Vixtera received the US patent for the fault detection in a system of connected devices
IoT appeared relatively recently, so people have not yet mastered this technology fully. This means that IoT is an open concept. It’s important to understand that ubiquitous communications, cloud analytics, and smart devices are not all the things that you need when launching IoT. There is another essential part of IoT architecture. This article will tell you about the importance of a connectivity management platform.
As in any other business, IoT security is an equally important element. You need to organize a secure approach to configure the network architecture if you do not want an unknown, unauthorized device to connect to your network. Device Management helps you understandably deal with this task. Using the web interface, you can establish a secure connection and authenticate connected devices by registering and connecting them to an authorized station. An end node can connect to the network and transfer any data only after connection.
It is essential to know that authentication of any device increases not only its security but also the security of the data generated by these devices. The importance of device authentication also lies in the fact that the IoT platform establishes an accurate identification of the connected device, thereby making it clear that the device is safe and ready to use.
Today, the issue of the security of using public networks is becoming increasingly relevant. Having the necessary equipment, attackers can crack the protection of any device, gaining unlimited access to the user’s data by connecting to any network. Hardware that allows intercepting the connection tricks, mobile devices, tablets, or laptops provides this access to critical information. By linking to someone else’s network, the user runs the risk of catching malicious viruses, losing data, money, and becoming a victim of phishing. Therefore, it is so important to know whether the connected device is running from a trusted user and whether it is genuine.
Authentication and provisioning existing in the IoT management system ensure the reliability and security of the device.
By introducing IoT to various enterprises, implies scaling up to tens and hundreds of distribution nodes. This, in turn, creates problems when troubleshooting. Eliminating failures using a manual approach becomes not only ineffective but also practically impossible. Another problem is the risk of losing strategically important data because end nodes remain unattended.
To launch the most critical applications and for the correct operation of all devices, the enterprise needs a comprehensive solution that can predict, prevent, and identify the root causes of the problem and eliminate failures in real-time. If any of the devices cannot deliver the data correctly and in time, this may mean overload. Another thing, if it completely stops providing data, this may mean an error or a defect in the equipment. A pump that stops working almost after start-up can also signal leaking pipes, which entails interruptions in electricity.
Having a comprehensive solution, it becomes possible to plan the simultaneous maintenance of several devices, which will save money and time.
Fortunately, Vixtera has a solution that can help detect system defects, determine the root source of breakdowns, and fix them. The developed methodology works as follows: the algorithm makes some supposition about inputs and outputs and their environment, determines the root cause of the failure, as well as the factors that created the problem. This solution helps reduce both device downtime and the cost of manually fixing the problem.
Device Management is a necessary element because it allows you to connect various devices to IoT absolutely without any changes in the existing infrastructure. This, in turn, provides not only security but also simplicity for the enterprise and its IoT ecosystem.
Any business requires OT and IT coordination to have an extra edge in a competitive market. Continuous data exchange obtained through device management helps OT and IT departments work on projects in parallel. Synchronous operation and data flow make the organization more profitable among competitors and allow them to provide quality services, which favorably affects the income of the enterprise.
Our bright digital future which has recently been a dream is our reality now. A flying car is still just a prototype and is under development, but there are many more new technologies, devices, and applications besides them. We will talk about new technologies in our article, namely, the Industrial Internet of Things.
People started to wonder what does this term means? They are particularly interested in almost everything, starting from the meaning of the term and the history of appearance and ending with companies that provide complete solutions for large industries.
IoT is basically a system that connects physical objects through a network. These objects are sensors, detectors, and switching equipment. All these devices have one unique opportunity – interaction with each other without human factor interference. IIoT is about the autonomy of smart devices and their ability to exchange data. Thanks to this connection, devices can not only exchange information but also store data, analyze it and make appropriate decisions. This technology has made good progress. The implemented system in the production can monitor the technical condition of the equipment everywhere, issue notifications of an impending breakdown, as well as find the cause of the malfunction and self-learn using AI. The purpose of this technology is to increase industrial productivity and efficiency, as well as safety.
Hearing the word “industrial” people always associate it with something serious and huge, for example, with production shops and shipyards. That’s right, but IoT technologies can also be implemented in the areas of healthcare, finance, trade, agriculture, and marketing.
The first references to the “Internet of Things” date back to 1985, when researcher Peter Lewis mentioned the term in his statement to the US Communications Commission. But used to consider that the first person who coined the term was Kevin Ashton.
This person worked for P&G and was involved in supply chain optimization. At one of his presentations, he wanted to draw attention to an interesting technology called RFID, and since the Internet was at the peak of popularity at that time, he decided to call his presentation “The Internet of Things”. But, as we see, his idea wasn’t widespread at that time, but they have been waiting on its way for 10 years.
