• Share this article:

Virtual IoT Meetups - Year in Review

Monday, December 21, 2020 - 15:58 by Hudson Kelly

Boasting an audience of over 2,500 IoT enthusiasts, the Virtual IoT Meetup Group brings together a world-wide network of developers dedicated to discovering and creating new technologies that will make it easier to create IoT applications. In 2020, the group gathered four times through Eclipse Foundation organized events to discuss projects making strides in the IoT space. With over 500 combined attendees, the Virtual IoT program continues to be a great way for developers to raise community awareness for their projects, Interested in hosting the next Virtual IoT event? Send an email to events@eclipse-foundation.org and we can begin organizing a webinar! Now, let's look back at the great Virtual IoT events that happened in 2020. 

 

IoT Commercial Adoption Survey 2019: Key Trends in IoT 

In the first meetup of the year, Frédéric Desbiens, Program Manager, IoT and Edge Computing and Paul Buck, Vice President, Community, at the Eclipse Foundation, reviewed the key findings from the IoT Commercial Adoption survey. Collected in late 2019, the IoT Working Group focused its efforts on gaining a better understanding of the IoT industry landscape by identifying the requirements, priorities and challenges faced by organizations that are deploying and using IoT commercial solutions. Learn what percentage of respondents are deploying IoT solutions today, how much they’re spending, how many plan to start in the next two years and other key facts about the future for IoT adoption. 

 

MQTT at the Eclipse Foundation: A Toolkit for Today and Tomorrow 

Presented by Ranjan Dasgupta and Ian Craggs, get to know MQTT, an essential IoT standard protocol providing flexibility in communication patterns and designed for lightweight machine to machine communication. The session provided insights into how the Eclipse Foundation supports open source projects related to MQTT and the coming trends in the space. 

 

The 80’s Called and They Want Their Architectures Back: how MQTT actually converges IT & OT for faster systems integration

Another MQTT related session, this time led by the team of Don Pearson (Inductive Automation), Arlen Nipper (Cirrus Link) and Todd Anslinger (Chevron). See how MQTT Sparkplug makes Industrial IoT easy. Using a real-world example from one of the largest oil companies in the world, MQTT Sparkplug solves issues with a simple ‘plug-and-play’ IIoT solution. 

 

Apache PLC4X Project

In the most recent IoT Meetup, Apache PLC4X Project VP Christofer Dutz, walked us through three generations of the automation industry and the problems that spurred innovation. In the 90’s, machines from different vendors could not easily interact with each other, requiring heavy protocols to connect. It was not until MQTT, that these protocols became lightweight, but still only effective on newer devices. Given the 20 year life-span of most equipment, the automation industry has struggled to address the 95% of devices that do not support these new protocols. That is, until the advent of Apache PLC4X. Capable of communicating with nearly every piece of industrial hardware at no license cost, PLC4X is changing the industry. 


Are you part of an IoT project that might be of interest to the community? Let us know! Reach out to events@eclipse-foundation.org and we can set up your Virtual IoT Meetup.

Tags