To manage remotely your IoT device without knowing the IP address of the device we used MQTT and a set of custom go libraries. With this architecture Arduino Create Agent allows users to deploy container remotely. A journey on Docker client, APT command line, sockets, systemd and much more on Arm and Intel Linux devices.

1. REMOTE CONTROL OF IoT
LINUX DEVICES
ARDUINO CONNECTOR | LINUXLAB 2018
04|12|2018

2. 2Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
ABOUT ME
LUCA
CIPRIANI
CIO, ARDUINO
@MASTROLINUX

3. 3Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT 3
INTRO |
GOALS

4. 4Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
ARDUINO - KNOWN FOR MICROCONTROLLERS
MKR FOX
1200
MKR WAN
1300
MKR GSM
1400
MKR NB
1500
MKR WIFI
1010
MKR ETH
SHIELD
MKR1000

5. 5Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
RUNS ON LINUX TOO

6. 6Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
USE CASE
Give users a quick and easy web interface to
• Check the status of the system
• Configure networking
• Install packages
• Deploy apps/containers, Arduino Sketches

7. 7Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
CONTROL LINUX FROM THE WEB
• Old problem, Old
solutions
• HTTPS is hard to achieve
• Bi-directional
communication
• Work on most network
topologies
• Create a web server,
contact it via http
• Cannot have HTTPS
unless domain name is
registered and IP address
is static/known
• UDP port are often
closed

8. 8Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
KNOWN SOLUTIONS DID NOT FIT USE CASE
Here is a random list
• Ubuntu Landscape
• Zentyal
• Ajenti
• Webmin
• Others

9. 9Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
LANDSCAPE - DO NOT BE OVERKILL
We do not want to store users’ data
unless needed or with big
advantages for both users and us.
We do not want to deal with state
synchronization.
Scaling is really expensive!

10. 10Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
SECTION TITLE

11. 11Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
ZENTIAL - OUR TARGET ARE NOT SMB
You have to control a
Raspberry, not a small office, do
you really need a whole OS?

12. 12Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT

13. 13Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
AJENTI - GOOD PRODUCT BUT STILL WEB SERVER
They have a nice, well designed
product but has the same
issues we mentioned already.
HTTP server based system!

14. 14Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT

15. 15Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab 2018 - Firenze, IT
ARDUINO CONNECTOR
FEATURES
One single binary ~20MB (no external deps)01
Works on every Debian-like Linux distros02
Works on slow connections05
No need to know the IP in advance06
Secure only connections03
MQTT (Stable TCP socket with the remote server)04

16. 16Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
MQTT is:
• Well known
• Widely used
• Feature complete
• Simple enough
• Bi-directional
I like AMQP more ;)

17. 17Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab 2018 - Firenze, IT
SERVER SIDE
WHAT YOU NEED
MQTT Server01
SSL Support02
MQTT over Websocket (optional)05
MQTT Client03
Oauth2 server (optional)04

18. 18Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
SHOW ME THE CODE
Go Language runs on:
arm v5, v6, v7
arm64 v8
x86
x86_64
Public repo:
https://github.com/arduino
/arduino-connector

19. 19Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
{}
--> $aws/things/{{id}}/stats/post
INFO: {
"memory":{
"FreeMem":1317964,
"TotalMem":15859984,
"AvailableMem":8184204,
"Buffers":757412,
"Cached":6569888,
"FreeSwapMem":0,
"TotalSwapMem":0
},
<-- $aws/things/{{id}}/stats
EXAMPLE API
{}
--> $aws/things/{{id}}/apt/list/post
INFO: {"packages":[
{"Name":"firefox","Status":"upgradable","
Architecture":"amd64","Version":"57.0.3+b
uild1-0ubuntu0.17.10.1"}, ...],
"page":0,"pages":1}
<-- $aws/things/{{id}}/apt/list

20. 20Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
Use /proc Luke!
And remember, everything is a file in Linux
We released
https://github.com/arduino/go-system-stats
STATS API

21. 21Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
APT integration is dummy, APT lib api are in
C++ only and nearly impossible to integrate
with Go, so we used the CLI as an API
We released
https://github.com/arduino/go-apt-client/
A combination of dpkg + apt commands
wrapped in an API
Supports managing repos
APT INTEGRATION

22. 22Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
DOCKER INTEGRATION

23. 23Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
NetworkManager has stable API (0.98 is really
stable)
We released
https://github.com/arduino/gonetworkmanager
You can add ETH or WiFi networks
NETWORK MANAGER INTEGRATION

24. 24Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
DOCKER INTEGRATION

25. 25Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
We install docker if not previously installed and
if target supports it.
Docker Go APIs are really easy to manage
(imagine why)
Works with private registry
Runs on huge servers (we tried with Intel Data
Center with 64 core CPU)
And Small devices (like Beaglebone Black and
Raspberry Pi)
DOCKER INTEGRATION

26. 26Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
DOCKER INTEGRATION

27. 27Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
We can run Arduino compiled code directly as
a Linux binary
Integrations with all Hardware sensors and
GPIO is provided by the MRAA library
https://github.com/intel-iot-devkit/mraa
ARDUINO INTEGRATION

28. 28Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
Support for all Debian
Based devices.
Porting to other OS is
simple.

29. 29Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
Communicate with the
hardware directly from
Arduino to Linux API and
vice-versa

30. 30Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
Run Shell commands in Arduino and manage hardware directly
https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/Arduino_Genuino/arduino-linux-on-
up2-board-with-intel-mraa-a30f87

31. 31Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
ARDUINO INTEGRATION

32. 32Remote Control of IoT Linux Devices | LinuxLab2018 - Firenze, IT
Let’s give it a try!
https://create.arduino.cc

33. THANK YOU!
ARDUINO.CC
Luca Cipriani - CIO
l.cipriani@arduino.cc - @mastrolinux