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Open Market Demo Shows Power of Internet of Things Ecosystem for Industrial and Commercial applications

CAMBRIDGE, MARLOW UK AND OTTAWA, IL USA – June 16 2016 — Three leading Internet of Things (IoT) companies have demonstrated the first end-to-end IoT ecosystem designed with re-usable infrastructure and open industry standards for industrial and commercial applications at scale. Advantech B+B SmartWorx, Connect2 Systems and DevicePilot delivered automatic remote monitoring and management of industrial ultra-low power IoT sensor devices using constrained wireless networks and open IoT standards developed by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The demonstration featured WzzardTM Wireless Sensor Nodes from Advantech B+B SmartWorx and Inclinometer Wireless Sensor Nodes from Connect2 Systems.

The WzzardTM Wireless Sensor Nodes are typically used to monitor the energy consumption and the condition of equipment and facilities. Examples where they have been used include data canter temperature monitoring to reduce energy consumption; construction aggregate plant monitoring of ‘crusher’ drive motors and conveyor belts to enable predictive maintenance and reduce unexpected failures; and for use in creameries to keep everything at exactly the right temperature and the correct humidity to protect flavor and control bacterial growth

The Inclinometer Wireless Sensor Nodes are designed for near vertical borehole applications and are used to measure lateral movement in the ground or in a structure for applications such as detecting slopes and landslides; monitoring dams, retaining walls and bending in piles; detecting and recording ground movement due to tunneling operations; and measuring settlement and deformation of concrete slabs and tank bases.

The end-to-end solution, demonstrated at the recent Internet of Things Thames Valley Meetup in the UK, showed the benefits of true interoperability, extensibility and reuse from using industry standards including:

  • 802.15.4e for the air interface
  • 6LoWPAN – IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks
  • IETF CoAP for a RESTful API
  • OMA Lightweight M2M (LWM2M) device management standard
  • Internet Protocol for the transport to the Cloud

The automatic monitoring and management of the wireless sensor nodes was performed using DevicePilot universal cloud based software service connected to a LWM2M server running on IBM’s Bluemix Cloud Platform which was in turn connected to an Advantech B+B SmartWorx Cellular Gateway running Connect2 Systems Edge Gateway/LWM2M Client software. The sensor data was sent to a business application running on IBM’s Watson IoT Platform.

“A huge amount of ‘care-and-feeding’ surrounds every IoT application and in our experience, this can often consume some 80% of the overall effort,” said DevicePilot CEO Pilgrim Beart. “This extra work includes setting-up and managing connectivity, security, monitoring, provisioning and code upgrades. In the past, manufacturers have implemented these functions in a proprietary way, which had the side-effect of locking the application into a closed silo, so no part of it could easily be used by third-parties or supplied by third-parties. This lock-in was dangerous for the customer and inefficient for the vendor and the need to translate between proprietary edge protocols and the cloud created real security vulnerabilities.”
Beart continues, “Using standards, which are entirely open and compatible with Internet Protocol allows easy re-use and integration of all components in the chain, from the edge device, through the gateway to cloud services, while also enabling end-to-end security. This brings huge efficiencies to vendor and customer alike, finally delivering the win-win benefits long promised by IoT”.

“This is the first public demonstration of open, standards-based, end-to-end IoT device management, which we’ve built using commercially-available technology and industrial IoT devices,” said Duncan Purves, Co-Founder, of Connect2 Systems. “Manufacturers and suppliers are under pressure to shorten the time-to-market of new products, which means they may be shipped and deployed with embedded software bugs or features missing. Industrial IoT devices are typically deployed in inaccessible places and the cost of servicing the devices manually to upgrade the firmware or change configuration settings can be prohibitive. Security is also a key concern; in fact, history shows us that all software stacks have security bugs, which will need to be patched after deployment and therefore the ability to update software/firmware ‘Over- The-Air’ (OTA) for long-lived lifetime of industrial IoT devices is essential.”

“The Open Mobile Alliance is pleased to see another successful implementation of the Lightweight M2M (LwM2M) specification,” said Seth Newberry, General Manager of the Open Mobile Alliance. “Interoperability is key to achieving the potential of IoT, and this demonstration illustrates how using standard protocols like LwM2M enables market growth and a healthy ecosystem.”

Mike Fahrion, VP IoT Technologies at Advantech B+B SmartWorx, said, “Reducing the friction in deploying and supporting IoT solutions is core to our strategy as an IoT hardware platform provider. By developing intelligent hardware platforms for the network’s edge, we enable systems integrators and solutions providers to deploy scalable IoT solutions. The work done by Connect2 Systems demonstrates that IoT solutions can be deployed using an end-to-end standards based approach that will be required for successful, cost effective, secure and scalable IoT deployments.”

