IOTech Announces Edge Connect for Industrial Data Collection & Management
August 10, 2023
News
SAN FRANCISCO. IOTech recently announced the general availability of Edge Connect, a solution designed for acquiring large amounts of data in complex multi-protocol industrial environments. Industrial IoT applications play significant roles in sectors like manufacturing and energy, but before organizations can benefit from these applications, they must first connect the edge devices and collect that data — a complex and time-consuming process. Edge Connect aims to simplify this process to enable fast deployment of new edge-based use cases.
Edge Connect is a connectivity solution designed for third party OT applications — like real-time battery energy storage systems and closed-loop control applications — deployed in the various sectors that exist at the industrial edge. Edge Connect can also be embedded into edge devices like small microcontrollers, making it a suitable solution for industrial OEMs. It works with existing proprietary systems and hardware, eliminating the need to gut and/or replace infrastructure before deployment.
Edge Connect was developed in collaboration with industrial solution providers like Schneider Electric, Johnson Controls, Fluence Energy, and King Steel.
“King Steel has been working in collaboration with IOTech over the last 12 months to help contribute to the direction of Edge Connect with its focus on Industry 4.0 connectivity. Edge Connect delivers an Industry 4.0 data connectivity solution that enables real-time data acquisition, data storage, data visualization and analytics for our award-winning NexCell Injection Moulding Machines," said Jim Chen, General Manager of King Steel.
Additional Edge Connect features include:
- Easy connectivity unlocks data value: The solution can connect to different types of equipment concurrently using a variety of industrial protocols (e.g. Modbus, BACnet, OPC Unified Architecture (UA), EtherCAT, etc.) and read/write data from these devices at high volume and low latency.
- Open APIs: Edge Connect’s open APIs help simplify third-party application integration. OPC UA has become the de facto communication standard for Industry 4.0 and client applications can access aggregated data through an OPC UA server layer.
- MQTT/JSON support: Users can access normalized data via MQTT/JSON, which can be useful for streaming data to cloud services.
- Memory and CPU efficiency: Edge Connect is designed to have a small memory footprint and use computing resources efficiently, making it a suitable solution for memory-constrained applications.
Because it is hardware- and OS-agnostic, users can deploy Edge Connect as a native Linux application, containerized, or embedded as a library into a third-party software stack. Designed for high-performance edge computing use cases, Edge Connect aims to simplify integration between real-time edge applications and high-level enterprise IT, cloud, and SCADA applications.
For more information, visit www.iotechsys.com/products/edge-connect/.
