The Zephyr Project community is heading to Milpitas, California!
Join us on Thursday, November 5, 2026, from 9:00 AM-1:00 PM PST for an in-person Zephyr Project Meetup hosted by NXP Semiconductors, with Future Electronics as the venue sponsor. NXP Semiconductors will also sponsor hardware board giveaways.
The event is open to developers, engineers, contributors, students, technology professionals, and anyone interested in open source, embedded systems programming, and software development. Whether you are an experienced Zephyr developer or just beginning to explore embedded technologies, you are welcome to join.
As the Zephyr Project celebrates its 10th anniversary, this meetup offers an opportunity to connect with fellow community members, hear from industry experts, and explore how Zephyr is used in embedded and edge computing applications.
About the Host and Venue Sponsor
NXP Semiconductors is hosting the Milpitas meetup, bringing developers and open source enthusiasts together for a morning of technical learning, shared experiences, and networking centered around the Zephyr RTOS ecosystem.
Future Electronics is supporting the event as the venue sponsor, welcoming the community to its Milpitas office.
Event Details
- Date: Thursday, November 5, 2026
- Time: 9:00 AM–1:00 PM PST
- Venue: Future Electronics
- Address: 400 North McCarthy Boulevard, Suite 230, Milpitas, California, USA
About the Sessions
The morning will feature presentations exploring collaboration within the Zephyr ecosystem, browser-based development and debugging experiments, and the evolution of Zephyr development tools.
Speakers will share practical experiences, open source experiences, and challenges for the community to discuss. The agenda also includes dedicated time for community discussions, followed by lunch and networking.
Whether you are exploring Zephyr for your first project or already using it in embedded products, the sessions offer an opportunity to learn from others and gather ideas for your own work.
Agenda
9:00 AM-9:15 AM – Welcome Note – NXP team
9:15 AM-9:30 AM – Frenemies, customers and collaborators; Why OEMs belong alongside silicon vendors in the Zephyr community – Brendon Slade, Director, NXP Semiconductors
Silicon vendors compete to win customers, yet collaborate on Zephyr’s shared software foundation. This talk explores why that approach makes commercial sense and why OEMs have an important role alongside them.
Through examples of NXP and other silicon vendors’ work within the wider ecosystem, Brendon will examine how shared interfaces, upstream contributions, and community maintenance can help product teams reuse software, reduce duplicated effort, and support products over time. The focus is on the customer value of collaboration, while preserving each company’s freedom to differentiate.
The session will also explore how OEMs can strengthen that foundation through real-world requirements, testing, feedback, and contributions of their own. Participation can start small, with a useful bug report, a test, or better documentation. Attendees will leave with a practical perspective on how engaging with Zephyr can benefit both their products and the wider community.
9:35 AM–10:05 AM – Zephyr Meets the Web: Wasm, WebUSB, and Web Bluetooth Experiments – Jonathan Beri, Canonical
What if you could boot Zephyr, flash a board, and step through a debugger without installing a toolchain? This talk is a tour of experiments that bring Zephyr development and debugging to the web platform. Most are early-stage, and I’ll be upfront about what works, what doesn’t, and what I learned along the way.
Running Zephyr without hardware
- Emulating x86 in the browser with v86, and running Zephyr’s native_sim inside a Linux guest
- QEMU compiled to WebAssembly, booting Zephyr with an interactive shell
- Treating WebAssembly as a first-class Zephyr architecture, with deterministic virtual time
- Running native_sim in containers behind a web UI, with live UART, networking, and remote debugging
Talking to real hardware from a browser tab
- Flashing and debugging over WebUSB with probe-rs compiled to Wasm: breakpoints, RTT/defmt, registers, and peripheral views
- Firmware updates over Web Bluetooth using MCUmgr and MCUboot, featuring the open source mcumgr-web project and my contributions to it
- Web Serial for consoles, and USB/IP for reaching boards on remote machines
- Getting hardware APIs to browsers that don’t support them, such as Firefox and Safari
What you’ll take away
- The trade-offs between emulation, simulation, a native Wasm port, and real hardware
- Live demos you can try yourself, plus known limitations
- Where the browser platform’s gaps are and where Zephyr could help
Everything shown is open source, and I’d love feedback and contributors.
10:15 AM–11:00 AM – Lessons and Challenges of Development Tools for Zephyr – Kyle Dando, NXP Semiconductors
How has Zephyr software development improved over its 10 year history? This session reviews the challenges that need a solution. Tools have been introduced to improve the wider adoption of Zephyr. Join this interactive review of:
- Environment and tool setup
- Device Tree management
- Assistance for Agentic workflows
- Visual Studio Code… for everyone?
The challenges for each topic are outlined, then available solutions are reviewed
11:00 AM–12:00 PM – Community Discussions
Join fellow attendees to exchange ideas, discuss development experiences, and explore questions with members of the Zephyr community.
12:00 PM–1:00 PM – Lunch and Networking
Stay for lunch to meet fellow developers, discuss projects, and continue conversations with members of the Zephyr ecosystem.
Registration
Registration is required to help the hosts plan the space and event logistics. Seats are limited, so we encourage you to register early to secure your place. Register here.
For questions about the meetup, contact meetups@zephyrproject.org.
You can also join the Zephyr Project Discord server to participate in community discussions.
Thank You to Our Supporters
Thank you to NXP Semiconductors for hosting the meetup and sponsoring hardware board giveaways, and to Future Electronics for providing the venue. We also appreciate the speakers, volunteers, and attendees whose participation makes this event possible.
Support an Upcoming Zephyr Meetup
Interested in sponsoring development board giveaways or food and beverages for an upcoming Zephyr meetup? Complete the sponsorship interest form, and our organizers will contact you with event details and coordination information.
About the Zephyr Community Meetups
This meetup is part of the Zephyr Community Meetup Series, a collection of local gatherings hosted by community members with support from the Zephyr Project.
These events provide a welcoming space for developers, students, researchers, and embedded systems enthusiasts to exchange technical knowledge, present real-world projects, discuss challenges, and build stronger local open source communities.
Whether you are based in the Bay Area or another part of the world, we encourage community members, companies, universities, and developer groups to get involved. Contact meetups@zephyrproject.org or complete the meetup interest form to explore how you can bring Zephyr to your community.
We look forward to seeing everyone in Milpitas!