Ah, you’re very correct. The device, on initially powering-up, will need to have a working network interface it can use to contact the backend and download the container images, inside of which are the modules that have been built, etc. In this case, you have three options:
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preload the device with your built image [1] (device boots up, runs the container(s), one of which (or… the only one, if there’s only one) installs the kernel module, enabling the wifi device)
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build your own BalenaOS with the kernel module included (requires a yocto build setup) [2] and then affiliate the device to the BalenaCloud backend [3].
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wait for our team to include the driver, if that turns out to be the path we take (I’ve forwarded this request to the engineers)
[1] https://www.balena.io/docs/learn/welcome/production-plan/#preloading-images
[2] https://www.balena.io/os/docs/custom-build/
[3] Building balenaOS from source and connecting to balenaCloud