Huawei cloud IoT device access service full experience

Abstract:Huawei cloud IoT device access service, massive devices, one-click access, you deserve to have!

This article is shared from the Huawei Cloud Community “Full Experience of Huawei Cloud IoT Device Access Service Directly Connected by HUAWEI Mate 40 Production Line”, the original author is Qiming.

Preface:

Before we start this article, let’s ask ourselves two questions:

Question 1: The Internet of Things is slowly infiltrating into thousands of industries. Its rapid development is inevitable, but are there any challenges in the process of development?

Question two: at present in the intelligent manufacturing industry, many IoT devices are dependent on the edge gateway, that is, through the edge gateway to access the Internet of Things, so why to use the edge gateway? What are the benefits of an edge gateway?

We will answer one by one through the following article.

I. Opportunities brought by the Internet of Things

According to the survey data, 60% of enterprises are currently using IoT services or are about to deploy them. 24% of the enterprise IT budget is spent on IoT-related investments. At the same time, 63% of enterprises have already reaped substantial returns through IoT deployments. The Internet of Things is playing an increasingly important role in the economy. More data about the Internet of Things can be seen below:

At the same time, we can see that in real life, the Internet of Things is everywhere: smart meter reading, smart street lights, smart manhole covers, Internet of vehicles, smart retail, smart stores… The Internet of Things has deeply penetrated into all walks of life, promoted the digital transformation of related industries, and led the industry to do a very far-reaching change.

Reviewing history, we can conclude that there are three “waves” in the Internet economy:

The first wave: digitization of information services, mainly from 2000 to 2015. The development of Internet companies, through the digitization of Internet software, has pushed the relevant industries to carry out the transformation of the Internet of Things. This, however, is the past;
The second wave: digitalization of service industry, mainly from 2014 to 2020, is carried out by digitalization of traditional service + Internet technology represented by telecommunication, banking, government, medical treatment, publishing, retail and so on. This stage has been basically completed;
Wave 3: Digitization of the real economy, from 2015 to present. Among them, we are most concerned about the changes in manufacturing, energy, transportation, agriculture and other large industries related to people’s livelihood. This is a “wave” of changes taking place.

From the country’s 11th and 12th Five-year Plan to the 13th Five-year Plan, to the recently discussed “new infrastructure”, the manufacturing industry has been promoted to upgrade. But at present, China’s manufacturing industry is large but not strong, and its independent innovation capacity is insufficient. How to improve it? Digital transformation is the key way to enhance the competitiveness of manufacturing industry.

II. Challenges brought by the Internet of Things

The dividend brought by the Internet of Things is undoubtedly huge, but at the same time, it also brings some challenges:

Challenge # 1: Let things talk

The key challenge in making things talk is:

A lot of existing equipment is not being digitized;
Diversified equipment, different industry agreements, different industry communication modes;
The equipment requires low power consumption and low cost;
Equipment safety problems are prominent.

The most common thing we use to connect devices to the network right now are sensors. The traditional sensor only simulates the information information record, and cannot analyze and process the record. So the first step is to digitize all of the sensors’ perceptions and put them in very objective numbers for things like temperature, pressure, position, and so on. At the same time, we need to let the sensor “learn to express” on the basis of perception, that is, network, through the connection to the Internet, so that “things are connected”. Digital first, then online, is the first step in making the “thing” speak.

Challenge 2: Make the thing speak a word

The key challenge in getting things to speak is this:

Millions of data elements, lack of standards and specifications;
Diversified data format;
With the development of “chimney-type” of various manufacturers, data islands stand up and data exchange is difficult.

At present, some equipment, because of different industries, the manufacturers are also different, such as street lights, manhole covers, water meters, etc., are produced by different manufacturers. Then, in the production process, they may use different protocols and access methods, which is equivalent to people from different countries, without a unified language, completely unable to communicate. So we need to “bridge” the devices so that they all speak the same language, which is our “object model” or “product model.” Standardize data, unify object model, and make “object” speak the same language.

Challenge # 3: Make the thing say something of value

The key challenge to making something valuable is:

Massive data brings computing power and storage problems;
Real-time stream, time series, off-line, multi-dimensional analysis complex;
Complex industrial application scenarios;
Business Closed Loop, Value Realization, and Allocation Problems.

