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jakewinstoday at 8:24 AM0 repliesview on HN

I tried this a while back and found it ended up being easier to just give the firmware agent a dedicated machine, there’s so much low-level stuff you want access to for iterating on firmware, and the docker layers kept confusing the agents when they were debugging faults, crashes, brownouts etc.

Combining a dedicated small machine with a USB hub that supports per-port power cycling lets the agent iterate and un-wedge stuff with no human intervention for very long (days) periods. Obviously any software produced that way is unusable, but it’s incredible for debugging. Agent gets a programmable oscilloscope, power-cycling, and peripherals (also power-cycleable) emulating the various things our product talks to in the wild.

TL;DR I found the docker layers just caused confusion for the agent and giving her an old laptop was way simpler and much more powerful