I am looking for an industrial computer on which I could easily install BalenaOS without too much stuggle in builiding a custom image. My requirements are the following:
Industrial fanless computer (IP protection, vibration and shocks graded, robust connectors, no openings in the enclosure, …)
Based on Nvidia Orin AGX or NX (need to run video processing models based on cuda or built for tensorRT)
Preferably 6 or 8 GMSL2 inputs (with driver support) but ethernet camera inputs are an option if needed.
Some examples of computers I could consider buying if support of BalenaOS is correct:
My concern is to find the hardware that would minimize developments on the BalenaOS part, to allow a focus on the application side. This means making sure that I can easily find a compatible OS image, upload it easily to the computer, and retrieving the GMSL2 cameras output easily in my containers.
Does anyone here have some experience with this and could guide me to make a relevant choice? Combining BalenaOS with Jetson hardware unlocks many doors, but the hardware needs to be reliable to run in real enviromnent 24/7, which is not the direct purpose of the Nvidia dev board.
We don’t have any of the above devices tested / compatible with balena today, but we have had discussions in the past with both Syslogic and Neousys who have had interest in bringing balena compatibility to their hardware themselves. I haven’t worked with M2M, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be willing to do the same.
If the vendor was open to that path, it would take time for them to do that work (usually about 2-3 months after they start the engineering piece; after shipping hardware and signing NDAs and such). But the cost to you is nothing, and the cost for them is engineering time with the reward of you as a customer for that effort. If they advertise it, they may find other opportunities as well.
So I think that might be the best way for you to move forward, where you wouldn’t be responsible for the OS layer at all, and in fact would have the full support of the hardware vendor behind you, which is what we all want to see for successful deployments.
Let me know what you think of that idea. I can connect you with the folks I’ve met at Syslogic or Neousys to get those conversations going, but happy to answer any other questions you might have first here as well.
Thank you for the quick reply! I think that could be a great idea, of course.
At the moment, we are working on a use case using a Syslogic RPC RML A4NX (GMSL) computer but I did not succeed to installa BalenaOS on it (even less with camera support). I asked support on specific questions:
But the path is still very long before I would make it work, and I fear that would be too much for the time I can dedicate. So I kept the basic L4T OS at the moment. But this question was also raised internally in our company since we are thinking of scaling our use case. Hence my request about another potential balenaOS-compatible computer with the specs I mentionned.
What could be the next step according to you to try to make this happen? Don’t hesitate to message me personally if you want to set up a meeting with someone of syslogic or Neousys.
