Episodes
Tuesday Sep 21, 2021
Tuesday Sep 21, 2021
By nature, industrial facilities consist of physical assets and processes that evolve through time. Therefore, each data point generated by such systems is essentially a snapshot of events at that particular point in time.
By extension, this data wants to be stored in a way that reflects the sequential order of events, so that it can be rapidly queried and analysed, among many other reasons.
But yet, this isn't a capability that is inherently baked into the more common Relational and NoSQL databases. Hence the rise in popularity of Time-Series Databases for industrial Telemetry Data storage over the past few years.
At the forefront of this revolution is InfluxDB, an Open-Source Time-Series Database platform developed by InfluxData.
To understand how Time-Series Databases work, and InfluxDB in particular, I had a chat with Brian Gilmore who is the Product Manager for IoT at InfluxData.
Check out our full conversation in the video linked below.
Outline:
✔️ Characteristics of IIoT Data
✔️ Why Time-Series Databases Matter for IIoT
✔️ Common IIoT Use Cases for Time Series Database
✔️ How to Plan an IIoT Data Architecture
✔️ InfluxDB Time-Series DB Platform
✔️ InfluxDB - Open Source vs Cloud vs Enterprise
✔️ InfluxDB Time-Series DB Migration
✔️ InfluxDB Deployment Options
✔️ Acquiring Industrial Telemetry Data into InfluxDB
✔️ Industrial Telemetry Data Enrichment in InfluxDB
✔️ InfluxDB Integration with Analytics & Visualisation Platforms
✔️ Factory-Floor to InfluxDB Data Pipeline
Wednesday Sep 15, 2021
Wednesday Sep 15, 2021
The success of a fully realised Industry4.0 lies in the democratisation of intelligence and the capacity for Industrial "Things" to autonomously act based on the knowledge they have.
Effectively, turning each and every factory into a computer that is made up of modular processes within, in the form of Cyber-Physical systems.
And central to that success, is the ease with which Industrial things like pumps and sensors can be embedded with Machine Learning functionality.
To learn more about Embedded ML, I had a chat with Zin Thein Kyaw who is a Sr Success Engineer at Edge Impulse, a company on a mission to enable the ultimate development experience for machine learning on embedded devices for sensors, audio, and computer vision, at scale.
You can check out our conversation at the link below
Outline:
✔️ Integrating ML into industrial machines and sensors
✔️ Benefits of ML at the Edge of IIoT Network
✔️ Current applications of Embedded ML in industrial assets
✔️ Choosing an Embedded Processor for ML
✔️ Workflow for developing and deploying Embedded ML models
✔️ Integration of Edge Impulse with Tensorflow and Resource Optimisation
✔️ Industrial Data Collection and Data Availability
✔️ Application of Deep Learning in Industrial Systems
✔️ The Future of Embedded ML
✔️ The Edge Impulse Ecosystem & Developer Resources
Saturday Jul 03, 2021
Saturday Jul 03, 2021
As Industrial IoT matures, most of the components in the IIoT stack have become commoditised. Things like hardware, OSes, drivers, protocols, databases e.t.c
But yet, many organisations still develop custom interfaces for these components, instead of adopting standards. And in cases where there is adoption, there lacks an industry-wide consistent approach to standardisation.
To understand the importance of standardisation for IIoT and how vendors and end-users should engage standards, I had a conversation with Claude Baudoin.
Claude is the co-author of a recently published whitepaper on Global Industry Standards for IIoT by the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC). He is the owner of cébé IT & Knowledge Management LLC, advisor to the OMG, IIC, and senior consultant at the Cutter Consortium.
Here's the outline of our conversation in the video linked below:
✔️ Importance of Standardisation for IIoT
✔️ Phases of a Standard Life Cycle
✔️ Standards Engagement Strategy
✔️ Identifying areas for standardisation
✔️ Adapting Open Standards to an Industrial Architecture
✔️ IIoT Connectivity Standards
✔️ Standards related to IIoT Security
✔️ Barriers to Agreeing on Standards and How to avoid building new silos
✔️ Building IIoT Solutions Vs Buying Off-The-Shelf Solutions
✔️ IIC in IIoT Standardisation
✔️ cébé
Wednesday Jun 02, 2021
Wednesday Jun 02, 2021
At the present moment, it is quite clear that the future of industrial automation will be driven by software. More so, that of IIoT.
