Vipul Gupta
Vipul is a software engineer at balena and a documentarian running his docs initiative called Mixster. He advocates strongly for open-source, cheesecakes and party parrots.
@vipulgupta2048
Mistakes, pain and learnings of scaling Python applications on millions of IoT devices
I am Vipul!
@vipulgupta2048
We-pull
- Product Owner & Documentation Lead at balena
- Run a docs initiative called Mixster
- Volunteers @ PyCon India & ALiAS
- Pronouns: He/him/his
@vipulgupta2048
This is a Raspberry Pi
@vipulgupta2048
It ain't much ...
@vipulgupta2048
Devices like this power...
CO2 sensors, farms, smart dustbins, cars, locks, your room, home devices...
@vipulgupta2048
and more like this...
Underwater drones, satellites, parking, and your talking wireless speakers
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
The challenges
With smart cities & even your toaster running applications.
The stakes have never been higher
While building software is hard.
@vipulgupta2048
Building it right for IoT is painful.
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
Considerations when selecting
an IoT device
- Architecture?
- CPU, RAM, GPU?
- Wifi/ethernet/sim?
- Peripherals needed?
- TPM chips?
- GPIO headers?
@vipulgupta2048
Considerations using
Python for IoT
- Is it supported on ARM v8?
- Is 4GB of RAM enough to run it?
- Does the use-case need internet?
- Is there a gstreamer wrapper library?
- Does it support microcontrollers?
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
Ideating your IoT product
- What resources you need?
- What limitations your usecase has?
- What hardware is available out there?
- Repeat.
Your will decide if your product or dies before launch. No pressure.
@vipulgupta2048
And
That's what we are talking about today
@vipulgupta2048
Tight feedback loops between environments
Dev == testing == staging == prod
@vipulgupta2048
Build an SBOM
Track, assess and obsess
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@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
"It works on my system"
Adding another dimension of hell
@vipulgupta2048
Memory Management and Resource Constraints
@vipulgupta2048
Let me tell you a story ...
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
Storage Considerations for IoT Devices
- SD cards in production. Toxic relationship.
- Go easy on storing all your print() and logging.info()
- Use services like Datadog to store your logs.
@vipulgupta2048
Reproducible Self-Healing Setup
- Recovery of the device is better than crashlooping
- Proper crash reporting pays dividends
- If you have to reboot, then you are doing wrong
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
Make sure your code
- Retries with exponential backoffs
- Can take into account race conditions
- Doesn't rely on timing but on eventual consistency
- Perform setup or teardown processes
- Has a "heartbeat" comms
@vipulgupta2048
Building Fault-Tolerant Applications
- Handle intermittent network issues gracefully.
- Prevent excessive bandwidth consumption.
- Don't be using your swap memory.
- Connect your peripherals on runtime, not bootime
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
Going beyond the code
- HiTL pipelines for testing
- Choosing a space-efficient embedded OS
- Keep a way to remotely access a device
- Communication infra optimized for IoT
- Use MQTT instead of HTTPS
- Use pub-sub model
- Account for flaky connectivity
@vipulgupta2048
But Vipul, how can I use this now at work?
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
And, that's about it!
Questions? Collaborate? Work with us? Reach out!
Vipul Gupta
Reviews cheesecakes, solves GitHub issues & "rights" docs
And, that's about it!
Questions? Collaborate? Work with us? Reach out!
Vipul Gupta
Reviews cheesecakes, solves GitHub issues & "rights" docs
Credits
- https://acoptex.com/wp/overview-of-raspberry-pi-4-model-b/
- https://pythondev.readthedocs.io/platforms.html
- https://imgflip.com for the memes
- https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Smart-Parking-System-Talking-of-the-above-mentioned-figure-it-depicts-a-parking-area_fig1_303842610
- https://mixster.dev/2022/10/18/no-soldering-ambient-lighting/
- https://blog.balena.io/assets/2023/02/os-testing-autokit-rig.png
- https://blog.upbound.io/hashicorp-bsl-license-change
- https://www.cisa.gov/sbom
- https://github.com/balena-io-examples/balena-python-hello-world
- https://raspberrypi.org
[PyDelhiConf '23] Deploying Python on the edge: Mistakes, pain and leanings of scaling Python applications on millions of IoT devices
By Vipul Gupta
[PyDelhiConf '23] Deploying Python on the edge: Mistakes, pain and leanings of scaling Python applications on millions of IoT devices
Unlock the power of Python on the edge! Optimize your deployments for resource-constrained uptime-critical environments. Join the session to level up your IoT applications using Python.
