Meet the Most User-Friendly IoT Connectivity Management Platform
The internet of Things (IoT) is relatively young; while the term was first used in 1999, IoT didn’t begin gaining traction until around 2010, and once it did, it hit the mass market in only four years. Let’s just say, advances in this field happen fast, and our technologies continue to drive the industry.
Engineering Design Group (EDG) has changed a lot over the last year, and new and old customers alike are in need of an introduction (or a reintroduction). So... who are we? EDG was created to simplify remote sensor monitoring for organizations with large numbers of devices. Our platform brings data from anywhere in the world to our customers’ fingertips, allowing them to easily identify trends and make predictions. Below, we’ll go into further detail about EDG's mission, walking you through our end-to-end IoT connectivity management platform.
The Problem
While those in a wide range of industries rely on remote sensors to receive crucial updates about their systems, a reliable solution can take up to two years to design and build from the ground up. The problem is that businesses and engineers both tend to excel at individual pieces. Hardware designers don’t specialize in cloud infrastructure, and due to the multitude of sensor protocols, mobile app developers don’t have a unified way to communicate with them.
Not only that, but in the age of IoT, it's commonplace for companies to need a large amount of data from a large number of devices for machine learning algorithms, artificial intelligence, and general automation. This means the data must be accessible in a way that is secure, scalable, and robust, which is extremely challenging if your expertise does not cover everything from hardware to the cloud. You need a team with extensive experience in hardware, firmware, cloud infrastructure, and application design, and that team has to consider security, scalability, and robustness from day one. EDG does just that.
EDG’s Mission
EDG saw numerous companies struggle to design cloud infrastructure that could monitor and control large numbers of devices, so, we set out to solve this problem. Our mission is to allow industries to monitor distributed sensors from around the globe, putting data at your fingertips to save you time and money. Our complete IoT connectivity management platform gives customers a scalable and robust solution while providing complete security from the sensor to the user for the lifetime of our product.
How We Achieve That Mission
The University Researcher
Our intention has always been to provide a robust, end-to-end IoT connectivity management platform, and we began pursuing our mission from the very beginning. One of our first clients, a geologist with the University of Wyoming’s Center for Economic Geology Research, needed to monitor data in eight locations, requiring them to drive to each site periodically and read the data manually or with a USB key. This traditional approach would suffer from human error, drifts in methodology, and other inconsistencies. So, we created a fully automated, wireless network of distributed systems, which uses cellular IoT technologies to send sensor data through our cloud infrastructure to a simple web application - the EDG Client Portal. Here, researchers can access data from each remote system through a single webpage from anywhere in the world.
We built the EDG Client Portal with future customers in mind, but also equipped it with functionality to meet the geologist’s specific needs; he was able to securely log in and monitor sensor data, assign names to individual systems, create groups of systems, download sensor data to a CSV, and even share his data by inviting research partners as guest users to the Portal. The project utilized the first iteration of our EDG006 Wi-Fi and cellular controller (before it included an expansion connector) and an early version of our API, which is the data pathway to our cloud infrastructure, allowing applications to securely control and monitor our hardware.
To read more about our work with the university researcher, check out this case study.
Our Evolution
In our early days, data flow was unidirectional, meaning we could only transmit sensor data from the hardware to the EDG Client Portal; the system didn’t yet allow users to send commands to our devices. We quickly added an expansion connector to our cellular and Wi-Fi controller, which made a variety of sensor interfaces available in our own unique stackable architecture. We leveraged this connector almost immediately to integrate new sensors and control mechanisms for several customized client solutions. These customers saw EDG as the supplier for their complete IoT solutions, which moved us into the area of hardware enclosures and mobile applications that leverage our cloud infrastructure.
Suddenly, we realized we had grown into a complete solution provider; we had created a data collection platform that allows customers to monitor and control any number of EDG systems through a single application dashboard. This is uncommon in the remote connectivity industry, as many companies offer only hardware or only software, not both. Our ability to offer hardware and software - a complete IoT connectivity management platform - comes with a huge benefit; we have full control over security with minimal reliance on third parties.
