Standard object model: seamless connection of equipment, a blessing for the IOT industry

Abstract: The information model is the key to solving a series of challenges in the development of the IoT industry. On the basis of the information model, the unification of industry standards/architectures can be promoted, and the ecological coordination of the industrial chain can be realized.

This article is shared from the HUAWEI cloud community " [Cloud-based co-creation] standard object model, the gospel of the Internet of Things ", the original author: G-washington.

The development trend of the Internet of Things industry: The Internet of Things industry will develop into a vertical industry

The concept of the Internet of Things first appeared in the book "The Road to the Future" by Bill Gates in 1995. In "The Road to the Future", Bill Gates has already mentioned the concept of the Internet of Things. The basic characteristics of the Internet of Things From the perspective of communication objects and processes, the information interaction between things and things and between people and things is the core of the Internet of Things.

The basic characteristics of the Internet of Things can be summarized as overall perception, reliable transmission and intelligent processing. Since 1990, the Internet of Things started, starting from the professional application of M2M. At that time, it was fragmented and an isolated vertical structure. The typical business application is electric power metallurgy. Data collection in petrochemical railways and other fields for centralized monitoring. Monitor through sensors, remote sampling, A/D conversion, monitoring center, etc.

Starting from the 2010 stage, IoT connectivity and cloud platform enablement began to gradually develop, covering individuals, households, and industry cloud services, etc. Typical services include smart home, car networking, smart meter reading, etc. At this time, it is through connection, Cloud platform, data analysis, etc. are controlled.

Since now, with the breakthrough of IoT vertical application business, it has developed into the deepening of vertical profession based on cloud platform, data algorithm and AI. Typical businesses include security, intelligent transportation, industry 4.0, smart logistics, and public service facilities. The point of control is expertise and software.

It is estimated that by 2025, the capability of the IoE level platform will be extended to realize the interconnection of all things, including the connection of people, processes, data and things.

The Internet of Things industry faces the problems of long solution chain, fragmentation and high complexity

The system construction chain is long, ordinary Internet applications only need to consider software development, and the Internet of Things not only needs to consider applications but also need to design hardware data collection, gateway aggregation, data Internet of Things transmission, end-cloud interaction and other scenarios.

The equipment model is fragmented, and the Internet of Things system needs to cooperate with N-type equipment. The business coordination requirements between applications and devices are higher, leading to the privatization of device data models, tight coupling of applications and devices, and fragmentation of the model.

The complexity of the industry solution is high. The IoT industry solution is composed of M subsystems, and the M*N level of equipment integration complexity across applications increases.

Problems encountered in the implementation of IoT projects

The FS Industrial City project is located in the Pearl River Delta. It is planned to be a model project of the smart park standard solution. Many problems have been encountered in the process.

First of all, the project has a long delivery cycle. The entire project delivery cycle is as long as 9 months. The period includes various integration adaptation and repeated debugging, construction schedule coordination and other issues. Participants provide 7 suppliers, 5 design platform suppliers, and 16 hardware brands. , There are 25 new hardware types, and there are more than 50 protocols for docking new and old devices. There are many things that need to be negotiated and exchanged.

The integration cost is high, and the solution is difficult to replicate. The smart park is designed with 12 subsystems, each of which has more than 20 IoT devices connected. The integration cycle of each subsystem is 1 month, and the overall integration cycle is more than 4 months. And the solution cannot be directly copied and used in another project. The other party may only need a part of it, and the rest needs to be reworked, so the replication is very poor.

The interface is not unified, the amount of docking is large, and the interfaces of various hardware brands are not unified. There are standard protocols such as GB28181, MQTT, Modbus, Bacnet, OPC, CoAP, HTTP, Web API, etc., and there are also manufacturers’ own private protocols, which are difficult to connect and develop. Heavy workload.

The project delivery of the physical network in the industry requires a standard object model. For equipment manufacturers, if there is a standard object model, then they do not need to select only one of the data models of the manufacturer; for ISV application manufacturers, the development stage is It is not possible to exhaustively list all applications/devices for pre-integration; for SI vendors, there are too many subsystems and it takes time for integration; and for customers, the lead time is too long.

The picture on the left shows that without a standard object model, the interfaces of each device are different, and it is difficult for applications to connect to the device. Under the standard object model, each device corresponds to a unified standard object model, which provides a consistent interface to the outside world. Can directly correspond to the application.

Standard object models can be arbitrarily combined to produce new models. For example, you can assemble a camera and a lamp to form a lamp with a camera. The combined complex object still inherits the model of the basic object, which can not only meet the needs of complex scenes, but also Able to keep its standard model and application docking.

Standard object models can be used to improve efficiency between objects and objects, between objects and applications, and between applications and applications.

Huawei has built the IoT Stage around the standard object model. It diversifies the choice. It provides 3500+ products in the IoT market and 50+ carefully selected partners. Secondly, the combination is more free. The standard object model decouples applications and devices. Freely choose the equipment that suits you to make your competitiveness stronger. Deploy faster, realize one-time integration and multi-point deployment. The delivery cycle is shorter, shortening the time to 3 weeks from the configuration of special account roles, the configuration of master data, the power-on and networking of equipment, the configuration of permissions to the commissioning of services.

The standard object model is not something that Huawei can define. It requires Huawei's multi-party cooperation to jointly define the standard object model. Huawei has achieved 280 million+ device accesses, with 3000+ partners and 1,000+ standard object models.

Huawei’s current achievements in the IoT industry include the AI Intelligent IoT Model Ad Hoc Group, which enables the AIoT Alliance and AII to jointly promote the development of the AIoT industry. An important result of the cooperation between the two parties is dedicated to the construction of information models. The information model is the key to solving a series of challenges in the development of the IoT industry. On the basis of the information model, the unification of industry standards/architectures can be promoted, and the ecological coordination of the industrial chain can be realized.

Huawei hopes to create an industry chain partner (partners in various fields, standard industry organizations, open source organizations, scientific research institutions) for efficient and collaborative end-pipe-side cloud use, to achieve complementary advantages, joint innovation, and jointly respond to industry development challenges, expand the ecosystem, and promote the IoT industry development of. Build information models, promote the unification of industry reference architectures, achieve security and credibility, and accelerate the transformation of industry digital models.

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