FEATURE Sensors & Sensing Systems
Solving the challenges of large-scale IoT rollouts
By Bruno Damien, Strategic Marketing Director – IoT EMEA, ON Semiconductor T
he IoT delivers many opportunities for users and businesses to add automation. Many new companies are
entering the IoT market with innovative ideas and solutions that will provide even more enhancements in the near future. The huge number of start-up businesses within the IoT has been enabled in no small part by component and sub- system vendors providing extensive design support in the form of evaluation boards, reference designs and detailed documentation. This enables the rapid development of prototypes and even small-scale pilot projects to prove new concepts. However, from this point, moving into large-scale deployment of devices remains a signifi cant step fraught with challenges.
Large-scale IoT solutions In deploying a large-scale IoT solution, there are several areas that give rise to challenges. Software updates and device management are both diffi cult to manage at scale without an eff ective solution. The IoT requires regular fi rmware- and software-over-the-air (FOTA and SOTA) updates for a variety of reasons. Security is a primary consideration, especially as IoT devices are often used in remote locations, making them vulnerable to physical as well as virtual attacks. As a result, regular security patches are required, rendering any method other than remote deployment impractical. Remote software deployment can also allow for quick bug fi xes as well as permitting operators to roll out new features that will enhance the IoT device, prolong product lifecycle and help generate additional revenue streams. One of the characteristics of the IoT is the huge amount of data created and transmitted from sensing devices. Without a solution to capture this data, store it and turn it into decision-supporting information through automated analysis, the value of the IoT deployment is signifi cantly smaller than it can be. ON Semiconductor has recently integrated several of its IoT platforms with the Bosch IoT Suite – a set of cloud and on-premise services for the development of
24 July/August 2021 | Automation
Figure 1: RSL10 Sensor Platforms can connect to the Bosch IoT Suite via the gateway
IoT applications. It is available as Platform as a Service (PaaS) to quickly build and implement cloud-based and highly- scaleable IoT applications – and even for highly-sensitive environments on-premise. The Bosch IoT Suite already connects more than 15 million devices. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a connectivity protocol as it brings several competitive advantages to the application, including portability, light weight, ubiquity of resource availability through smartphones and tablets, and connectivity to IP gateways.
BLE-enabled devices can typically be connected to the Bosch IoT Suite through IoT gateways running Bosch IoT Edge – middleware that enables IoT devices and gateways with connectivity, management, applications, updates and more-advanced edge-computing features. Bosch IoT Edge off ers drivers for discovering and connecting Bluetooth LE-enabled devices and out-of-the-box support for variety of reference hardware. In order to fully integrate ON Semiconductor system solutions with the Bosch IoT Suite, a complementary plug-in for Bosch IoT Edge is provided by ON Semiconductor; see Figure 1, above. The software package can be installed on Raspberry Pi gateways running Bosch IoT Edge to fully enable end-to-end services like data and device management, fi rmware updates and digital twins for ON Semiconductor sensor platforms. ON Semiconductor also developed
the Eclipse Vorto abstraction layers to ensure that user experience is as seamless as possible. The Eclipse Vorto language harmonises device APIs that, in turn, helps IoT developers to integrate devices quickly, in order to build device-agnostic IoT solutions. The Vorto repository is an open platform where device manufacturers share information and models of devices with other IoT stakeholders, allowing them to easily create solutions using these devices’ capabilities.
A complete ecosystem Once the concept is defi ned and tested, the most challenging aspect of at-scale IoT deployments is building the solution to manage and update the devices, as well as managing, understanding and acting upon the constant fl ow of data the sensors provide. With
Bosch.IO, ON Semiconductor has
provided users with a complete ecosystem that accomplishes these key goals while adding out-of-the-box Bluetooth LE functionality to the Bosch IoT Suite through the innovative Raspberry-Pi-based gateway. Currently, the RSL10 Sensor Development Kit and RSL10 Smart Shot Camera are supported within the Bosch IoT Suite ecosystem, with more platforms to be added soon.
CONTACT:
ON Semiconductor
www.onsemi.com
Bosch
Bosch.io
automationmagazine.co.uk
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