IIoT to Animate the Embedded Systems Industry

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It’s certainly a nice fit.  We would expect the growth of the Internet of Things to have a positive impact on the embedded systems industry.  With the billions of connected devices envisioned, it’s hardly surprising that the amount of computing to be embedded in the “Things” of the IoT would increase.  Perhaps not so obvious is that the Industrial IoT promises to generate a growing percentage of that increase.

After attending the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in Boston last month, industry expert and ARC Advisory team member Dick Slansky noted in his recent blog, Embedded Systems Industry Focuses on IIoT as the Future of Manufacturing, that “there appeared to be consensus that IoT and the entire notion of smart connected ecosystems was going to drive an industry revival for embedded systems.”

This sentiment echoes a recent study by IC Insights, Internet of Things Boosts Embedded Systems Growth, which states that the “Industrial” share of the $3.9B IoT market in 2014 is forecast to rise from an estimated 29% to 36% of the anticipated $11.5B IoT market in 2018.  Doing the math, that’s a jump from $1.13B to $4.14B in the dollar amount for the Industrial IoT, an almost four-fold increase over four years.

What is behind this?

Summing up Slansky’s analysis, he says that the new, smart factory will rely on smart devices—embedded systems connected to the IIoT. This in itself will give a boost to the embedded systems industry.  Yet the area expected to demand even more embedded systems development is edge computing—the moving of computing resources from the mainframes and PCs in a control room or central office to the sensor and device level, eliminating network traffic and cutting processing time. “Embedded intelligence at the source will become the norm,” said Slansky.

We have talked about edge computing previously, and discussed how the Skkynet Embedded Toolkit (ETK) supports it with a full-featured, built-in scripting language. Adding that capability to secure, bidirectional, connectivity to SkkyHub and DataHub, the ETK smoothly integrates real-time edge computing with the Industrial IoT, for a number of embedded platforms and devices.  For example:

  • It is a Verified Software Add-on for Renesas Synergy, meaning that any network enabled device built on the Renesas Synergy platform can connect, just by adding Skkynet to the application build.
  • It is available as an install package for Red Lion Sixnet® series RAM® cellular RTUs or IndustrialPro® cellular routers, supporting connections to SkkyHub and DataHub.
  • It runs on B+B Spectre 4G LTE cellular / wi-fi router, from B+B SmartWorx, NetComm’s NTC-6200 series of gateways, and the Systech® SysLINK™ M2M Gateway.
  • It has been tested on Raspberry Pi, Arduino, GR-SAKURA, mbed, Lantronix Xport, WiPort, and MatchPort, and a number of other devices.

How IoT Can Revolutionize the Oil and Gas Industry

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Have you ever driven past a gas field or oil refinery at night, and seen the blazing orange fires raging atop the gas flare stacks?  What a waste, eh?  How much money must be going up in smoke?  How much CO2 is the oil and gas sector needlessly spewing into the atmosphere?  It makes you want to pipe that gas to your own house and cut your monthly heating bills, if nothing else.  Surely there must be some way to collect that gas, saving precious resources and the environment at the same time.

Solving the Problem

Perhaps this decades-old problem can be solved—with the help of the IoT (Internet of Things).  In a recent article, From Measurement to Management: How IoT and Cloud-Based Data is Changing the Oil and Gas Industry, Adam Chapman, Global Director of Marketing at Fluenta, lists in detail the waste and damaging effects of gas flaring, and then shows how the IoT can transform the status quo through remote assest management.

“IoT applications can not only support measurement, but enable businesses to manage more effectively in hostile and hazardous locations,” he said.  “For the oil and gas industry, IoT connectivity will enable organisations to control risk more effectively, and support the necessary transition from measurement to management of greenhouse gasses as the industry addresses the problem of emissions.”

Opportunity

There is a big opportunity here.  Chapman says that the total amount of gas flared every year is roughly equal to 30% of the gas consumed in the European Union—over 150 billion cubic meters.  In Africa, where much of the flaring takes place, it adds up to about 1/2 of the total energy use for the continent.  Capitalizing on this missed opportunity can be done through proper asset management. “When applied effectively, remote asset management through connected infrastructure will revolutionise oil and gas operations,” says Chapman.

Gathering real-time data using the IoT can cut manpower costs of offshore platforms, provide input for continuous emission monitoring systems, and help centralize Big Data repositories for company-wide comparitive analysis, Chapman explains. “It is cloud technology and the ubiquity of internet connectivity that fundamentally brings significant change to remote asset management.”

