The Role of Device Twins In Industrial IoT Solutions
Device twins are becoming important in the design, development and deployment of industrial IoT solutions. They act as virtual devices representing the metadata and data of the physical device connected to the IoT platform. Though the concept of device twins is still evolving, it has become an essential part of IoT device management.
Every device that is activated and registered with an IoT platform has two categories of data. The first category is the metadata that doesn’t change very often. It includes details that describe the device such as the serial number, asset identifier, firmware version, make, model and year of manufacturing. The second type of data associated with the device represents the dynamic state. It contains context-specific, real-time data unique to the device. For example, a thermostat my send data points such as temperature, humidity and room identifier.
Mobile and web applications that are part of an IoT solution retrieve sensor data and send specific commands to the devices. For example, a mobile app can be used to track the current temperature reported by a thermostat and send a "switch on" command to an HVAC. Repeatedly querying the current state of devices can prove to be expensive. In some occasions, the device may not be online to respond to the query. Similarly, when an application sends a command, the device may not be able to change the state immediately.
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Janakiram MSV is an analyst, advisor, and architect. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.