Making data valuable is a big challenge for manufacturing. After the appearance of massive data, we need to analyze from all aspects: time dimension, hot and cold data, valuable data and worthless data, etc., so as to obtain a complete data analysis, so as to make decisions on “things” and make the data valuable.

These are the main challenges facing the Internet of Things. As you can see, the “Internet of Everything” is not a simple matter. Returning to the manufacturing industry, in the process of digital landing of the manufacturing industry, enterprises find that the amount of data is very large, the circulation is very difficult, and the data collection cycle is very short, basically in seconds. At the same time, there have been restrictions on how data can be used. Therefore, specific to the manufacturing industry, there are the following problems in the process of digitization:

Unable to do personalized customization: total factor collection is very difficult;
Network cannot be coordinated: it is difficult to get through multi-domain data flow;
Intelligent production is not possible: large data and multiple dimensions are difficult to analyze;
Unable to service extension: product intelligent service development is difficult.

III. Interpretation of Huawei Cloud IoT Device Access Services

(I) Schematic diagram of device access service solution:

Internet users, there is a basic understanding, that is “data does not come out of thin air.” The data is collected and then reported. Huawei Cloud IoT Device Access Service is a tool, or platform, for data collection. The following is the IoT solution architecture diagram of Huawei Cloud IoT:

Huawei Cloud IoT cloud service, with LiteOS as the operating system, enables the device to have the ability of “perception”. At the same time, it enables the device to have the ability of networking through SDK. After the equipment is networked, access to Huawei Cloud IoT platform (including device access service, device distribution service, global SIM connection and data analysis service, etc.) through gateways and other ways to report data, issue orders and other operations; Then through API, connect to the Internet of Things application, to create smart traffic, smart city, smart park and other smart scenes. Of course, there are also many other services of Huawei Cloud, such as database, to support the use of the upper layer of Internet of Things applications.

Among them, the device access service provides access and management capabilities of a large number of devices, which can be used in conjunction with other services of Huawei Cloud to help customers quickly build end-to-end IoT solutions that meet their requirements. It includes multi-network access, device linkage rules, product model development and other functions. Through these micro-services, it provides an overall service management capability for device access.

(II) Huawei Cloud IoT Device Access Service Communication Model

Making things talk is just an anthropomorphic figure of speech. What we’re really trying to do is get devices to “communicate” using a form of communication. So how do we abstract away a device for analysis?

First, the attribute is reported. After related protocol parsing and attribute reporting, device attributes are divided into attributes, commands, events and transparent message patterns based on model management, which can be described in the form of schema. And in the upper application, we will also follow such a model for related processing.

Next, let’s take a closer look at the capabilities of the device to access the service.

1. Product Profile: Unified data & communication model

How does such a unified data model come about? The concept of a codec plug-in is introduced here. The specific methods are as follows:

Define a product: There are two ways to define it:

Option 1: Device vendors edit profiles online through SP Portal;

Mode 2: Equipment manufacturers obtain the sample Profile provided by the platform, modify it according to their own business, and generate the Profile required by their own business;

Fast Generating Plugins

Plug-in generation: The platform provides developer Portal, through which plug-ins can be quickly generated based on self-defined profiles.

Plug-in deployment: support for one-click quick deployment of completed plug-ins;

The value of

For upper application value: reduce the complexity of upper application on device management, through the data of different manufacturers in the platform scale, form a unified Profile, upper application does not need to perceive the differences between different devices;

Value to equipment manufacturers:No need to modify the equipment code, through the plug-in to adapt to the demands of different enterprises, reduce the maintenance complexity of equipment manufacturers.

2. Rule engine: data flow & equipment linkage

Let’s get to know another powerful feature of device access: the rules engine. Through the rules engine, we can upload the reported data to the relevant services (such as data analysis services, etc.), triggering multi-device coordination (alerts, alerts, status reports, etc.).

