Smart Connected Assets are being developed today through the convergence of IIoT, Cloud, Big Data Analytics, and Mobile technologies that are fusing traditionally separate Information and Operational Technology (IT/OT). They facilitate precisely this key shift from a mindset of reactive to predictive maintenance capabilities by making full use of available APM data.

In this article we are going to see how these Smart Connected Assets will be monitored in an efficient way by using Microsoft Azure IoT along with the various components of Microsoft Azure .

Azure Components : Following are the Azure Components which are used in this process for collecting the data from the various assets and ingesting it in to the cloud for the data processing and the dashboard creation for the monitoring purposes . Azure IoT Hub Azure Event Hub Azure Blob Storage Azure HD Insight Azure MySQL DB Azure Power BI Architecture — Connected Assets

Using the above mentioned Azure Components the architecture diagram is derived for the Smart Monitoring of the Connected Assets . The Architecture of this Smart Monitoring of Connected Assets will be implemented in the three categories .

1. Device Engineering
2. Cloud Infra Components
3. Visualization

Explanation of Architecture Components :

a. Device Engineering : The Data from connected asset will ingest the data to the DELL 3001 IoT Edge Gateway using RS232 , RS485 ports , OPC UA protocols .The IOT Edge Gatway which is running either in Ubuntu IoT core or Win10 IoT core will receive the data from these ports through the receiver end of RS232 or RS 485 ports present in the IoT Edge Gateway , with GSM port enabled .The Edge Connector program ( either in .net core or python) which is running inside the Edge Gateway will ingest these timeseries data in to the Azure cloud IoT hub , via MQTT communication protocol .

b. Cloud Infra Components: The Lambda Architecture was followed to ingest the time series data from Azure IoT to the other services of the Azure cloud .The respective IoT devices are created in the Azure IoT hub , once the devices are created the Device ID and primary connection string are noted and it will be used to create a SAS token to authenticate the Cloud — Device handshake for the respective devices .Once this step was completed the times series data which is received in the Azure IoT hub will routed to the Azure blob and Event hubs respectively accordingly to the endpoints created . The data from the Event hub endpoints will be ingested to the Azure HD insight service where in Pyspark cluster the raw data ingested will be processed in an continuous manner and inserted the processed data according to the given KPI to the Azure MySQL DB . From the MySQL DB the data will be feed in to the Visualization dashboards the datasets was fetched in the Power BI dashboard and the dashboard will be integrated in to the Angular web app by means of Embed url option in Power BI .

c. Visualization: The data which is pulled out from the MYSQL DB using C#.net REST API’s will be feed in to the Angular dashboards for real time data or the POWER BI dashboard creation tool used to create the interactive dashboard for the end -users by connecting directly to MySql Db datasets and integrated in to the Angular web app . Kindly check next slide for the sample dashboard for Connected Assets with required monitoring KPI’s .Below are the screenshots of the portal which is created to monitor the KPI’s of various parameters of the connected assets .

Smart monitoring portal — Login

Smart Monitoring Portal — Report ( once you login the portal you can see this report)

Kindly find the github url for the source code for implementing this architecture ( the repo is private) . https://github.com/SARAN2991/smartmonitoringofconnectedassets.git

The above git url will contain the code base for the following :

1. Creating a simulator for the Gateway programming
2. Database scripts to store the data of the connected assets
3. Source code for ETL jobs using pyspark
4. Screenshots for creating the Azure components required for this use-case
5. UI and API source code for creating the Smart Monitoring Portal .

By implementing the above IoT solution for the Smart Monitoring of Connected Assets using Azure IoT , the efficiency of the assets will be monitored regularly , the usage of the asset will be optimized and the unscheduled maintenance of the asset will be avoided , so that there will be more productivity in the industries too.

If you have any queries in this article or in the implementation of this solution means feel free to connect me through :

Linkedin Profile : linkedin.com/in/saravanan-ganesan-23705a47

Email address : saravanan2991@gmail.com