Our End-To-End IoT Connectivity Management Platform
The Hardware
EDG’s Environmental Monitoring Units (EMUs) are foundational to our IoT connectivity management platform, and they come in two wireless varieties, Wi-Fi-based or cellular. Both of these options are capable of measuring temperature, humidity, and CO2, and are built with a stackable bus to eliminate board-to-board cabling, thereby reducing system complexity and improving reliability.
We also provide lifetime over-the-air (OTA) security updates to these systems. That means each system is kept up-to-date without user intervention, defending your assets against the most recently uncovered security vulnerabilities.
The Software
At the application level, the EDG Client Portal provides basic monitoring capabilities for EDG hardware, giving customers the ability to monitor sensor data from any number of EMUs. Users can assign names to individual systems, create groups of systems, download sensor data to a CSV, and share data with partners by inviting them as guest users to the Portal.
Each of our customers utilize IoT in a unique way, and they each require a unique approach. For more complex solutions, EDG can create advanced web apps, mobile apps, or desktop applications. Our mobile apps allow companies to monitor and send requests to hardware directly from a smartphone, making them an invaluable tool for technicians who service fielded devices.
EDG’s API and Cloud Infrastructure
EDG’s API is the intermediary between our cloud infrastructure and the hardware and software. Both devices and applications use the API to authenticate with our cloud infrastructure, preventing bad actors from breaching your data and malicious devices from attacking your application.
For developers, the most interesting part is that EDG’s API unifies data retrieval from devices of different manufacturers and protocols. Here’s how it works: on the hardware side, developers handle nuances in data transmission with their own set of API endpoints. On the software side, application developers use their own set of API endpoints to access all data from the distribution systems, regardless of the sensor manufacturer, protocol, or the system which the data came from.
EDG’s cloud infrastructure can be viewed as a historical mailbox for devices and applications, which tracks when mail (your data) was sent, received, and read. Think of the API as the “key” for hardware or software to access the mailbox. Your data is retained for historical access, and device-side and application-side events are logged to provide a complete picture of each command and data transmission.
Together, EDG’s API and cloud infrastructure work to supply secure and scalable data pathways, ensuring that your distributed network stays reliable as it grows.
Third Party Support
After building out the cloud infrastructure that serves as the foundation for our end-to-end IoT connectivity management platform, we realized that businesses seeking to integrate third parties could benefit from it as well. If you’re developing hardware and your app developers need to access your device data, we’ll work with you to connect your hardware to our API so you can share that data with your partners and simplify software development.
Our Cost-Saving Model
Building and maintaining your own remote sensor monitoring platform can be extremely pricey. Creating the cloud infrastructure alone comes with an array of costs beyond just tools. You’ll need a team of experienced developers that understand the nuances of embedded hardware and complex distributed networks. And on top of that, you’ll need a team to be available to maintain security and scalability as you grow. With EDG, you don’t have to worry about these financial burdens. EDG is a SaaS provider, meaning customers pay only for what they need as they grow. Our pricing model is fully customizable, allowing customers to pay per device, per month, adjusting the number of devices as needed.
Not only does EDG save customers money when it comes to cloud infrastructure, we also eliminate the need for an around-the-clock team. Should any issues arise, our staff are ready to respond at a moment’s notice. Our system can be scaled without sacrificing reliability, and we’ll manage the security, saving you from having to hire experts in VPNs, gateway configuration, firewalls, and data encryption. By handling every aspect of remote sensor monitoring, our IoT connectivity management platform makes the process convenient, easy, and incredibly affordable.
Our Vision
IoT technology is rapidly advancing, and we strive to stay at the forefront of innovation. We’re working to build more than an IoT connectivity management platform; our vision is to create an ecosystem for IoT in which devices and apps can operate so securely and reliably that these pieces become an afterthought, allowing your business to focus on its core competencies.
Get Started With EDG’s IoT Connectivity Management Platform
If your organization relies on large numbers of sensors, you know the repercussions of finding out too late that something has gone wrong, and you also know the steep barriers to designing a remote monitoring system. With our hardware, applications, and our complete IoT connectivity management platform, those worries can be a thing of the past. EDG’s technologies will bring data to your fingertips, so you’ll know there’s a problem before it’s too late. If you’re interested in learning more, would like to speak to an expert, or are ready to dive in and revolutionize your sensor monitoring process, contact EDG today! We’d love to hear from you.