Announcing AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 – With an Open Source Edge Runtime and New Developer Capabilities

I am happy to announce AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0, a new version of AWS IoT Greengrass that makes it easy for device builders to build, deploy, and manage intelligent device software. AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 provides an open source edge runtime, a rich set of pre-built software components, tools for local software development, and new features for managing software on large fleets of devices.

AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 edge runtime is now open source under an Apache 2.0 license, and available on Github. Access to the source code allows you to more easily integrate your applications, troubleshoot problems, and build more reliable and performant applications that use AWS IoT Greengrass.

You can add or remove pre-built software components based on your IoT use case and your device’s CPU and memory resources. For example, you can choose to include pre-built AWS IoT Greengrass components such as stream manager only when you need to process data streams with your application, or machine learning components only when you want to perform machine learning inference locally on your devices.

The AWS IoT Greengrass IoT Greengrass 2.0 includes a new command-line interface (CLI) that allows you to locally develop and debug applications on your device. In addition, there is a new local debug console that helps you visually debug applications on your device. With these new capabilities, you can rapidly develop and debug code on a test device before using the cloud to deploy to your production devices.

AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 is also integrated with AWS IoT thing groups, enabling you to easily organize your devices in groups and manage application deployments across your devices with features to control rollout rates, timeouts, and rollbacks.

AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 – Getting Started
Device builders can use AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 by going to the AWS IoT Greengrass console where you can find a download and install command that you run on your device. Once the installer is downloaded to the device, you can use it to install Greengrass software with all essential features, register the device as an AWS IoT Thing, and create a simple “hello world” software component in less than 10 minutes.

To get started in the AWS IoT Greengrass console, you first register a test device by clicking Set up core device. You assign the name and group of your core device. To deploy to only the core device, select No group. In the next step, install the AWS IoT Greengrass Core software in your device.

When the installer completes, you can find your device in the list of AWS IoT Greengrass Core devices on the Core devices page.

AWS IoT Greengrass components enable you to develop and deploy software to your AWS IoT Greengrass Core devices. You can write your application functionality and bundle it as a private component for deployment. AWS IoT Greengrass also provides public components, which provide pre-built software for common use cases that you can deploy to your devices as you develop your device software. When you finish developing the software for your component, you can register it with AWS IoT Greengrass. Then, you can deploy and run the component on your AWS IoT Greengrass Core devices.

To create a component, click the Create component button on the Components page. You can use a recipe or import an AWS Lambda function. The component recipe is a YAML or JSON file that defines the component’s details, dependencies, compatibility, and lifecycle. To learn about the specifications, visit the recipe reference guide.

Here is an example of a YAML recipe.

When you finish developing your component, you can add it to a deployment configuration to deploy to one or more core devices. To create a new deployment or configure the components to deploy to core devices, click the Create button on the Deployments page. You can deploy to a core device or a thing group as a target, and select the components to deploy. The deployment includes the dependencies for each component that you select.

You can edit the version and parameters of selected components and advanced settings such as the rollout configuration, which defines the rate at which the configuration deploys to the target devices; timeout configuration, which defines the duration that each device has to apply the deployment; or cancel configuration, which defines when to automatically stop the deployment.

Moving to AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0
Existing devices running AWS IoT Greengrass 1.x will continue to run without any changes. If you want to take advantage of new AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 features, you will need to move your existing AWS IoT Greengrass 1.x devices and workloads to AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0. To learn how to do this, visit the migration guide.

After you move your 1.x applications over, you can start adding components to your applications using new version 2 features, while leaving your version 1 code as-is until you decide to update them.

AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 Partners
At launch, industry-leading partners NVIDIA and NXP have qualified a number of their devices for AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0:

• NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit
• NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier 32GB Module
• NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit
• NVIDIA Jetson Nano Module
• NVIDIA Jetson TX2 Developer Kit
• NVIDIA Jetson TX2 Module
• NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX
• NXP S32G-VNP-EVB
• NXP S32G-VNP-RDB

See all partner device listings in the AWS Partner Device Catalog. To learn about getting your device qualified, visit the AWS Device Qualification Program.

Available Now
AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 is available today. Please see the AWS Region table for all the regions where AWS IoT Greengrass is available. For more information, see the developer guide.

Starting today, to help you evaluate, test, and develop with this new release of AWS IoT Greengrass, the first 1,000 devices in your account will not incur any AWS IoT Greengrass charges until December 31, 2021. For pricing information, check out the AWS IoT Greengrass pricing page.

Give it a try, and please send us feedback through your usual AWS Support contacts or the AWS forum for AWS IoT Greengrass.

Learn all the details about AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 and get started with the new version today.

— Channy