And, due to the merits that have allowed it to dominate in the IT space, Open Source software is likely to lead the industrial software revolution. Regardless of the conservative nature of the industry.
To discuss the use of Open Source in building IIoT solutions, I had a conversation with Frédéric Desbiens.
Frédéric is the Program Manager for IoT and Edge Computing at the Eclipse Foundation, managing close to 50 Open Source projects under Eclipse IoT.
Here's the outline of the discussion.
✔️ Key Challenges for Implementing IIoT
✔️ Why Open Source Matters for IIoT Implementation
✔️ Key Components of an Industrial IoT Solution
✔️ Open Source Stack for IIoT Gateways
✔️ Open Standards for IIoT Data Aggregation
✔️ Why Semantic Interoperability Matters for IIoT
✔️ Real Value of MQTT Sparkplug to Implementers
✔️ Real Value of MQTT Sparkplug to End-Users
✔️ Is MQTT Sparkplug a Lock-In?
✔️ Open Source Digital Twin Frameworks and how they work
✔️ Open Source Software for IIoT Security
✔️ Role of Eclipse Foundation and Eclipse IoT
Tuesday Apr 06, 2021
Tuesday Apr 06, 2021
Nowadays, with so many IIoT concepts in the air, you can't help but breathe it in.
But sometimes it's helpful to take a step back and put all of this in context to understand how we got here, as that might help shed light on what IIoT is and isn't about.
To gain a fundamental understanding of OT-IT integration, I had a conversation with Benson Hougland.
Benson is VP of Product Strategy at Opto 22, a company that has been at the forefront of OT-IT integration for close to 30 years. From being a founding member of OPC to introducing the first Ethernet-based I/O Unit in the nineties, and more recently, introducing the first Edge Programmable Industrial Controller.
Below is an outline of our discussion in the linked video.
✔️ Why Should Manufacturers Care About IIoT?
✔️ Evolution of the IIoT Technology Stack
✔️ Open Technologies in IIoT
✔️ Principal Functions of an IIoT Edge Device
✔️ The Role of SCADA in an IIoT World
✔️ Brownfield and Greenfield Considerations for IIoT
✔️ Best Practices for IIoT Security
✔️ Critical Skills for IIoT System Integration
✔️ Integration of IIoT Solutions into Business Processes
✔️ Opto22
Monday Mar 15, 2021
Monday Mar 15, 2021
While it may be convenient to follow simple steps to get connectivity working for your IIoT solution, sometimes you are better off having an understanding of the elements that make up the broad spectrum of connectivity technologies.
To understand the foundations upon which IoT protocols are built, I had a conversation with Dominik Obermaier. Dominik is the Co-Founder & CTO of HiveMQ, a company that provides an MQTT broker and a client-based messaging platform to over 130 customers including many Fortune 500 companies for mission-critical use cases like connected cars, logistics, Industry 4.0, and connected #IoT products.
Dominik is also a member of the OASIS Technical Committee responsible for developing the MQTT specification, and he's also involved in the standardisation of Sparkplug.
Here's the outline of the discussion linked below:
✔️ IoT Connectivity Architectures
✔️ Data Encoding Mechanisms
✔️ COAP Protocol
✔️ AMQP Protocol
✔️ XMPP protocol
✔️ Fundamentals of MQTT Protocol
✔️ Plug and Play Interoperability Using Sparkplug B
✔️ Adoption of Sparkplug B in Manufacturing
✔️ #MQTT Broker Deployment Options
✔️ Kubernetes for High Availability MQTT Broker Deployments
✔️ Backend IoT Architecture for MQTT
✔️ #IIoT Security
✔️ MQTT Use Case in Smart Manufacturing
✔️ HiveMQ
Monday Mar 08, 2021
Monday Mar 08, 2021
Developed at LinkedIn in 2010, Apache Kafka - a stream processing engine, now powers web-scale Internet companies such as Netflix, Uber, Twitter, Airbnb, and more. Profoundly impacting real-time user experience.
Of equal impact, is its application in creating a continuous streaming pipeline of manufacturing data, from the factory-floor to data centers. Fundamentally changing the structural organisation of manufacturing systems.
To gain an understanding of Kafka in IIoT, I had a conversation with Kai Waehner. Kai is Field CTO and Global Technology Advisor at Confluent, a company that was founded by Kafka creators and is behind the open-source project.