There are many more references to this term, but it is better to dwell on theory and practice.
In the 90s, absolutely all activities which were related to IoT were exclusively theoretical. That is, there were only concepts, discussions and ideas for implementation.
In 1998, the scientist Mark Weiser created a fountain that has interesting functionality – it synchronizes with changes in the stock market and reflects the ongoing changes.
The rapid development of IoT occurred in the 2000s. At that time, people began to move from theory to practice and launch good projects, which later became successful. That’s when the world first saw such devices as a fitness tracker, smart doors, smart irrigation systems. It was a time for the rise of such projects as self-driving automobiles, smart cities, and smart manufacturing. All this has become possible and affordable due to constant progress in the growing IT field.
That means the development of IoT has been going on for decades, but large-scale growth and progress began only in 2008. This year, Cisco announced that the true birth of IoT happened at a very time when the number of appliances attached to the Internet became much more than people on the planet. Now it’s 2020, and the number of connected devices is so large that there are 2-3 devices per one person.
The industrial Internet of things is an indispensable technology that, will help business owners to get an accurate idea of the functionality of the enterprise and its failures, and thereby help to make the best decisions through the collection of data.
The introduction of IIoT is a particularly profitable technology for enterprises because it can significantly improve scalability, connection efficiency, save time and money. Companies can decently save on costs and at the same time receive considerable benefits thanks to the existence of IIoT.
The uniqueness of IIoT can hardly be underestimated because the introduction of this system into an enterprise radically changes the company’s daily activities. For example, analysis and prediction are super important functions that help to detect a malfunction before it”s break.
Broken equipment or a machine can cause losses to the enterprise because the whole production will be stopped due to a malfunction. Maintenance exists at every enterprise, but it will take some production time each time, which is not a plus.
Using IIoT will do a good job because the intelligent service uses sensors to continuously collect information, as well as identify problems and potential failures. This state of affairs will minimize the time of inactivity of the enterprise and will not bring any damage.
It takes effort and a large amount of data, as well as AI modeling, to get a good and reliable prediction result. All this takes a lot of time and manual effort. To solve these and potential problems, Vixtera invented a comprehensive solution to analyze the cause of a breakdown. This algorithm analyzes the reasons for the failure of the device, and also takes this reason as a source for further NN training.
This algorithm is a reliable tool in detecting failures by eliminating human involvement, providing an accurate source of analysis and reducing equipment maintenance costs.
IoT is a relatively new technology, that’s why for many people this may be something incomprehensible. However, this method is far from complicated but has a complex structure. The world first heard the definition of “Internet of things” in 1999. This term was introduced by the British technologist Ashton.
Absolutely all data that fell into the computer was previously inputted by a human. This state of affairs was before the twentieth century. Since the twenty-first century, people have gadgets and as independent devices, they can collect information and share it. Now you do not need to enter any data, because smart devices provide us with data itself. Starting from the weather, location and ending with the sensor, which determines the position of the device in space. All this happens thanks to applications and built-in sensors.
Data collection, analysis, processing and exchange now occurs without human intervention, that’s called the Internet of things.
To understand which areas use the latest IoT technology, we first need to figure out what IoT devices are.
IoT Device is a hardware one that has a sensor and exchanges information with other appliances. They exist in the form of computer devices, wireless sensors, detectors, and software. As mentioned earlier, these devices can be built-in in various types of equipment, it can be both industrial gear and mobile appliances.
Earlier, we wrote an article where we talked about the advantages of IoT, speaking about devices, we cannot but say that their introduction will favorably affect the efficiency of enterprises, open up new opportunities and lead to lower costs. Using IoT devices in the domestic sphere will make life easier for busy people, and also reduce the time required for home care.
Speaking of IoT applications, they need an endpoint for operation. Mobile applications are mainly used as endpoints for transferring music, multimedia or for interacting with other people. Therefore, connected IoT devices need an endpoint to retrieve, process, and display data. Therefore, it turns out that the connected devices and applications are inseparable because the app is the starting point and provide readings and data storage from the device.
It is important to say that applications can be divided into two groups: the former collect and analyze data, and the latter can control the device (for example, smart home applications).
IoT apps will be used by billions of people everywhere, and devices will be installed on millions of industrial and domestic facilities soon. In the near future, everything around us will possess intelligence and simplify our lives.
It is worth mentioning that the first IoT implementations were successful and various areas can boast of using technology at the moment, namely:
This type of technology no longer seems impossible, since its introduction has already occurred in our lives. Only ten, fifteen years ago, no one would have thought that a computer that occupies an entire floor earlier would fit a jeans pocket. Almost the entire population of the globe has smartphones and personal computers but also gets acquainted with wearable devices at the same time.
Hearing the word “wearable device”, only smartwatches come readily to the minds of most residents. Yes, this is a popular device, but the technology market has a much wider selection of different devices.
