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MBed OS and platform are shutting down in 2026, although rumor has it almost all of the devs have already been downsized.
https://os.mbed.com/blog/entry/Important-Update-on-Mbed/
A couple of possible discussion points from the perspective of someone who used it for STM32:
It was one of those FOSS-but-not-really products that was completely corporate controlled and funded and written, but under a FOSS license. It never really gained any traction outside corporate. There is a winner-take-all mentality in microcontroller RTOS... why use Mbed if Zephyr supports 10x as much "stuff" out of the box? Also, given the primary source of funding, it really only practically functioned on ARM processors. Pragmatically it seems multiplatform RTOS are the only ones that survive long-term, single platform seems always doomed, a bit different than the desktop/laptop/phone market.
There was something of a product-tying thing going on with Pelion IoT cloud platform, which used to be free, but the free tier disappeared. It was pretty awesome for hobbyist use until they intentionally got rid of the hobbyists, presumably to "save money". However this seems to be a common pattern for decades, the devs who influence million dollar contracts during the day want to play with pirated/free versions at home at night, so arguably Pelion and thus Mbed shot themselves in their own foot.
I wonder how much C19 killed Mbed a couple years later. After STM32 procs and ARM microcontrollers were unobtainable for couple of years, there was no way to get hardware to run Mbed.
It was a bit memory-hungry; IIRC by the time you got a full IoT platform with auto-updates and telemetry over WiFi working on commodity dev board hardware, you were out of either flash, ram, or both so you couldn't run your app.
I have happy memories of being introduced to LwM2M protocol; it was an interesting innovation on MQTT but a little too "organized" for widespread use. Take MQTT and "compress" by turning all common (and uncommon) nouns and verbs into integers; kind of like the old Apollo spacecraft computer, kind of like a fixed compression standard.
A final interesting discussion point is tool manufacturers going out of business is a pretty strong signal the bubble is over. The permanent solution to "The S in IoT stands for security" may very well be the IoT industry drying up and blowing away, and this shutdown is a sign of the start of the end.
Anyone else have fond memories of MbedOS? I thought it was pretty awesome back in the day, although I switched to Zephyr years ago. Other contemporary microcontroller or IoT comments?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 16 2024, @01:01PM (6 children)
There was never a point where any of the promises of "IOT" came true.
There was a period where a lot of formerly useful tools inexplicably came with $5-10 monthly subscriptions. And that's only getting worse.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday July 16 2024, @02:08PM (1 child)
What sort of promises though? I can honestly say I wasn't paying much attention, partly because I hardly ever consume marketing material anyway, and partly because I find the IoT simultaneously creepy and boring.
The only claim I can vaguely remember was that there would be fridges that would automatically restock themselves. Even if that could be achieved without invading my privacy or going over my budget (It couldn't, even ignoring those $5-10 subscriptions), I highly doubt it would guarantee any delivery into my fridge is COVID-free. So, again, do not want.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday July 16 2024, @06:07PM
A good one that never happened was a fridge that would automatically produce shopping lists. Because that turned out to be hard, but putting a screen on it with Twitter and Facebook and a smartphone app that told you the temperature was easy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GloomMower on Tuesday July 16 2024, @02:58PM
> There was never a point where any of the promises of "IOT" came true.
Maybe that is true in the consumer space. But that is not true in industrial and ag space. I think it is going strong, coupled with machine learning is only going to be stronger.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday July 16 2024, @03:27PM
IOT was always a cash grab from companies that wanted to force devices to fail sooner. It's why it was such a pain in so many cases to operate them without the internet. I think that had they all come with the option of running them off your own Pi or other SBC that they would have been more successful. There's a bunch of stuff like thermostats where being able to flip a switch to turn on bluetooth and then set the thermostat from a basic app before locking it again with the switch would be a massive selling point. Once programmable thermostats became a common thing, they became really annoying to work with due to the typical interface being so bad. Being able to upload a schedule to the device of what temperatures at what time without messing around with buttons would be worth it. The problem is that most smart thermostat out there requires an Internet connection. Which can be a security issue if not properly secured.
Personally, I wouldn't mind having a bunch of IOT enabled devices where it makes sense, but I'm not spending $5-10 a month and dealing with what happens when the device gets discontinued. My Phillips Hue lights still work, but because they're first gen, the ecosystem is completely broken and I can't even use them with the official app anymore. IIRC, there is a 3rd party way of doing it, but that's kind of annoying and probably shouldn't ever have required an internet connection at all.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday July 16 2024, @08:29PM (1 child)
One "promise" almost definitely going to be true: There will be millions of unpatched Internet-connected thingies running 25-year-old operating systems. Which can be easily turned into botnets. Fun, fun, fun!
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Funny) by pTamok on Wednesday July 17 2024, @09:41AM
Yes.
The 'S' in IoT stands for 'Secure'