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MicroEJ Open Sources Kifaru JavaScript Framework for Embedded Development

• By John K. Waters
• September 2, 2021

Embedded and IoT solutions provider MicroEJ has released to open source its JavaScript framework for embedded development called MICROEJ Kifaru. This addition to the company's offerings "fulfills the company’s mission to democratize embedded development to the broadest ecosystem of skilled applications developers on the market."

MicroEJ is a provider of software containers for edge and embedded devices. The company supports multiple standards and specific languages (C, Java, Domain-Specific Languages) with the aim of opening embedded systems development to the mobile and cloud community. And it has long supported "sub-flavors" of JavaScript for various customers targeting IoT.

Adding JavaScript support to the MICROEJ Virtual Execution Environment (VEE) expands the company's reach and makes the VEE one of the most accessible execution environment in the embedded industry, the company says.

"Being able to address more than 60% of the worldwide software developer community is a formidable boost of innovative creativity that we are proud to share with our customers," said Fred Rivard, MicroEJ’s CEO, in a statement.

The MicroEJ roadmap includes other popular languages, such as Kotlin and Python, and the company says to expect support for them, soon.

The list of features MICROEJ Kifaru introduces to smart device manufacturers includes:

• Safe software container: The new framework targets the MicroEJ software container, making it possible for developers to write their applications in multiple languages. Also, all multi-language components are securely run and managed by the VEE.
• No learning curve: Because JavaScript is one of the most popular scripters—and it's an easy and accessible languages to learn—getting up and running with Kifaru is fast and simple. Also, the framework makes it easier to iterate at a fast velocity to achieve quick prototypes and applications, the company says.
• Large ecosystem: Engineering teams using the new JavaScript framework now benefit from one of the largest ecosystems of tools, frameworks, and libraries, which can be leveraged in the development process to reduce development efforts and costs.
• Software modules reuse: MicroEJ ensure software modules portability across many RTOS/OS and hardware platforms. Consequently, JavaScript software modules created with MICROEJ Kifaru can run "as is" on various electronics with no modifications, resulting in a much easier evaluation process between different hardware and fast product declinations, the company says.
• Reliability: The MicroEJ provides application sandboxing, which means that software applications stay isolated from each other. Device robustness is guaranteed at execution, the company says, thanks to code validation and real-time execution checking for reliable embedded and IoT devices.

According to the company, more than 120+ companies around the world currently use MicroEJ to design electronic product applications in a large variety of industries, including smart home, wearables, healthcare, industrial automation, retail, telecommunications, smart city, building automation, and transportation, among others.