Golang and IOT review.

1. The internet of things , See how golang
is a part of this revolution
Meetup 2016, February 10, 2016
Yoni Davidson
Eyesight Technologies

2. About me
Working on Eyesight’s “Singlecue” IOT device:
● Automation
● Linux “baking”
● Embedded programming on uC component.
● Cloud infrastructure.
● Application level programming
● Backend (servers)
● Integration to other IOT devices.

3. Agenda
● IOT devices - review.
● Golang for IOT pros/cons.
● Go module - https://github.com/blackjack/webcam
● Demo.

4. IOT - Buzz word VS reality
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or "things"
embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which
enables these objects to collect and exchange data.
from wikipedia .
Gartner Says 6.4 Billion Connected "Things" Will Be in Use in 2016, Up 30
Percent From 2015

5. IOT - Examples - 1:
Raspberry pi :
Arduino
Intel Galileo /Edison.
Amazon: alexa echo, Dash button.

6. IOT - Examples - 2:
Google - Nest thermometer / camera , chromcast.
Eyesight - Singlecue.
Philips hue

7. IOT - Examples - 3:
AR-Drones.
Wink - smart HUB.
Ninja blocks.

8. What a mess...
Various platforms , architectures and components .
Most devices will need Backend for support ,functionality and web interface.
Each device has a different connection method - Wifi , Bluetooth ,USB and
proprietary.
A lot of devices are extendable and programmable for creating more advanced
products based upon them.

9. Needed skills:
Linux internals.
Backend - infrastructure and Development.
Communication protocols - bluetooth , wifi, Zigbee, MQTT….
Embedded programming - linux drivers and microcontrollers.
Image processing.
Sensor manipulations: Camera ,proximity sensor and touch interfaces.
UI (Device and web).

10. Conclusion - too many skills , not enough developers
Startups have limited number of developers and skill sets .
Big companies are good in developing infrastructure but don’t want to go “deep”
into small solutions/products .
Combining hardware with many software skills creates a hard “entry” step .
Context switch for each feature is big . You have to write a feature from backend
to the device.
Feature integration is hard - multiple devices and languages involved - Logic is
written several times in different languages.

11. How does golang help us ? - 1
Golang compiles natively to most important architectures (arm, x86).
Golang makes it easy to write HAL’s by having a strong packaging system.
Development is faster in comparison to C ,C++.
Deployment of code on IOT is simple due to the nature of static compilation.
Context switch between backend and device is simpler if you use go in both.
Concurrency is easily used in go (in comparison to C/C++) lets you better exploit
multi core IOT architectures (very common today).

12. How does golang help us ? - 2
Go is all about interfaces and so is IOT application development - Applications
interfaces with outside world in many protocols . By using smart interfaces
application is decoupled from that (send message by MQTT or HTTP - WIFI or
Bluetooth).
No file system dependency (Java , Nodejs, C++ - boost) - Code runs natively.
Large and growing collection of open source code for large range of abilities.
Compiles easily with C - very important.

13. But nothing is perfect …
compilation Artifacts are large in comparison to other languages.
Missing native integration support in some frameworks (for example compiling go
artifacts in bitbake session).
Go consumes more memory then C/C++ code - That can be problematic in a very
limited IOT device.
Most linux “user space” abstractions (v4l , gatt) to devices are written in C- You’ll
probably still need to write in C some HAL code (but mostly read).

14. IOT as a micro-services platform
Logging server
Backend client
WIFI/Bluetooth
service
Gui/UX
Microservices architecture -
DBUS/REST interface
Frame provider
(camera control)
Mobile-app
gateway (http
server)
Sensor 1
service
MQTT client

15. Recommended packages:
https://github.com/tianon/debian-golang-dbus
https://github.com/paypal/gatt
http://gobot.io/
https://github.com/blackjack/webcam

16. ● Go module - https://github.com/blackjack/webcam
Allows us to connect to the camera via V4L2.
Good example of using thin ‘C’ layer for exposing a device to Go.
Compiles to ARM and X86 natively.

17. Coding example on Raspberry 2

18. Questions ??
Find example at https://github.com/yonidavidson/raspberry-golang-example