Here are the contents of our discussion
✔️ Stream processing in Manufacturing
✔️ Apache Kafka and Its Role in IIoT
✔️ Kafka vs MQTT
✔️ Architecture Patterns for Kafka Deployments
✔️ Connectivity to Industrial Control Systems
✔️ Data Ingestion to enterprise Applications
✔️ Examples of Real-Time Streaming Analytics
✔️ Using Kafka as a Data Historian
✔️ Re-Engineering ERP Suites with Kafka
✔️ Using Kafka to Drive Machine Learning
✔️ Hybrid Kafka Deployments
✔️ Kafka as a Platform for the Digital Twin
✔️ Kafka's Role in Augmented Reality
✔️ Kafka Use Cases in Manufacturing
✔️ Confluent
Monday Mar 08, 2021
Monday Mar 08, 2021
So here's the thing, data from industrial sources is inherently messy. For example, a typical PLC system manages thousands of tags from both physical instruments and internal calculations, but this data is often unstructured, not linked to a unifying data model, and uses naming conventions that are vague to the outside world.
This makes data from such sources not readily usable in analytics applications and has led to the emergence of a new field of industrial data preprocessing for IIoT, called Industrial DataOps.
To discuss more on industrial DataOps, I had a conversation with John Harrington who is the Co-Founder of HighByte, a company pioneering this field with their HighByte Intelligence Hub.
Here some of the topics that we discussed.
✔️ What is Industrial IoT DataOps
✔️ Limitations of the Purdue Model/ISA-95
✔️ The importance of Data Quality
✔️ Data Standardisation, Normalisation and Contextualisation
✔️ Best Practices for integrating industrial data silos
✔️ Principles of IIoT Data Modelling
✔️ How DataOps enforces privacy and security
✔️ HighByte Intelligence Hub
John has previously worked as the VP of Business Strategy at PTC, and he's also served as the VP of Product Management at Kepware Technologies.
Wednesday Jan 20, 2021
Wednesday Jan 20, 2021
Cliché as it may sound, data IS the new Oil. But, to fully reap the benefits, data needs to be properly collected and advanced analytics correctly applied to it.
To better understand the process, I had a conversation with one person who has close to 3 decades of building industrial data aggregation and advanced visualisation tools, Marcos Taccolini.
Marc is currently the Founder and CTO of Tatsoft, a platform developer for real-time factory-floor data monitoring, SCADA and HMI Systems, Distributed Data Aggregation, and Advanced Visualization Tools.
Below, is the outline of our conversation.
✔️Collecting Real-Time Data
✔️Collecting Enterprise Data
✔️Plant-Floor to Cloud Integration
✔️Integrating Structured and Unstructured Data
✔️Data Lakes for Plant-Floor Data
✔️MQTT Sparkplug B
✔️Role of OPC UA in IIoT Dataflow
✔️Real-Time Metrics Tracking
✔️Advanced Analytics Best Approach
✔️OEE Explained
✔️Plant-Floor Machine Learning Applications
✔️Operational Intelligence with the Digital Twin
✔️Tatsoft, FrameworX, and Factory Studio
Marc also previously served as the Founder of Indusoft, a provider of HMI and embedded intelligent device software, which was acquired by Invensys. He was also the co-founder of Unitec and Unisoft.
Tuesday Jan 19, 2021
Tuesday Jan 19, 2021
While the connectivity of industrial systems is the most important aspect of IIoT, there is currently a confusing mix of connectivity technologies and standards.
To understand IIoT Connectivity I had a conversation with Stan Schneider, who specialises in innovation where pervasive networking meets functional AI
Stan is CEO of Real-Time Innovations (RTI), the world’s largest software framework provider for smart machines & real-world systems such as power plants & autonomous vehicles
Here's what we discussed
✔️ Industrial Internet Connectivity Framework
✔️ Why Connectivity Technologies Don't overlap
✔️ Why Connectivity Wrappers Don't Work
✔️ Industrial Connectivity Stack
✔️ The Core Connectivity Standard Architecture
✔️ Data Distribution Service Explained
✔️ OPC UA vs DDS
RTI software runs over 1500 designs including the largest power plants in North America, the Canadian Air Traffic Control system, NASA's launch control system, nearly all Navy ships, GE Healthcare's hospital device networks, Siemens wind turbine farms, trains, & metro control systems, & over 250 autonomous vehicle designs
Stan holds a PhD from Stanford in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science with a focus on Autonomous Systems.