For slide presentations go to:

http://www.slideshare.net/DuncanPurves/device-management-for-internet-of-things-constrained-devices-oma-lightweight-m2m
http://www.slideshare.net/pilgrimbeart/iot-device-management-using-open-standards-endtoend

Glossary

  • 802.15.4e – an IEEE standard for low-power, time synchronized short-range wireless connectivity
  • 6LoWPAN – IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks. Enables relatively large IPv6 packets to be sent over small radio networks such as 802.15.4
  • CoAP – Constrained Application Protocol for edge devices. This IETF protocol brings the benefits of a RESTful API for to constrained edge devices
  • LWM2M – A lightweight machine-to-machine interface for device management, defined by the Open Mobile Alliance

About Connect2

Connect2 Systems has decades of experience gained with technically demanding projects utilising sensors, cellular and Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) and wireless sensor technologies. We specialise in helping companies integrate sensors, wireless sensor networks and control systems with IoT Application Platforms and Enterprise Systems through:
Components and services for remote Over-The-Air (OTA) management and monitoring of low power IoT sensor devices based upon open standards
Wireless sensor and cellular networking products
Technical design and integration consultancy services
Custom hardware and embedded software services

See: http://connect2.io/

About DevicePilot

As you deploy more connected devices into the field, it is too expensive, slow and error-prone to rely on manual device management, restricting your growth and threatening your future business. Automated device management is essential, ensuring a sustainable relationship between device deployment and operational costs. DevicePilot is a universal cloud based software service allowing you to easily locate, monitor and manage your connected devices at scale, with proactive management of the entire device lifecycle. DevicePilot has completely open interfaces. It can manage any device, on any platform, with easy to use RESTful APIs for rapid and easy integration with existing systems.

http://devicepilot.com

About Advantech B+B SmartWorx

Advantech B+B SmartWorx engineers and manufactures intelligent M2M technology for industrial networks. Providing robust, reliable, sophisticated connectivity from the sensor, network edge to the network core. Seamlessly connecting multiple generations of data networking technology, from legacy serial equipment to the industrial Internet of Things.

Having designed and manufactured data connectivity products for more than 30 years, B+B possesses a level of expertise that can only be acquired through experience. With an installed base in excess of 3,000,000 wired connections, 500,000 wireless connections and 400,000 connected vehicles, B+B equipment already enables millions of M2M solutions.

For information of Advantech B+B SmartWorx Wzzard Wireless Sensor Platform: http://advantech-bb.com/product-technology/iot-and-network-edge-platforms/wzzard/

About Open Mobile Alliance (OMA)

OMA is the leading industry forum for developing market driven, interoperable mobile service enablers. OMA was formed by the world’s leading mobile operators, device and network suppliers, information technology companies and content providers as the industry focal point for the development of mobile service enabler specifications. OMA is a non-profit organization that delivers open specifications for creating interoperable services that work across all geographical boundaries, on any bearer network. OMA’s specifications support the billions of new and existing terminals across a variety of wireless networks, including traditional cellular operator networks and emerging networks supporting machine-to-machine device communications for the Internet of Things (IoT). New work in OMA is leading to the development of next generation mobile services in areas such as Device Management, LBS, IoT, APIs and more. See www.openmobilealliance.org.

About IBM Watson IoT Platform and Bluemix

IBM is an established leader in the Internet of Things with more than 4,000 client engagements in 170 countries, a growing ecosystem of over 1,400 partners and more 750 IoT patents which together help to draw actionable insight from billions of connected devices, sensors and systems around the world. Building on the company’s $3 billion USD commitment to bring Watson cognitive computing to IoT, in December 2015 IBM announced a new global headquarters for IBM’s new Watson IoT unit in Munich Germany, bringing together 1,000 IBM developers, consultants, researchers and designers to drive deeper engagement with clients and partners.

Bluemix, IBM’s Cloud platform, which draws more than 20,000 new developers per week who are creating more than 120,000 apps every month, has grown rapidly to become the largest public Cloud Foundry deployment in the world. Based in open standards, it features over 140 tools and services spanning categories of big data, mobile, Watson, analytics, integration, DevOps, security and the Internet of Things.

For more information on IBM Watson IoT, please visit www.ibm.com/iot
For more information on IBM Bluemix, please visit www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix

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