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Is IoT Catalyst an IoT platform??
IoT Catalyst is an IoT Edge Platform that is an IoT development and management platform (IoT DevOps + IoT Device Manager) specifically designed to exploit the specific capabilities of edge computing.
Compared to the sensor to the cloud model, in which every data just produced is immediately sent to the cloud (or to a data center) where the IoT platform backend resides, the edge computing paradigm aims to carry out as many
operations as possible right at the edge as close as possible to where the data is produced.
In particular, data operations such as aggregation, computation, filtering, caching, and rule execution are only a few of the operations that can be executed at the edge.
In this way, latency is reduced, you save
traffic and the general reliability of the system is improved as it is not
more present a single point of failure.
IoT Catalyst helps develop IoT applications that run on the edge and can be managed remotely from the control plane.
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Why use IoT Catalyst over vendors such as AWS IoT, PTC Thingworx, Cumolocity etc?
The choice of an IoT platform is a complex process that requires a particular analysis of the specific needs of each individual
user and the knowledge of the peculiarities of the technology it intends to use.
IoT Catalyst allows you to create, dispatch, control and update Digital Twins in the form
of independent,segregated applications that run on any linux and windows system capable of interfacing physical assets
(and more).
Thanks to the technologies offered, the authoring process is oversimplified and accelerated by 90 % in development times.
Unlike other IoT systems, the Digital Twins created in IoT Catalyst are autonomous entities (i.e. they run even when the central system
is offline) and universal as they can be connected without any modification to any external platform or system.
IoT Catalyst can therefore be used as an end to end system for IoT Edge Computing or even just as an IoT DevOps tool to accelerate the development
of IoT applications integrated to external service providers (dashboarding, NOC, metering, billing, trouble ticketing, etc.)
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What is the pricing model? User based? Sensors based? Are there any limitations in terms of users or sensors?
IoT Catalyst has no limits related to the number of users or sensors. Pricing is determined by
number of IoT Catalyst Edge managed. In theory, it is possible to have only 1 IoT Catalyst Edge that manages 10,000 sensors ... and in this case it only counts for 1!
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What if I want to use IoT Catalyst to power my super custom home-made reporting platform?
IoT Catalyst can be integrated with any external system thanks to the Adapters plug-in technology.
An IoT Catalyst Adapter joins the game every time the user wants to connect a digital twin to an external application.
To successfully manage the connection of a digital twin to an external systems it is necessary to perform these steps:
Step 1: communicate the new entity to the external platform by passing it all the relevant information;
In this way the external platform can perform the housekeeping activities required to be able in the future to manage new entity.
This step is called onboarding / provisioning
Step 2: send the external platform-specific code to the edge computer where the the Digital Twin is running. This code will be executeted at the edge to activate the
bidirectional connection between the digital twin and the esternal platform.
Step 3: In case of deletion of a digital twin, it is necessary to communicate the cancellation of the entity to the external platform to keep the two systems (IoT Catalyst and the external one) updated and synchronized.
In IoT Catalyst the code to implemenet all the three steps above, is automatically managed by the IoT Catalyst Adapter
Different adapters can be created to integrate any technology starting from the same plug-in template.
Each adapter will manage the specific code for performing the step 1,2 and 3 against the targeted external platform.
Let's imagine that a User wants to connect IoT Catalyst's Digital Twins to a MySql database.
The code of step 1 could take care of creating a new table to host the data coming from a new sensor.
The code of step 2 is executed by the IoT Catlyst Edge to create a direct connection to mysql and save the data in the DB
The code of step 3 could take care of truncating the table automatically when deleting the Sensor in IoT Catalyst
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I don't see a protocol of my interest in the list of supported protocols. What can I do?
IoT Catalyst offers a wide range of supported protocols to integrate devices and sensors and we continue to work to support new ones based on market needs.
In case a protocol is not yet supported by IoT Catalyst, it is possible to design an IoT driver yourself using the IoT Catalyst assisted online Generic Device designer.
The Generic Device designers is one of the designeres included in IoT Catalyst Studio. It guides the developer in creating the settings and the cyber-model, and allows to import any python library to make the development process even faster.
Even in case of custom IoT driver development, IoT Catalyst is the best choice.
The advantage of designing an IoT driver using IoT Catalyst is to have "for free", out of the box a lot of helper functions and management tools e.g. software sistribution, remote inspection, debugging and control, etc.,
These additional services are mandatory in professional IoT solution, making the difference between a maker approach and a industrial grade one.
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What happens to the IoT Catalyst edges if the IoT Catalyst's service becomes unreachable/unavailable?
Taking advantage of the edge computing paradigm, IoT Catalyst was designed to allow edge components to work even in the absence of communication with the IoT Catalyst Studio.
If local automation rules have been established (for example "if the temperature exceeds a certain threshold then activate a device"), IoT Catalyst Edge will execute the local rules in any case.
If there is no communication with the IoT Catalyst service, it will not be possible to access the remote control channel but everything else will continue to work
Collected data will be cached too.
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Whose the code generated using IoT Catalyst Studio?
The code generated by IoT Catalayst is an unencoded open source Python code and remains forever property of the User.
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What is the execution environment of IoT Catalyst?
We need to make a clarification. IoT Catalyst consists of two distinct execution environments. The centralized one,
where there are the control panel and all the microservices necessary for the management of the whole IoT domain,
and the peripheral environment that is necessary to manage the execution of IoT applications
For clarity sake, we will use IoT Catalyst Studio to refer to the centralized execution environment and to all its components and we will use IoT Catalyst Edge to refer to the peripheral execution environment.
IoT Catalyst Studio is distributed as a collection of docker containers (having a microservices-based architecture) and therefore can be exuted in the cloud or on-premises.
IoT Catalyst Edge is available in different versions specific for Window and Linux and requires very limited execution resources (it even runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero). It is possible to install the IoT Catalyst Edge on-premises (usually on IoT Gateways or industrial PCs) but is possible to install and run or in the cloud too.