Appropriate Technolgy

Offshore platforms and other remote industrial assets call for specialized cloud technology.  Skkynet provides not only the real-time data required by an industrial asset management system, but it also ensures secure connectivity and robust performance that is fully compatible with cellular and satellite technology commonly used in these kinds of applications.

Chapman says, “The combination of accurate, real-time information on remote assets and cloud technology can have a significant positive impact on moving an oil and gas operation from a monitoring approach to a management approach.”

Connecting the Worlds of IT and OT

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Ever since the dawn of computing for commerce and industry, there has been a wide gap between the world of IT (Information Technology) and OT (Operations Technology).  Most of us are more familiar with IT—crunching numbers for financial applications, building databases for personnel records and corporate assets, and printing out sales reports, monthly earnings, and year-end statements.  The world of OT is more remote and esoteric—hidden behind firewalls and DMZs, sometimes on completely independent networks, mission-critical systems oversee the real-time processes that control a company’s production equipment and machinery.

Now, with the advent of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial IoT, these two worlds are being brought together.  In a recent article, The Internet of Things: Bridging the OT/IT divide, John Pepper, CEO and Founder of Managed 24/7, makes the case that the business value of operational data will be lost unless IT and OT learn to co-operate.  He said, “Unless organisations actively bridge the gap between OT and IT, the real operational benefits of the digital business will be lost.”

A risk of losing the prize

According to their research, companies are jumping on the IoT bandwagon and increasing their number of networked devices, but due to a lack of an overall policy to bridge the IT/OT gap, there is a real risk of losing the prize.  Critical OT information that has been unknown in the past is now becoming available, but only to those who know how to connect to it, and are willing to do so.

“Indeed, while the vast majority of new control systems used in buildings and factories – from water pumps to energy systems – include an Ethernet connection,” says Pepper, “few organisations are actively using this real-time insight to support CxO decision-making.”

Pepper’s call for deeper integration between the real-time data flowing through the OT world and the analytical capabilities of the IT world is a need that Skkynet was created to meet.  The predictive technologies that Pepper recommends can be realized and fully supported by Skkynet’s Industrial IoT technologies.  The vision of end-to-end monitoring and self-healing technologies that Pepper shares can become reality when we effectively connect the two worlds of IT and OT.

Focusing on the Edge of the Industrial IoT

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There is more life on the edge.  People who live on the edge take risks, dream big, and claim to get the best view.  “Edge effects” in ecology can lead to greater biodiversity.  Leading edge technologies promise more of everything–more power, more functionality, more value.  Now, as the conversation around cloud computing and the Industrial IoT expands, we are beginning to hear more about the edge.

Previously we looked at fog computing, where off-cloud computing power is installed on a cloud-connected device to reduce bandwidth and conserve cloud resources.  But that’s just part of the picture, according to Harry Forbes, at the ARC Advisory Group.  The edge of the IoT, he says, is not a single thing, but rather an area between the device and the transport to the cloud that can vary widely according to application requirements.

In a recent blog, “The Evolution of the IIoT Edge“, Forbes identifies at least five different aspects, or “classes of edge.”  Here is a brief summary:

Intermittent Connection – A significant number of devices and applications don’t need a full-time connection to the IoT.  A level sensor in a tank making a cellular connection to the cloud may need to send its data only a few times per day.

Data Historian – Sophisticated data users often log real-time data from multiple devices to a single, on-site historian.  By connecting this historian to the IoT, the data can be sent intermittently to Big Data tools for processing and analysis.  The edge application in this case combines consolidation and intermittent connection.

IIoT Gateway – This is a dedicated device that consolidates data from a number of locally-connected devices, and provides a connection to the IoT. Forbes points out that the value of this kind of device is that it can be provided and maintained by a 3rd party, and improved and updated as the service evolves.

Fog – An approach to cloud computing where some amount of intelligent processing is done at the device level, before the data gets sent to the cloud.  This could include message throttling, conditional logic, and even simple control.  We discussed this approach here.

On-premise cloud – For larger users like telecom services, localized cloud computing can be installed at the edge of the cloud to do what is essentially fog computing, but on a much larger scale.

As with the Industrial IoT itself, the vision and reality of what is happening at the edge is continually evolving.  Forbes says, “Five years ago the idea of deploying a (on-premise) cloud at the base of every cell tower would be considered madness. Five years hence it may well be the norm.”

