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Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

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Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#251

Post by r0m4n0 »

coffeesn0b wrote: post #137
TickleSteve wrote: post #115

Can anyone explain what the actual problem is they're solving using 'edge computing'? I get the feeling this is a completely unnecessary use of technology.

Here's the abbreviated reason; Internet connectivity for restaurants stink. So we put our compute at the edge. Trust me... as an SRE I would much prefer we shove it in the cloud and call it a day, but alas... no such luck.

Shameless plug but...

They could be using VeloCloud and many of those internet connectivity problems would go away. Use multiple internet links with cellular along with dynamic multipath packet optimization

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#252

Post by StavrosK »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #212
ochoseis wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also curious, does GP have some way to shutdown gracefully when the car turns off, and reboot fast when it turns on? You could potentially handle this with a laptop and some battery-settings but not aware of an external battery solution for the NUC.

I currently use a laptop power adapter for the cigarette lighter, which is only on when the car is. The NUC's BIOS is set to turn it on when the power comes on, but I power it off manually before turning off the car. This is not ideal. There is an external battery solution for the NUC, and I bought it! http://www.mini-box.com/NUC-UPS But I haven't switched to it yet. The big upside is that it will gracefully shutdown…

It should be pretty easy to hook up a microcontroller (think Arduino nano) to "press" the power button when the power from the lighter comes on.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#253

Post by StavrosK »

fenwick67 wrote: post #192
walrus01 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux kernel in raspbian treats the SD card like a normal block device. I'm not aware of any special optimization for write wear leveling at the OS level, or on the board's sd card controller.

SD card wear-levelling is usually supposed to be handled on the controller inside the SD card. SD cards aren't like having raw access to flash, you basically write over SPI and the controller in the SD card decides where to actually put it. This talk about SD cards is really great and explains some of this: https://youtu.be/r3GDPwIuRKI?t=197

Fantastic talk, thanks for the link!

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#255

Post by 1337biz »

ForrestN wrote: post #245
ForrestN wrote: post #241

Sorry to interrupt the eager participation in this engineer recruiting effort (wow, iPads, cool!) Don't forget that the people who run Chic-Fil-A support a toxic version of Christianity that, among other things, holds that God himself is going to punish the United States because I'm allowed to get married. (Also, in case you're a few years ahead of the current western ethical consensus, they torture and kill a massiv…

It's painful to scroll to the bottom and see all the suppressed comments about Chic-Fil-A's ethics. Hackers are powerful. Don't give yourselves over to people who would harm your society. If you make a business like this more profitable, you're literally putting money into the coffers of political organizations that seek to take away my rights.

I scrolled all the way to the bottom just to downvote every comment that is not about tech. Go back to reddit if all you can contribute is some circlejerking about politics and religion.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#256

Post by jstarfish »

wenc wrote: post #233
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I currently use a laptop power adapter for the cigarette lighter, which is only on when the car is. The NUC's BIOS is set to turn it on when the power comes on, but I power it off manually before turning off the car. This is not ideal. There is an external battery solution for the NUC, and I bought it! http://www.mini-box.com/NUC-UPS But I haven't switched to it yet. The big upside is that it will gracefully shutdown…

Thanks. Curious, where do you stash the NUC in your car? I imagine it's insulated and not exposed -- otherwise a hot day or a very cold day might kill it.

You don't want insulated and hidden, you want perforated and airy (while still being discreet).

The NUC-like hardware that goes into tanks have chassis consisting of a mesh cage to allow maximum airflow since the cabin temperature alone can exceed 100F.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#257

Post by jacques_chester »

coffeesn0b wrote: post #130
djhworld wrote: post #64

I enjoyed reading this post, but came away with more questions. They talk about providing a service for developers to deploy stuff easily, but I'm wondering how that works in practise. I've very little experience with Kubernetes, the author mentions they run 'mini' kubernetes clusters at each restaurant. Does that mean they have to deploy software/container updates to each restaurant one by one? Or is it abstracted a…

Hey! Caleb here... I'm the lead SRE building the clusters on the restaurants. Each individual restaurant gets it's own cluster (we aren't fully deployed yet). There are too many network latency challenges and too much immaturity around federated clusters to take the route (unfortunately). We currently use gitops, which houses all the configs per cluster in a single repo per restaurant (CRAZY amount of corgis!)... we…

Wouldn't Spinnaker be suitable for something like this?

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#258

Post by yazmeya »

TickleSteve wrote: post #200
coffeesn0b wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more about network outages than latency specifically... although in several remote locations latency is permanently low due to slow providers.

But again, latency of what? Requirement for low-latency implies a use of data that is time-sensitive. What time-sensitive data is there in a single chicken restaurant??

In a fast food restaurant the latency of food orders being fulfilled (i.e. how fast your food really is) would be a reasonable metric to track.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#259

Post by coffeesn0b »

TickleSteve wrote: post #211
coffeesn0b wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our tolerance requirements for synchronicity are broad enough that we can tolerate blips like this... at the end of the day we are automating away some simple human interactions (ie; fry the fries or track the food), we aren’t performing surgery with these systems. So far we’ve been satisfied with Linux (Ubuntu 18.04 to be exact) and it’s overall capabilities. Also, don’t forget that cost at scale is a big factor...…

The point about real-time systems is not the your tolerance of 'blips' its about analysis of your worst-case timing requirements. This is what real-time control systems are all about. Sure, you may be able to tolerate a 1 second 'blip'... how about ten seconds? a minute? do you know for sure how long Linux may put your process on hold for? Linux provides no guarantees at all. It seems to me that what you are really c…

Have you worked with k8s yet? A lot of the things you bring up are addressed if k8s is used properly.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#260

Post by seattlefreeze »

laurentl wrote: post #156
max_im wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. Meant it more as a response to contents of the article that they've managed to break down their business processes into a subset of (dare I say) microservices that have allowed them to pinpoint weaknesses in efficiency and improve upon them - ie. the waffle fries example mentioned.

On the other hand when reading the article I kept thinking of the poor sod who has to cook a new batch of waffle fries because “The Edge” told him to.

Why do you consider the cook "a poor sod"? Because he/she is working a job and making a living? I imagine you didn't mean much by it but understand that just because everyone isn't employed in what many consider desirable professions doesn't mean their work is not important or that they don't take pride in what they do.

Not meant to be a rant, just wanted to make the point.

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