balena Announces EtcherPro, a 16-Device Stackable Drive Duplicator for SBCs

Internet of Things specialist balena has launched pre-orders for its EtcherPro, a device designed to take the technology behind its Etcher software and put it in a hardware system capable of flashing up to 16 SD cards, USB drives, or single-board computers at the same time — wholly standalone.

"EtcherPro takes our software Etcher to the next level," the company explains of its upcoming release, "creating the most streamlined, fast, and efficient multiple drive duplicator on the market. Etcher is balena’s leading-edge open source image writing software, currently flashing almost 2 million SD cards and USB drives per month. EtcherPro is built to write data flawlessly to multiple drives/devices simultaneously, increasing efficiency as production scales."

The all-in-one system is able to flash up to 16 devices simultaneously at speeds of up to 52MB/s — rising to 200MB/s if only one device is being targeted. Devices can be SD and microSD cards, USB storage devices, or selected single-board computers, or any mix thereof, while the source images can be loaded from a physical drive or downloaded automatically for flashing.

For those who need to flash even more devices at once, the hardware supports daisy-chaining up to 10 deep for 160 device simultaneous writing — though the software support for this won't be ready until later in the year, balena has warned.

The system is controlled via a 7" full-color touch-screen panel to the center, while network connectivity is comprised of a 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi radio and a wired gigabit Ethernet port. The hardware is housed in a custom chassis finished in a midnight blue color — with a limited edition grey version already sold out.

The company is taking pre-orders on its official website with a $50 deposit against a $990 plus taxes selling price, and aims to ship the limited edition grey variant within the next two to three months and the standard variant within four to six months.