balena

balena is a platform for building, deploying, and managing fleets of connected Linux devices using containers, bringing a cloud-native workflow to embedded hardware. It has three main pieces: balenaOS, a minimal, container-optimized Linux operating system that runs on single-board computers and industrial gateways across many device types; the balena engine, a container runtime tuned for the constraints of embedded devices; and balenaCloud, a hosted dashboard and API for provisioning devices, pushing application updates as containers, monitoring device health, accessing devices remotely over a secure tunnel, and managing configuration and secrets across a fleet. Developers push code and balena builds and delivers it to every device, with atomic updates and rollback so a bad release does not brick hardware in the field. The platform supports meeting emerging device-security regulations through software bill of materials tracking and vulnerability detection. balena is used by hardware startups, industrial and energy companies, and hobbyists for products ranging from digital signage to environmental sensors. Its first ten devices are free with full features, and paid plans scale by the number of devices under management, with a self-hostable option for organizations that need to run the backend themselves.