Deploy IoT applications with Balena Cloud and Arm Virtual Hardware
Introduction
Prepare a custom Balena OS image
Install Balena OS on AVH
Deploy an application to your device
Next Steps
Deploy IoT applications with Balena Cloud and Arm Virtual Hardware
Deploy from Balena Hub
You can build and deploy your own custom applications on Balena OS, or use a pre-built application from Balena Hub .
As an example, you can deploy a Grafana dashboard from Balena Hub that will show the state of your Balena OS device.
Open Balena Hub in a new tab by clicking on the Balena Hub button on the top right corner of your Balena Cloud dashboard.
Balena Hub button location
On the Balena Hub, click Apps in the top navigation bar, then search for balena-app. This is a pre-built dashboard backed by Grafana and served by Nginx.
balena-app in Balena Hub
Click on the app to open the details page.
Look for the Deploy button in the upper-right corner of the page.
Clicking this button takes you back to your Balena Cloud dashboard with a dialog to deploy balena-app to a fleet.
Deploy balena-app to fleet
Select Use an existing fleet instead and choose the AVH-Testing fleet.
You don’t need to do any advanced configuration for this app. Click the Deploy to fleet button to begin the deployment.
If you have more than one device in your fleet, this process deploys the selected application to all devices in your fleet simultaneously.
Once the deployment finishes, click on your device in Balena Cloud dashboard to open up the device page. You’ll see that the Grafana and Nginx services have been deployed to and are running on your device.
balena-app services running on device
You’ll also be able to see the system logs from your device, and optionally get access to the device’s terminal from this Balena Cloud screen.
Access your Grafana dashboard
Your application is now running, but it’s not accessible from the outside world. To view your Grafana dashboard in your browser, you need to tell Balena to make your device accessible from a public URL.
Toggle the Public Device URL switch to the On position.
A link appears next to the switch, click on it to open the newly created public URL.
balena-app login page
This opens the balena-app on your device in your browser. You’re presented with a log in screen, use the default username admin and password admin to log in. You’ll be prompted to set a new password for the admin user before continuing.
balena-app dashboard with system metrics
You now see the Grafana dashboard monitoring your Balena OS installation on this device, including the containers running Grafana and Nginx.