Announcing Beta Support for Zephyr in the Golioth Firmware SDK

We are excited to announce the availability of a public Beta for support for the Zephyr RTOS in the Golioth Firmware SDK! But wait, you say, doesn’t Golioth already support Zephyr? We do! Goloith has always been, and will continue to be, a big proponent of the Zephyr RTOS and its community. We built the first version of our product specifically to work with the Zephyr RTOS. But our goal is to serve the IoT community at large, and that includes folks who choose to use an operating system other than Zephyr.

To that end, we created the Golioth Firmware SDK, which is designed from the ground up to be portable to any RTOS. It already has full support for ESP-IDF and Modus Toolbox, limited support for Linux, and a pathway for porting to any other operating system. It also incorporates all of our learnings over the last few years building IoT firmware, with the result being a cleaner internal architecture and more flexible external APIs.

This left us with two SDKs to support, meaning every bugfix or new feature required twice as much work. Like many of you, we have finite resources, and doing everything twice didn’t feel like the right way to scale. So, we chose to invest in bringing our same first-class support for Zephyr to the Golioth Firmware SDK.

What does this mean for Zephyr support?

Golioth’s support for Zephyr remains as strong as ever. We continue to be financial sponsors of the project, sit on the Technical Steering Committee, and provide free Zephyr training. In short, we love Zephyr!

What’s next?

We are already hard at work on the next set of improvements to Zephyr support in the Golioth Firmware SDK. Our focus now is on driving down the resource usage – RAM, ROM, and CPU cycles – of the SDK when running on Zephyr (with some of those improvements applying to our other ports as well). We will incorporate your feedback on our APIs, functionality, and reliability, and we expect Zephyr support in the Golioth Firmware SDK to be generally available by early next year .

How can I help?

You can help by test-driving Zephyr RTOS on the Golioth Firmware SDK. Follow our guide for setting up your build environment. The Firmware SDK includes a collection of sample code that demonstrates API calls for all Golioth services. And of course, we have an SDK Reference if you really want to dig in. Most importantly, don’t forget to share your thoughts on the experience with us: [email protected].

What if I’m already using the Zephyr SDK?

You can continue to use the Zephyr SDK as you do today and devices in the field running the Zephyr SDK (or earlier versions of the Golioth Firmware SDK) will continue to function.  We will continue to support you with bugfixes and new features for the near term.

Of course, if you are curious about where we are headed, we would love to have you try out the Golioth Firmware SDK! We are here to help you with the transition to the new SDK – please reach out to [email protected] or post on the Golioth Forum with any questions.

I’m starting a new project with Zephyr, which Golioth SDK should I choose?

For devices going to production in 2023, we recommend using the Golioth Zephyr SDK. The Firmware SDK supports all the features of the Golioth platform today, but is not yet as optimized as the Golioth Zephyr SDK.

We expect to reach general availability of Zephyr support in the Golioth Firmware SDK in early 2024. If you are building a Zephyr based device with plans to go to production in 2024 or later, you may want to consider beginning development in the Golioth Firmware SDK to reduce the burden of transitioning later.