The potential of Smart Farming was highlighted by the “Farming and Food Technology Trends” focus day in Bielefeld on September 25, 2019 in Bielefeld.
The potential of Smart Farming was highlighted by the “Farming and Food Technology Trends” focus day in Bielefeld on September 25, 2019 in Bielefeld.
In the Internet of Things, large amounts of data need to be transferred and processed quickly. However, the cloud with its relatively narrow bandwidth is overwhelmed with it – edge computing as data processing on-site is getting increasingly important. Is the end of the cloud getting closer?
Imagine an industrial environment: a large production hall, where complex machines work around the clock, interact with each other, depend on each other. Now, imagine an IIoT ecosystem whose task it is to monitor every single detail within the production process: positions, speed, temperature, pressure, energy consumption, filling levels – all the metrics that play a crucial role for an efficient process. To reduce idling, prevent failure or simply save resources, hundreds, if not thousands of sensors are needed. The more the better. But with only a centralized intelligence, Industrial IoT (IIoT) could quickly become a bumpy ride.
So far, the world of IoT consists of a very heterogeneous landscape. Multiple computing protocols like ZigBee, Z-Wave, Modbus and BACnet have their individual pros and cons and therefore all a right to exists — depending on their individual use case. But in an Internet of Things world, everything and everybody is connected — from consumers in sensor-rich environments to enterprises harnessing new technologies like robotics and machine learning. Since we lack one common language for the IoT there is no way around a solution capable of connecting all these standards. But still, the intelligence will move to the edge of the networks. Devices will interact directly. The cloud remains for analysis.
Let’s face it: Explaining the Internet of Things and the advantages of direct communication between devices can be a dry and theoretical topic. So we decided to literally spice the whole story up and add a little bit of gamification to the issue: In future events we’re going to demonstrate our technology with a smart game of dice that communicates its result to a vending machine, releasing a pack of Lemonbeat branded snack chips in case players sucessfully rolled the dice.