The Internet of things can be regarded as an ecosystem, it can connect multiple devices through Bluetooth, wifi, lora, and zigbee wireless network, etc. Common devices include temperature and humidity sensors, 3-axis sensors, tracking sensors, and so on. Each device has its exclusive IP address for easy identification. After connecting to device management, a large amount of data is automatically collected and transmitted without human intervention. It helps you monitor the up-time and troubleshoot problems with these devices. In this article we will get deeply on the definition and other topics can be covered regarding to remote IoT device management.
How does remote IoT device management work?
As below are procedures of IoT device management:
Step 1:Provisioning
Provisioning is the first step in IoT device management, where a smart device needs to be connected to the Internet in order to work properly. This step is to create an account for the first time, and set up a network connection.
It’s composed of two components:
1. Complete the first connection between the IoT solution and device by registering the device.
You can register a single device or multiple devices at once. Devices can be grouped into groups, and then you can send commands to different devices at the same time. For instance, when you have a sensor that tracks temperature over your time, you can register a sensor at a time. However, if you’re going to manage an autonomous fleet, then you may need to register multiple sensors at once.
2. Configure the device according to the requirements of the specific solution.
Both processes involve customizing equipment. Configuration modifies the devices from its original, present settings to the Settings needed to integrate the device into your network. It can be configured at any time.
Step 2：Identification authentication
Authentication is the process of identifying and registering devices when they enter IoT systems, effectively preventing intrusions and keeping proprietary information confidential. In order to enable authentication, administrators should set up device and network security settings to authorize or block access attempts. Although the authentication process for devices is different, each device has a different certificate or key to verify the authenticity of the identity. Model number and serial number are one of the credentials used to verify identity.
Step 3：Configuration
As we mentioned above, IoT configuration management is a way to customize the functionality of IoT devices. After the new device is installed, further configuration takes place after the initial configuration phase. For example, you can add additional complexity and intelligence to the device, optimize its functionality with additional code, or modify its settings to meet new requirements.
Step 4：Control
You should be able to control devices after they are provisioned, authenticated, configured, and connected to the network through devices. The behavior of the device is usually established during device distribution and authentication to automate the device process. For example, after activating sensors, gateway communications, frost fans, wake up and report behavior, administrators also should be capable of controlling Internet of things devices so that devices on the network can be tracked and managed.
Step 5：Monitoring
Another key goals of remote IoT device management is remote management in IoT. This step supports a set of application goals such as:
- System metrics: The dashboards check the uptime of a device and other events accumulated and triggered.
- Queue data reporting: Gain critical insight into user-defined data points. These data points can include positioning, temperature and humidity, speed, and other measurements.
- Autonomic alerts¬ification: Establishes user-defined notifications for events to enable predictive maintenance and key decisions. To prevent serious system failures, data loss, or performance degradation, administrators need to be notified about changes on the network that may affect performance.
- Security: One of the benefits of a highly integrated IoT device management platform likeMOKOSmart is to detect and remedy security vulnerabilities, such as changing device configuration, and provide system administrators with notification of these events.
Step 6：Diagnostics
After completing the process, the administrator can diagnose the entire device network and device health status. These processes enable administrators to perform diagnostics from the management platform without having to physically visit each device installation point, effectively and quickly troubleshoot and fix problems.
Step 7：Software Maintenance&Updates
IoT devices require complex software-defined attributes to manage their security and functionality. IIoT devices can last a decade or more. Therefore, to keep IoT devices operating optimally, administrators should be able to send firmware updates to enhance functionality to any devices across the network at any time. Several examples of software updates are listed below:
- Install manufacturer’s firmware updates to fix bugs and enhance features
- Deliver security patches to make sure security protection is up to date
- Use Python to update the code for device functionality to adapt to changing business requirements
- Increase the frequency of status reports to monitor device progress more closely, or reduce the frequency of reports to save on network costs
Why use remote IoT Device Management solutions to manage IoT devices
Mokosmart’s solutions include the ability to deploy, manage, and optimize your device network for you.
Automatic locate
You can quickly search an entire fleet of devices or find any IoT device you want to use a combination of attributes such as device status, device ID, and type to take action or troubleshoot.
Remote management
The Internet of Things connects multiple devices, sometimes hundreds or thousands of them. Remote IoT device management enables you to manage or update devices remotely and maintain the health of your device cluster. You can also remotely perform fleet wide operations such as restarts, security patches, and factory reboots.
Security
Internet of Things devices such as routers and base stations risk being hacked. Therefore, security updates are critical in protecting networks. With continuous monitoring, abnormal behavior in data traffic and any attempts to change the configuration are detected and an alarm device is triggered.
Scalability
The ability to scale up a deployment depends on an organization’s ability to monitor and manage IoT device remotely through a central management interface or on-site mobile devices.
