Alex Lennon
Alex Lennon has been working with embedded Linux and OpenEmbedded for at least 15 years (possibly longer, but his memory is shot). He's the founder of Dynamic Devices Ltd and delivered a keynote at Yocto Project Summit 2022.
Over the past few months, Alex has been experimenting with AI-assisted development workflows for Yocto projects, learning what works, what doesn't, and where the real productivity gains lie. His recent work includes automated hardware testing, remote target debugging, and power optimization workflows - all enhanced by AI collaboration.
Alex believes the embedded community needs to figure out AI integration together, sharing both the successes and the failures to develop practical best practices.
議程
This session is about speeding up embedded bring-up for the Jaguar EInk Display: colour e-paper on NXP i.MX93 SOC with Yocto / OpenEmbedded customisation, plus a Zephyr-based companion chip for power management—targeting 5+ years operation with the PMU approach for realistic scheduled static signage workloads.
The Linux side display and controller integration are implemented as a Rust userspace application on the Linux image—code people often call a “driver,” but here it is userspace engineering, iterated like any other critical service.
The focus is agentic AI (e.g. Cursor-class agents) and how it changes the loop when you feed it real hardware feedback. I will describe a workflow we relied on: SSH to boards (including remote lab setups), automated deploy of rebuilt artefacts, and webcam capture of what is actually on the panel—fed back into the agent loop so “what we think we programmed” is checked against what appears on hardware. That closes the gap between compile-only optimism and hardware truth.
I will cover partitioning between Linux + Rust app and Zephyr on the PMU at an architectural level (rail sequencing, sleep/wake, responsibilities). PMU application firmware remains closed source; I will not present proprietary files—only the integration surface, debug strategy, and lessons that remain useful when part of the stack is private.
The product direction includes long-life maintenance thinking aligned with UK-CE RED and EU CRA expectations around secure boot and OTA—discussed technically, not as legal advice.
Open artefacts
- meta-dynamicdevices
- eink-power-cli
- esp-eink (older open e-paper reference material)
Audience
Embedded / Linux developers; Rust curiosity helps; deep kernel internals not required.
Outline (30 minutes)
- Goals and architecture (Linux + eink display rust app + Zephyr PMU)
- Yocto customisation highlights using Foundries.io stack for secure boot and OTAU
- Agentic workflow (SSH, deploy, logs)
- Webcam-in-the-loop verification for panel outcomes
- Failures and guardrails; Q&A (Open-EP collaboration themes)
Takeaways
- A repeatable pattern for remote hardware feedback loops with agents
- Pointers to public repos
Related
- Prior talk (agentic Yocto-era workflows): Yocto Project Summit 2025.12
- Product framing: etablone