Beyond the Release: Managing Long-Term Risk and Compliance in Embedded Linux with Yocto

• Anna-Lena Marx
• April 14, 2026
• Embedded , Conferences

The embedded systems of the future will be judged by their long-term resilience and security. For many manufacturers, however, the shift from a product release to continuous lifecycle management is a significant operational hurdle.
Regulations like the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) are formalizing this challenge, demanding ongoing vulnerability management and creating a backdraft of responsibility that impacts the entire supply chain.

This presentation highlights that a robust and reproducible build system is the cornerstone of any sustainable product strategy in this new environment. It will explore how the Yocto Project provides the essential framework for building future-proof and maintainable systems.
The discussion will cover how its architecture enables the critical features needed to manage long-term risk: full-stack patchability for targeted CVE fixes, reproducible builds for maintaining legacy devices, and automated Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation for regulatory transparency.
Attendees will gain actionable strategies for implementing lifecycle-aware embedded development and transforming existing product portfolios to meet evolving regulatory requirements.

Your Vendor's BSP Is Probably Not Built For Product Longevity - Now What?

• Anna-Lena Marx
• December 4, 2025
• Embedded , Conferences

Vendor Board Support Packages (BSPs) are the standard for bringing new silicon to market, showcasing features, and promising an “easy” start. However, for those of us building products with long-term lifecycles, these BSPs often fail to meet quality requirements. They can be overly intrusive and typically don’t separate feature showcases from the well-maintained base needed for product development. This focus on rapid demonstration frequently results in BSPs which are difficult to maintain, lack transparency, and are built on non-LTS Yocto and kernel versions, making them unsuitable for products expected to last 5, 10, or even 20 years.

A Gentle Power Off for ZEReader: Replacing the Hard Switch with a Latching Power Circuit

• Anna-Lena Marx
• November 16, 2025
• Zereader , Electronics , Embedded

With the second revision, the way ZEReader is turned on and off got a massive redesign.
The hard on/off switch in the first revision was dead simple and worked great—with one big flaw from a user’s perspective. You could not recognize if the reader was on or off on the first sight. The old switch just closed or opened the loop with the power supply, and due to the E-Paper display just holding the state, you had no chance to tell.
Besides, there was no possibility at all to implement some kind of graceful shutdown mechanism, which would allow me to save all important state information and show a clear device off indicator.
This situation was totally fine for the very first prototype, but it started to get annoying very soon. A new approach was needed!