Network optimization
Organizations need tools to deploy software changes for optimizing data usage, battery life, and functionality for devices at the network’s edge.
Faster time-to-market
The IoT device management platform helps developers minimize the time required for development and testing efforts
Cost reduction
IoT device management detects device failures, which helps predict maintenance. This prevents minor incidents from becoming larger and requiring less maintenance time, which in turn leads to lower operating costs.
When do you need remote IoT device management
- If you have a large number of devices deployed, remote access to them can give you a quick snapshot of their health
- When your devices are deployed in places that are difficult to reach or physically dangerous, remote management devices are especially important. For instance, IoT devices are deployed in urban intersections, buses, trains, wells, mines, traffic lights, bridges and dams, grain silos, manufacturing facilities, and other remote applications.
- Receiving alerts under certain circumstances is an essential function of the application, such as unexpected offline, overs-peed, low battery power and beyond the set safety parameters.
- Routine inspections are time-consuming and labor-intensive. With remote IoT monitoring, you can send people to the site only when you need them.
- You can also apply this solution when your device is installed in a mission-critical application to avoid downtime or failures that can cost you dearly.
Types of commonly used IoT devices
Common IoT devices include drivers, sensors, and various smart connected objects. A connected entity can have dozens of sensors built into it to identify and react to the environment. A connected entity may have dozens of sensors built into it to identify and react to the environment. The sensor outputs information and exchanges data with other connected systems before sending a report back to the cloud.
- Temperature sensor
The industrial healthcare sector and cold-chain transport are particularly in need of such sensors to keep goods at a specific temperature. - Humidity sensor
Humidity sensors can be used to calculate the amount of water vapor and water level in the atmosphere and are commonly deployed in heating systems, kitchen sewers, dams, and air conditioning. - Accelerometer
Accelerometer is used to detect the rate of change in speed of objects relative to time. They are often used in intelligent pedometers and fleet monitoring. In addition, they are widely used in anti-theft protection systems, which notify when a stationary object or person enters a room - Energy monitoring sensor
Energy tracking sensors are mostly used in smart water meters, which save the time and effort of manual meter reading and improve accuracy. - Location tracker
Our daily life is now inseparable from location tracking systems. There are a variety of IoT-enabled location sensors on the market that you can apply to your cargo or the person you want to track. When multiple trackers are deployed, real-time visibility of all devices becomes particularly important.
Features of remote IoT device management
IoT remote monitoring systems require some features to provide you with a higher level of control over remote devices.
Instant alerting
Instant alerts enable you to receive important changes about the state in time. Your alerts are only meaningful if they can be properly de-activated or responded. If the notification reports a problem that cannot be resolved remotely, it should provide enough information so that you know what to do next. These pop-ups need to be delivered to people who can take action. Another approach is to perform event management. When you look at the root cause of critical failure alerts, you can know what other notifications can be set to help prevent the same problem from happening again.
Effective data collection
Your IoT devices may be deployed in remote locations, so you need to have an efficient method of data collection.There are two important methods to gain data: notification push or polling. For IoT monitoring systems, a push-based approach may be more convenient, but trade-offs should be considered. These trade-offs usually include appropriate communication protocols. It is important to ensure that the protocols supported by your device have an efficient way to collect data. But it’s also necessary to use open protocols for ensuring interoperability across multiple devices.
Charts for trend analysis
The monitoring system can provide data for any defined period. However, the raw information itself is not directly usable, but can help us grasp the information. However, the raw information itself is not directly usable, but can help us grasp the information. It’s best to have a monitoring system that enable you to execute some type of query across a database and then visually display the data. There are many other types of visual representations of data while line graph is the best way to achieve what you want.
Types of wireless technologies to mange IoT devices remotely
IoT is managed by connecting devices to a network and exchanging information and transmitting data. Therefore, appropriate Internet of Things communication methods should be selected when starting the Internet of Things strategy. The following are some communication methods used for Internet of Things data transmission.
WiFi
WiFi is a local area network that exchanges data with connected electronic devices. Its fast data transfer makes it suitable for file transfers, but it also consumes a lot of power. WiFi technology is based on the IEEE 802.11n standard and is mainly used in homes and enterprises, providing a range of hundreds of Megabits per second.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth technology is an important Internet of Things protocol that is very suitable for mobile devices and is widely used for near field communication. It is suitable for sending small pieces of data to personal products such as smartwatches or sensors. It consumes relatively little power and has the potential to be scaled up to all markets for innovation.
LoRaWan
LoRaWan, short for Long Range Wide Area Network, is an Internet of Things device used for remote wireless batteries and one of the most popular Internet of Things communication methods, known for Long distance interaction with very low power consumption. In addition, it can also detect signals below the noise level. It’s common in smart cities that connect millions of devices.
