Show IH: We built a container-first platform for IoT devices

Hi IndieHackers,

My friend and I have been working on an IoT device management platform Synpse (https://synpse.net/) that would make your devices feel like they are part of a cloud platform that's simple to manage, debug and deploy applications to. We designed it in a way so it's super easy to self-host it (we run it on Kubernetes but Docker Compose would be fine too) and that can run containers, configure networks, etc.

Primary use case was another project that required us to deploy software to ~1200 devices (public transport company) and have over-the-air software updates. Since we have been working with Docker for many years, naturally we thought it's the right way to deploy software :) The end result is pretty great, the instance that managed 1200 devices is actually a 1 CPU container connected to a developer type shared Postgres instance on Google Cloud. The whole thing costs less than $100 per month to run.

A couple of key features:

SSH to any of the device through reverse tunnels (crucial when debugging your applications). It's fun to SSH into a bus that's driving somewhere in another country :)
Device labeling and filtering
Deploy application using yaml configuration files (here we didn't go with the complexity of Kubernetes but it's a lot closer to a familiar Docker Compose)
CPU/RAM Metrics
Mount hardware devices (important in IoT world to mount zigbee/zwave or other devices)
RBAC - a lot of projects try to add collaboration and RBAC after the launch. We wanted to have this from the start so we wouldn't have a complex migration later.

As you can see from our blog post, we are having quite a lot of fun with it https://synpse.net/blog/ :D It's a joy to use, our intel NUCs and Raspberries are working overtime now :D

Say something nice to deforciant…

1
Hi IndieHackers,

My friend and I have been working on an IoT device management platform Synpse (https://synpse.net/) that would make your devices feel like they are part of a cloud platform that's simple to manage, debug and deploy applications to. We designed it in a way so it's super easy to self-host it (we run it on Kubernetes but Docker Compose would be fine too) and that can run containers, configure networks, etc.

Primary use case was another project that required us to deploy software to ~1200 devices (public transport company) and have over-the-air software updates. Since we have been working with Docker for many years, naturally we thought it's the right way to deploy software :) The end result is pretty great, the instance that managed 1200 devices is actually a 1 CPU container connected to a developer type shared Postgres instance on Google Cloud. The whole thing costs less than $100 per month to run.

A couple of key features:
- SSH to any of the device through reverse tunnels (crucial when debugging your applications). It's fun to SSH into a bus that's driving somewhere in another country :)
- Device labeling and filtering
- Deploy application using yaml configuration files (here we didn't go with the complexity of Kubernetes but it's a lot closer to a familiar Docker Compose)
- CPU/RAM Metrics
- Mount hardware devices (important in IoT world to mount zigbee/zwave or other devices)
- RBAC - a lot of projects try to add collaboration and RBAC after the launch. We wanted to have this from the start so we wouldn't have a complex migration later.
As you can see from our blog post, we are having quite a lot of fun with it https://synpse.net/blog/ :D It's a joy to use, our intel NUCs and Raspberries are working overtime now :D
Karolis Rusenas

·
5 years ago
·