3. Build edge cloud collaboration, universal access and credible intelligent IoT edge service:

IoT Edge: In addition to providing cloud capabilities, IoT Edge also builds a lot of capabilities, including universal access capabilities, local autonomy, industry applications, and so on. In particular, it needs to be introduced that the universal access capability can meet the requirements of some relatively standard protocol access, but also provide some proprietary protocol access. On top of the edge, the industry plug-in capabilities described earlier are also integrated. This third-party industry plug-in capability enables access to a wide variety of devices.

4. Rules-based device linkage and edge cloud collaboration realize multi-scene business customization

The device linkage on the edge can be unified with the IOTDA access service on the cloud.

5. Provide local autonomy when the network is abnormal to ensure business continuity

The capacity for local autonomy is well understood. In general, when the network is out of order, the edge of the site is close to the device. When it is close to the device, it can provide services for the connected device according to its own management ability. That is to say, when there is abnormal situation between the network edge site and the cloud network, it can guarantee the continuity of business through local autonomous management.

Next, combined with a production line of equipment to actually demonstrate how the equipment is connected to the Internet of Things platform. The materials we need to prepare are as follows:

Edge Gateway (Atlas500)
Edge gateways integrate the standard Modbus protocol
PLC (radium engraving machine, including device gateway Modbus Sever and collector) is connected to the edge gateway
Edge Gateway Integrates Private Device Access Protocol (Integrates Container/Process Services that correspond to protocol resolution)
PLC (SMT) uses private TCP protocol to intervene in the edge gateway

Specific process:

1. Access to IOTDA service:https://www.huaweicloud.com/p…

2. Enter the device access service page and create the product:

From the console’s product page, you can pre-define each product in terms of attributes, services, set commands, events, and so on. The following is a brief introduction to the more important product models:

IoT edge: edge_node to create the product and define the related product model. The properties of each model correspond to the type of a service, such as EDGE_ACCESS, that is responsible for Modbus device access
Radium carving machine: LasermarkingModbus. The model is simple. The speed, current and LED lights of engraving are reported through the radium engraving machine.
Device gateway of radium engraving machine: modbus_server. It is mainly used to set the parameters related to Modbus device docking, such as connection type, authentication, IP address port and so on.
Mounting machine: Mounter1. More complex, which in addition to the basic information, such as product version, product name, processing program name and so on, but also including such as processing results, equipment status, compressed air flow and so on all related to the SMT process of some parameters

3. Enter the “Device” :

HDC2021 Training in “Equipment” is the equipment required for this experiment

In the concept of “equipment”, “equipment” is hierarchical. The product of HDC2021 Training is “edge_node” as defined by us before. At the same time, it also has two sub-devices: training_server (radim carving machine) and MountDevice0425 (mounting machine).

4. Registered sub-devices: Registered sub-devices of Modbus under HDC2021_Training/training_server

Select products:
Data acquisition configuration
Add a child device and click OK:
complete

The above is a simple device access demonstration. In addition to gateway access, Huawei Cloud IoT platform can also adopt direct connection (MQTT) mode. There is no special requirement for hardware. You can go to experience it on your own when you have time.

V. Summary of Huawei Cloud IoT Device Access Services

Looking back at the question we asked at the beginning, we can answer it after this stage:

Question 1: The Internet of Things is slowly infiltrating into thousands of industries. Its rapid development is inevitable, but are there any challenges in the process of development?

A: The three challenges mentioned above: to make the object speak, to make the object speak the same language, and to make the object speak something of value. That is, make the equipment data, network, standardization, and need to have the ability of data analysis, so that the data can maximize the value.

A: edge gateways are very beneficial for enhancing network reliability and security, as well as the obvious benefits of being able to enhance the local closed loop of multiple single devices locally.

Through the above explanation and experiment, we can see that Huawei Cloud IoT Device Access Service provides the ability to connect massive devices to cloud, device and cloud two-way message communication, batch device management, remote control and monitoring, OTA upgrade, device linkage rules and other capabilities, and can transfer device data flexibly to other services of Huawei Cloud. Help users in the Internet of Things industry to quickly complete equipment networking and industrial application integration.

Let’s experience it

This article is compiled from [Huawei cloud community content co-creator hot recruitment] the fourth bullet: plough in May, keep walking! View the event details: https://bbs.huaweicloud.com/b…

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