This is the most common application for IoT devices and apps. In order to ensure a comfortable life, many people use smart devices in everyday life. Automatic garden watering, floor heating prior to arrival and a smart vacuum cleaner are just the beginning of the promising IoT industry.
Setting up production, improving productivity, cutting costs and increasing revenue is possible with IIoT. This technology can work both with a person and in his absence, which makes this area quite promising. Smart machines will help solve the problems associated with quality control that people often commit.
Earlier in the articles, we talked about the similarities and differences between IoT and Industrial IoT. We mentioned that IoT technology is easier to use, repair, and implement than IIoT. Therefore, it is worth paying more attention to the Industrial Internet, since this technology is used in large enterprises and industries, and there, as its known, a high level of reliability and dependability of devices is needed.
In order to deploy an IoT device, you need to know a few related requirements. To manage devices, you need monitoring, diagnostics, configuration, authentication, and software maintenance.
If the use of IoT devices in the domestic sphere can work for a long time without problems, then IIoT will require fixing bugs, updating software, replacing and repairing failed devices.
Effective and proper operation of industrial devices requires a decent solution that will analyze the operation of applications, identify and fix failures. This solution should also provide reliable forecasting of problems and their timely prevention.
For accurate data processing, providing final information and launching solutions at the application level is required the software that the gateways provide. This is equipment that can combine dozens of sensors or smart devices. The presence of gateways provides not only efficient data collection but also allows them to solve only those tasks for which they are designed.
ViEdge software can help solve these two situations quickly and efficiently. ViEdge will not only simplify the connection of devices, but also improve its service and management, and at the same time will make reasonable and effective decisions regarding data processing.
Vixtera has also developed an efficient algorithm that responds to crashes, various anomalies and problems in the functioning of devices. An effective solution from Vixtera is able to quickly determine the cause of the problem, as well as what contributed to its occurrence. This algorithm will analyze the external and internal environment of the devices and give a high-quality answer due to a failure, which will reduce equipment downtime.
A lot of complex things are very simple if you think them through, or so they say. The history of science is full of discoveries, techniques and methodologies helping to research problems caused by malfunctioning devices and systems. It includes examining a lot of components, subsystems and assemblies to find out the nature of failures, their causes and effects.
Running mission-critical applications and working in a highly-constrained environment leaves no room for failure and requires a solution that:
You know it – sensors sample data, send it to a server in the cloud to store, and then make available for analysis that produces some actions. However, applying it to IIoT mission-critical applications and running it in an asset-intensive industrial environment is totally impractical. The outcome is rather chilly = 1000 samples/sec x 1Kb data x 10,000 sensors = 10GB data/sec = a Category 5 hurricane in the making – and you’d better be ready.
VixteraIIoTEdge appliance offers a patented methodology to govern with ease the enormous amount of data generated by a multitude of devices, trending and tiering it by priorities, rules and policies whereas analyzing and identifying in real time the root cause of the problem. It uses causes for automatic generation of training data sets while eliminating human involvement from complex AI processes and enabling development of new applications and services.
What is your experience so far dealing with an overflow of IIoT ill-tempered data? Well, we’re all learning together that one can’t blindly grind through an enormous pile of data without developing a way to sort them out separating “good ones” from the rest that are practically useless.
Besides improving operational efficiency by bringing data governance closer to action, reducing backend cost and solving critical latency-depending issues, Data Curation provides you with means to organize, describe and clean the data while leveraging knowledge of your asset and enhancing benefits of your applications and services.
Vixtera introduces a new critical edition to its ViEdge software framework enabling multifaceted data curation using an innovative correlation algorithm to prob, analyze and clean collected data giving users a holistic view across sensors, devices and content. As a result, it:
To scale, agents can be integrated with communications platforms complementing it with full IIoT capabilities.
The industrial digitalization presents us with a profuse dilemma in defining values and boundaries of your data. It’s said that, while collecting data from industrial devices, the large amount of it is incoherent, irrelevant and is practically useless. Besides the overwhelming network with flawed information, it does create enormous challenges for real-time and predictive analysis.
Curating data at the edge resolves significant issues exposed by bandwidth and latency. However, it often involves algorithmic complexity that requires high-performance computing systems to process.
VixteraIIoTEdge uses a lightweight method of multifaceted data curation employing tiny, agile and configurable agents. The agent runs on a small memory footprint applying innovative trend analysis and curbing data streams while filtering and grouping (e.g., context) relevant events. Thus, it eliminates duplication of metadata whereas reducing the frequency of transmission and size of collected data.
From the get-go, it produces meaningful information for real-time analysis at the edge while supplying reliable well-structured data for AI/ML modeling and predictive analysis anywhere in the network.
