Welcome to the 24th issue of TMPDIR, a weekly newsletter covering Embedded Linux, IoT systems, and technology in general. Subscribe to future issues at https://tinyletter.com/tmpdir and pass it on to anyone else you think might be interested. Please send any tips or feedback to info@tmpdir.org.

Linux

Gstreamer major release 1.20 is out. It is one of favourite multimedia frameworks for Linux based Operating Systems. This change brings a load of changes

Linux 4.4 release has come to an end with this announcement. 4.4 was a long term kernel and deployed on many embedded Linux devices including Android.

Restartable sequences are new in glibc 2.35 introduced to speed up per-CPU data structures from userspace without locking. This has existed in kernel for long since 4.15 release but there was no userspace APIs till now Rich Felker (musl author) came with interesting shortcomings in the glibc implementation,

IoT

Currently testing Home Assistant. Thus far, it seems pretty slick and works well with Shelly devices.

To get more familiar with Shelly products, I did a few small projects around home:

Overall, Shelly products work great -- they are open and easy to use. My only complaint is the cloud and phone apps are a little fussy and have trouble discovering devices that are already on the network as well as attaching the devices to a WiFi network. Hopefully the newer Bluetooth enabled (Plus/Pro) devices will work better in this regard.

The Make IoT Simple Podcast from Shelly describes how their products are different than most IoT products today.

Quote for the week

When you catch a sideways glance in the mirror of your mind’s eye, and ask yourself why you do this software thing, and whether it really matters, "who" tends to make a satisfying answer. "Why" only rarely does, and only for a time. Serve. Other people. Other devs if you like. Now. Life’s just better that way. - Kyle Mitchell

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Thanks for reading!

Khem and Cliff