Webinar Snippet: New uses of MQTT and Sparkplug to modernize manufacturing
On November 18, we connected with HiveMQ’s Dominik Obermaier for the webinar “Connect Any Device & Reliably Move Your Data! New Uses of MQTT And Sparkplug To Modernize Your Manufacturing.” Here we touch on the presentation, chatting with the CTO about moving data with trust, trends with MQTT and Sparkplug, and modern methods of connecting assets. Take a look…
Smart Industry: What do you mean by "reliably" moving data? What are the challenges there and what are the benefits of reliable data movement?
Dominik: Many of our customers use HiveMQ and MQTT to move business-critical data from devices into their data center. They want to make sure no data is lost as it arrives in the correct sequence. This could be for regulatory or business process purposes.
In perfectly running systems, reliably moving data is not a big issue. However, rarely do systems run in a perfect fashion. There's a possibility of network failures, hardware failures, and even software failures. A well-designed system needs to be able to respond to these types of system failures. This is where HiveMQ excels in providing high availability and fault-tolerant software that protects the integrity of the data movement.
Smart Industry: Provide an example of a smart application of MQTT and/or Sparkplug that can yield quick wins.
Dominik: There are many examples. For example, monitoring leakage in an oil-and-gas pipeline would benefit from MQTT. Sparkplug would accelerate the modernization of a factory to enable predictive maintenance or improve operational efficiency.
Smart Industry: What are a few guidelines to consider when first connecting industrial assets? What questions do you most often hear from customers?
Dominik: When customers come to us, they are often looking to modernize their existing infrastructure. A common pattern is that they want to replace Modbus polling with something that is more network efficient. This is to lower network costs and enable more real-time data updates.
For such use cases, like connecting industrial assets, MQTT's publish/subscribe architecture is ideal. With MQTT, an asset can publish data when the data has changed or when an event has occurred. There's no requirement for polling from a central location to see if something has changed.
Important events are communicated immediately or in real-time, hence the action need not wait for the next polling period. Plus, network bandwidth is reduced as communication only happens when the asset has some new information. In addition, the MQTT messages are very small, so the network bandwidth is further reduced. These features of MQTT help in making a high impact on the overall system.