Down-to-Earth Cloud: Fog Computing on Edge Devices

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When a cloud comes to earth–hitting a mountain, or rolling in at ground level–we call it fog. In the same way, cloud computing conducted at the local level is sometimes referred to as “fog” computing or “edge” computing. Wikipedia defines edge computing as “pushing the frontier of computing applications, data, and services away from centralized nodes to the logical extremes of a network.” In other words, fog or edge computing brings data processing out of the clouds and down to earth.

In a recent blog, New in IIoT: Fog Computing Leverages Edge Devices and the Cloud, Al Presher describes how edge devices are being used in commercial and industrial applications to provide computing power to interface between the real world and the cloud. Putting computing power as close as possible to the data collection, detection or control can mean quicker response, and more efficient and meaningful data collection.

For example, a simple device might send a simple message “I’m switched on and working” every second. A control system that interacts with the device needs that message the first time, but not every second. Maybe it could use an hourly or daily update as a status report, but sending the message more frequently would just waste resources and bandwidth. With the thousands or millions of such devices that the IoT promises, we need a way to send only meaningful messages.

This is where edge computing comes in. A program on the device can throttle the messages down to once an hour, or once per day, or whatever. It can read and interpret messages such as “I’m switched off” or “I’m not working properly“, and forward them immediately. For more sophisticated devices, an edge computing solution could send ordinary status messages when things are normal, and then open a real-time data flow during any abnormal conditions, so that every single data change, no matter how brief, can be collected and recorded.

In addition to decreasing data volume, edge computing can also reduce the amount of processing done on the receiving end of the data. For example, unit conversions, linear transformations, and simple analytical functions can be run on the data before it gets sent to the cloud. Spread out over hundreds or thousands of devices, this relatively simple, decentralized processing can translate into significant cost savings.

The Skkynet Embedded Toolkit supports edge computing in several ways on devices where it is used. It has a built-in command set, and a scripting language specifically designed for mission-critical industrial applications, with a wide range of functions for interacting with the real-time data as it flows through the system. Being able to access each data point in the system, it can support both monitoring and control functionality, as needed.

What will be the impact of fog or edge computing? At this point it is difficult to predict, exactly. However, it seems that for industrial systems, edge computing can provide many of the benefits of a SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Access) system, for a much smaller up-front and ongoing investment. By plugging edge devices into an existing data communications infrastructure like SkkyHub, much of the heavy lifting for data monitoring and supervisory control has already been done.

ExxonMobil Seeks Open Automation Solutions

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At the most recent ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, ExxonMobil announced that they are not satisfied with business as usual when it comes to industrial automation, and they are looking for something far superior to what is currently being offered.  On January 14, 2016, ExxonMobil announced that they had awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to serve as the systems integrator in the early stage development of a next-generation open and secure automation system for process industries.  Lockheed Martin is tasked to seek out the architecture and tools needed for an “open, standards-based, secure and interoperable control system” that can be seamlessly integrated with existing facilities, as well as new and future systems.  ExxonMobil wants the hardware and software components to be commercially available and able to function in all current DCS markets.

Rather than simply replace their aging systems with the current state of the art, which is expensive, inflexible, and closed, ExxonMobil wants to leverage new, open, IoT, wireless, and cloud technologies to cut costs, enhance security, and reduce development time. As with other, adjacent areas of technology, they want to see a step-change improvements, not incremental or bolted-on changes to obsolete architectures.

Originally presented at Industry Day on January 26, 2016

Their vision for open automation is standards-based, secure, and interoperable, which will:

  1. Promote innovation & value creation
  2. Effortlessly integrate best-in-class components
  3. Afford access to leading-edge capability & performance
  4. Preserve the asset owner’s application software
  5. Significantly lower the cost of future replacement
  6. Employ an adaptive intrinsic security model

This vision reads like a list of Skkynet connectivity solutions features and benefits:

  1. SkkyHub, DataHub, and the ETK foster innovation and value creation by providing open-standards, real-time data connectivity for hardware and software from almost any vendor.
  2. These Skkynet tools allow users to integrate data from virtually any components.
  3. This kind of real-time data integration enables each component in turn to perform at its highest capacity.
  4. Any generation of equipment, from legacy to state-of-the-art, can be integrated.
  5. Connecting modules can be replaced, and the system itself gets continually updated.
  6. Connections from the DataHub or ETK to SkkyHub are secure by design.

We are currently in communication with Lockheed Martin, and bringing these advantages to ExxonMobil’s attention. We share their vision, and offer tested, verified, working solutions.