The Open Source Summit North America took place from June 23-25, 2024, in Denver, Colorado, and brought together a dynamic and diverse open source community. With 1,535 in-person attendees representing 732 organizations, the summit reflected the growing momentum and collaboration across the ecosystem.
The audience featured professionals from across the open source spectrum, including embedded and systems developers, security experts, DevOps engineers, and product managers. North America made up 81% of the attendees, with the USA, Canada, and the UK among the most represented countries.
The event featured:
- 263 conference talks
- 1,243 total talk submissions
- 51 sponsors showcasing technologies and tools from across the open source landscape
The Zephyr Project had a strong presence at the summit with multiple talks highlighting real-world applications, technical innovations, and community collaboration efforts.
Across the coming weeks, we will be publishing highlights from each Zephyr-related session, looking into topics such as security, long-term support, tooling, and the integration of Rust into Zephyr-based development.
Stay tuned as we recap the key takeaways and discussions that are shaping the future of Zephyr RTOS.
FUOTA Using LORAWAN and Zephyr: DFU in the ‘Real’ World – Sidd Gupta, Demar Inc. (DBA Zylum)
In this talk, Sidd presents a practical approach to overcoming the limitations of the LoRaWAN FUOTA (Firmware Update Over-The-Air) specification originally designed for small firmware artifacts by extending it to support larger updates typical of modern Zephyr RTOS based devices.
The talk introduces a novel method that treats LoRaWAN as an additional SMP (Simple Management Protocol) transport, enabling robust Device Firmware Updates (DFU) over long-range, low-power networks. This is achieved by integrating and extending open source tools, including Intercreate’s smpclient and Semtech’s LBM stack, into a working solution called ChirpStack FUOTA. The system reuses Zephyr’s MCU Manager subsystem and demonstrates DFU sessions that can seamlessly switch between transports (e.g., Bluetooth and LoRaWAN) mid-update.
Sidd also shares personal insights into the evolution of his open source journey and emphasizes the value of developer collaboration, modular design, and practical use of open tools. Slides here.
Zephyr for Open Source Health Devices – Ashwin Whitchurch, Protocentral Electronics
This session explores the role of Zephyr RTOS in the development of open source medical devices at Protocentral Electronics, including the HealthyPi 5, HealthyPi 6, and the wearable HealthyPi Move. Ashwin Whitchurch shares how Zephyr enabled a single, portable codebase across three distinct microcontroller platforms streamlining development across form factors and use cases.
The talk covers challenges faced while making devices wearable, low power, and cross-platform, and how Zephyr’s architecture including its sensor framework, state machine system, and middleware helped overcome them. With hardware variations, display sizes, and power constraints in play, Zephyr provided a consistent development experience through unified drivers, overlays, and modular design.
Additionally, Ashwin discusses the broader impact of open source health devices, from local manufacturing to transparent safety and RF compliance testing, and how the ecosystem around Zephyr supports scalability and practical deployment. This session is a compelling case study in building reliable, affordable, and scalable health tech rooted in open source hardware and software. Slides here.
Missed Open Source Summit North America 2025?
If you are looking forward to attending Zephyr talks or connecting with the community, Open Source Summit Europe + Zephyr Developer Summit (25–27 August 2025) in Amsterdam is your next big opportunity!
Stop by Booth B23 to see Zephyr in action, meet the team, and explore real-world demos. Whether you’re a long-time contributor or new to Zephyr, the Summit is the perfect place to learn, share, and get involved. Read more here.
Join us in Amsterdam, see you there!
To keep up to date about the project, subscribe to the Zephyr quarterly newsletter or connect with us on @ZephyrIoT, Zephyr Project LinkedIn or the Zephyr Discord Channel to talk with community and TSC members.