Industrial IoT (IIoT) vs IoT for industry (IoT4i)

You heard these terms, increasingly used, that are IoT (Internet of Things) and IIoT (Industrial IoT). Terms that seem so close that we tend to think that they are intimately linked, or even that they address the same thing but in a different context, which for the second would be that of industry. But the technicians, or marketers, are teasing or, because they surf the trends, it tends to generate misleading shortcuts.

You understand, behind my words, that there is no more than a fairly distant cousinship between IoT and IIoT. I will try to explain why and what are the consequences of these differences on the technologies used in each of these areas.

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Repair broken Nebra indoor with eMMC failure

The first versions of Nebra indoor miner came with CM3 (Raspberry Pi Compute Module) embedding eMMC memory. As you may know, Helium has been really I/O intensive, particularly this summer when the blockchain was filling really fast the small amount of storage the CM3 has. As a consequence, all my Nebra indoor miner dead around the same week. Diagnostic seemed to be a storage failure.

Here is the story about making them live again

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What is the IIoT transformation ?

The digital transformation of companies officially started in 2012, the year of birth of this term which reflects more the awareness by the company of its delay in its technological adaptation than a real awareness of its difficulties in modernizing its processes. .

Apart from this digital transformation, in society started 20 years earlier when Internet technologies were born and giants were already being built, Google, Amazon, Paypal… There is no need to detail the competitive advantages that the native use of these technologies in the construction of the processes of these current giants have brought, the financial results are before our eyes.

This is what it is all about, increased productive performance, accelerated development, domination of the markets despite a past so recent that the leaders of the large companies in our historic economy have, only rarely, managed to adapt. The most far-sighted will have succeeded in adapting as suppliers, integrating a digital relationship with these giants into their process. Industries have become customers of these essential technology providers, at exorbitant prices and on a recurring basis, so that today any product contains its share of cost for the digital giants.

It is not a question here of making a trial of these companies which have only the merit of having been visionaries, precursors and better than all to invent our digital world, taking considerable risks at their start. On the other hand, it is a question of learning lessons and looking to the future and the opportunities that are available to us.

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What positions for 5G and other wireless technologies in the industrial world?

The industry is changing, digitalizing, let’s call it the industry of the future or industry 4.0, it is increasingly integrating data into decision-making. If data has been driving the industry for a long time, we are now talking about another scale, that of massive data, on which it is possible to make faster, more efficient, more relevant decisions with impactful effects.

The quality and performance of the decision is directly related to the diversity and quantity of data processed for decision making. The industry already produces large volumes of data from production processes which already allow a strong creation of value using industry 4.0 solutions. The capture of industrial data then develops in its diversity component to pass a new stage, bringing a look upstream and ahead of the production chain.

This data collection is made possible through new communication technologies such as 5G, but not only. After having experienced the media campaigns on the impact of 5G in the industry, and elsewhere, at the beginning of 2021, I will try to present where to position this technology by its singularities.

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Ultra Low cost IoT, a breakthrough to innovation

Ten month ago, I was starting investigating the Ultra Low Cost Iot thanks to Sigfox given access to the experimentation they made in this area. The Ultra Low Cost IoT is defined by manufactured devices under or near the cost of $1.

Such level of price are enabling scalable deployment of devices and mass data capture, more than it has ever been able to made. And basically, it is not a question of device cost, it is a question of scalable use-cases where the higher device cost where a business model killer.

This is basically reducing the price of devices by a factor of 5x to 10x. No miracle, this is also reducing the device capabilities and concerns different use-cases than the one previously designed. In another word, Low Cost IoT is not classical IoT for a lower price, it’s a new IoT area where we find new use-cases, new business model and more generally is source of innovation.

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Pi Day – Sigma Lambda Pi

Sigma Lambda Pi is the perfect thing to talk about on the 3/14 Pi day!

This crazy machine is a 16 Raspberry Pi-4 cluster in a 2U server rack, set to execute FaaS (Function as a Service) with a green-it approach. Don’t make a dream of Raspberry-Pi high performance demonstration, you will be disappointed and it’s not the purpose of this project. This is not a commercial product, the objective of the company who made it, was research, team building and team skills improvement. This has been made by friends of my, working at Be|ys, a team of 9 people, under the lead of Christophe Prugnaud. They made a demo of it during the Clermont’Tech Api Hour #46, the video will be soon accessible.

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UnaMKR Mini breakout board

After presenting the UnaMKR Arduino devkit, Unabiz has made a new version of its maker kit supporting Sigfox Monarch and based on LiteOn module.

The UnaMKR mini is a breakboard solution for the LiteOn module and nothing more. You can easily make your own prototype system based on this board. The price sounds to be $25 to $30.

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What is Amazon sidewalk?

As usual, I love read what traditional and “tech” press can write about LPWAn technologies. That’s always a pleasure to read such amount of bullshit condensed is a maximum of 10-15 lines. They are directly copied and paste from a press release. The Author added value is a custom and totally wrong clickbait title.

As part of many, the one making me starting this post is from “Le monde informatique”. It is supposed to be a serous source. The title was “sidewalk a threat for LoRa and Sigfox on IoT”.

Just to let you know guys… Sidewalk is just a new Zigbee !

So let see what is really Amazon sidewalk, what are the strength and weakness of this solution

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