hub.