Golang application on IoT

Technical Discussion
1

Guys, can Go language be used for programing IoT devices ?
The main requirements for programing is
> Connect to many devices
> Able to store data
> Should support [Arduino] or [Raspberry Pi]
> Should be considerably fast
Is Go reliable for IoT programing ?

2

As long as you run Go program on supported platforms (microprocessor), you’re good.

For Arduino, not feasible as Go is specifically designed for computing. It’s best to stick back C/C++. If you want to have Go supported down to embedded level, you can consider develop for the team.

For Raspberry Pi, you need to remember to cross-compile your program like:

$ env GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm GOARM=5 go build <path/to/program>

Go is reliable for edge data processing and back-end server. For sensor/actuator interfacing, depending on your design, microcontroller assembly / C / C++ will be more suitable.

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3

There’s also TinyGo which is designed for such use cases https://tinygo.org/

You can compile and run TinyGo programs on several different microcontroller boards such as the BBC micro:bit and the Arduino Uno.

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4

Yeah, Thank you sir.

5

Sorry for some typo. Thanks for the backup @bklimczak. :smiley:

I was trying to convey that “you can help the developer team to enable Go on embedded microcontroller”. As far as I tested TinyGo, you must adhere to a few rules:

  1. avoid heap memory allocation (Heap allocation | TinyGo)
  2. no map type yet (Go language features | TinyGo)

Given the easiness to import Go packages across the Internet, you must be very, very careful with importing Go packages as a lot of them are using map data type internally. The programming experience is like walking by tip-toeing most of the time. In my opinion, it’s quite taxing which is why I do not recommend Go for microcontroller (yet).

If you can solve those puzzles and contribute to the developer team (E.g. TinyGo / Go dev team), I’m pretty sure the entire Go community will appreciate your effort. :smiley:

If you need to have small board but for some reason, strictly using Go, you can consider those very tiny single-board-computer like the following so that you don’t need to tip-toeing around:

  1. Buy a Compute Module 3+ – Raspberry Pi
  2. https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=132

Happy exploration.

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6

Regarding my humble experiences pis are not reliable. Take look at up board. Little pricy but they are a stable products with optimized linux kernel.

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7

Definetely, yes. I wrote a SCADA IIoT system in Go (real time monitoring and commands) connecting to many devices in real time thanks to goroutines. I also worked on Raspberry Pi (see here how). And yes, it’s extremely fast and reliable.

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