The industrial IoT systems become more pervasive and require a multitude of analysis to drive the outcome for processing mission-critical applications. When it comes to all things predictive, it involves training of AI system which is fed on the enormous amount of unstructured data and… manual labor. So, it is IMPRACTICAL to:
VixteraIIoTEdge uses patented algorithms performing it closer to devices, providing for real-time failure analysis and utilizing cause of failure for auto-generation of AI training data sets. It accurately pinpoints a problem and allows altering it in real time while providing reliable labeling source for AI learning. Thus, it drives consistently-good quality data for a variety of predictive applications and services.
Using these tips, you’ll be able to get sorted and relevant data. Saving and analyzing only properly filtered information will reduce the memory that is needed for its processing. It will accelerate the work of the whole system. Another advantage is that there will be no redundant data for analysis. It will help to increase its quality and show the real state of things. For more information visit our website.
A lot of exciting numbers have been flying around the IoT– billions invested, trillions market size, zettabytes of transmitted data. Yet, none would exist without bowing to and understanding of devices – those pompous little princes of the IoT hubris. Though, before you are able to perform fancy data analyses, drive the actionable outcome, and declare a happy marriage between OT and IT, you must establish a robust path for communications with devices that can be a tough row to hoe.
Fortunately, we’ve got a solution:
1) install VixteraIIoTEdge appliance;
2) configure device communications for standard protocols (e.g., SNMP, JACE, REST);
3) communicate with devices.
And, if you are dealing with an obscure device type, use the Edge’s wizard that will quickly guide you around, uncovering and configuring device spec’s nuances while allowing its instant visibility and control across the entire IIoT ecosystem. No needs for SDKs, drivers or other communications software, avoiding long, exhausting and laborious processes of writing and integrating the code with your devices. What will ensure proper connection then?
You could have the best analytics, clever data science, and sophisticated AI. But the aforementioned intelligence will be of little use to IIoT operation if you are unable to connect, control and maintain your devices. According to industry recent surveys and studies, over 90% of legacy devices were not designed with internet connectivity in mind and, therefore, pose the biggest obstacle to successful IIoT deployments, and is a major stumbling block to enterprises’ on-going digital transformation.
Vixtera’s patented declarative Protocol delivers in order of magnitude higher velocity of device onboarding and maintenance than writing and adapting a software driver or SDK. It works across ANY communication protocol or device type enabling rapid connectivity and control of and instant data collection from devices – no coding and minimum effort is required.
The protocol’s commands and micros can be easily configured and customized providing prompt response to frequent changes and upgrades while tuning devices and reporting quickly adjusting to ever-changing conditions of complex heterogeneous IIoT environment.
As of late, MQTT has been winning IIoT popularity being fostered as a lightweight communication protocol. Among its several benefits is the ability to provide a secure pipe for messaging payload furnishing communications between devices and applications.
Having that said, however, content and format of MQTT payload is device- and application-specific, and such a specific tool must be written for every new device to “decipher” its communications with applications. Think about wide-range IIoT deployment.
Vixtera developed and patented technique for ubiquitous connectivity and onboarding of ANY device across ANY comm protocol without ANY need for a driver, SDK or code to adapt an application to a new device. One can simply create a text file using declarative language while configuring declarative protocol specific to a device. The protocol can be easily customized providing consistent and reliable “reading” of MQTT payload messages leading to the opportunity of defining the industry-wide open practice for device-agnostic communications. This technique applies to any comm protocol making complex IIoT projects easily yield to large-scale multi-vendor deployments.
Speaking from experience, the importance of device management cannot be underestimated in building the IIoT ecosystem that employs a wide range of devices installed in a highly-constrained industrial environment. Ability to easily onboard, configure, control (not simply collect data) and maintain these heterogeneous objects with minimum effort and investment is essential for IIoT successful deployment and operation.
Sounds like nowadays qualms of digital transformation:
VixteraIIoTEdge software offers patented techniques radically simplifying device and event management, reducing unscheduled downtime and improving time-to-repair fulfillment. Devices can be auto-discovered and rapidly connected to the system without field service visits. You won’t require a bag of SDKs, an opensource fortune-teller or an army of expert driver coders and will be happy to avoid long and laborious integration processes.
To get you started, we offer a pre-built software framework with core run-time components and a variety of services to assist with customization and rapid productization of your solution, integration with clouds and applications. To complement your effort, the Edge offers single-click, no service interruption, bulk firmware upgrade significantly improving serviceability and productivity of your devices.
Protocols are essential for building connectivity between devices and applications. But this is not the only component that provides perfect connectivity. Smart equipment management helps to create a unified system that controls all manufacturing processes and analyzes the received data. It’s not the easiest task but Vixtera is ready to assist you! Learn more about our solutions for better connectivity here.