NFC
NFC is a wireless technology designed for short distances, up to 10 centimeters. It works by using electromagnetic induction between two coil antennas near an electromagnetic field. Customers can use NFC for instant file transfer and non-contact payments. As a short distance communication protocol, the power consumption is low.
ZigBee
ZigBee is also a short-range wireless Internet of Things device communication protocol based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The operating frequency is 2.4GHz and the data rate is 250kbps. The advantages are low power consumption, security, persistence, scalability and high number of nodes. ZigBee can transmit data over distances of up to 200 meters and has up to 1024 nodes in a network.
RFID
RFID utilizes electromagnetic fields for identifying and tracking tag attached to object. The device captures data from the tag and send it to the database.
z-wave
Z-wave is a wireless low power RF communication technology. Suitable for home automation products such as lamp controllers and sensors. With mesh network topology, up to 232 devices can be controlled and communication distance can reach 40 meters.
SigFox
SigFox aims to reduce the cost of wide-area coverage in application domains. It allows any communication requiring minimal power consumption, based on two-way functionality, for consumer goods, retail, transportation, and energy related communications.
MQTT
MQTT is a lightweight protocol for delivering data flows from sensors to applications and middleware. It sits at the top of the TCP/IP layer and consists of 3 components: broker, subscriber and publisher. Publishers collect data and transmit it to subscribers. The broker tests publishers and subscribers to check their authorization.
MQTT provides three patterns for achieving quality of service:
- QoS0 sends at most once: the least reliable, but fastest mode. Publications were sent but no confirmation was received
- QoS1 send at least once: A message may be sent at least once, but duplicate messages may still be received
- QoS2 sends exactly once: it is the most reliable pattern, but it is also the most bandwidth intensive pattern requiring a control copy to make sure that the message is sent only once.
AMQP
AMQP is an open standard subscription and publishing protocol from the financial industry. It provides asynchronous subscription or publication communication through messaging. The storage and forwarding function ensures reliability even when the network is interrupted. AMQP is probably the only viable protocol for end-to-end applications in the Internet of Things, often used in heavy industrial machinery or SCADA systems.
DDS
The Data Distribution Service protocol is designed specifically for real-time communication, reliable, scalable and high-performance data exchange between connected devices independent of software and hardware platforms. It supports architectures with fewer multicast and agents to ensure high-quality QoS and interoperability. It can be used for industrial IoT deployment, including high-tech services such as self-driving cars, smart grid management, air traffic control and robotics.
LwM2M
LwM2M is a lightweight M2M designed to meet the needs of processing resource-constrained devices. It defines many IoT device management functions, such as remote device operation connection management and monitoring, as well as firmware and software updates.
OCPP
OCPP is a protocol that enable EV charging systems to communicate with a central management system. It is used to transmit a 24-hour forecast of local available capacity to the charging point operator.
Expectations for IoT solutions growth
For companies offering devices for the Internet of Things, the future looks promising. According to the survey, global investment in IoT technology in 2020 is estimated to be $749 billion. Investment was lower than initially expected, but still significantly higher than the previous year, due to the global pandemic of COVID-19. Spending in 2023 is expected to exceed $1.1 trillion.
The growth of devices connected to the Internet of Things is a global phenomenon, currently led by investment in the Asia-Pacific region. Other major investors are Europe, the Middle East, Africa and North America. As more and more enterprises adopt IoT systems suitable for their industry to remotely manage devices.
Remote IoT device management platform
You can find cloud platforms for various IoT solutions in the market; There are three most popular solutions that can be applied to many industries. Mokosmart’s solutions can also be applied to the following three solutions to ensure that your solutions are performance assured and industry-leading.
AWS IoT
Cloud services and device software are provided by AWS IoT for connecting your IoT devices to other devices and integrate them into AWS IoT solutions. Protocols as below can be provided:
- LoRaWAN
- MQTT
- MQTT over WSS
- HTTP
Azure IoT
AWS IoT is a cloud platform that provides services for multiple security mechanisms, for example, encryption and access control of data collected by devices, as well as services for configuration monitoring and auditing, through open edge and scalable security to cloud IoT solutions.
Google Cloud IoT
Google Cloud IoT platform lets you unlock insights into the global network of devices. Its fully managed interactions enable you to connect, analyze, and store data in the cloud or edge. You can leverage the strengths of Google’s Cloud IoT building blocks to get value from device data from data ingestion to intelligence. With this platform, the need of maintenance and optimization of its performance can be detected in real time.
Let MOKOSmart manage your IoT devices
If you’re planning the Internet of things project, or would like to upgrade the deployed equipment network, remote IoT device management is essential for your solution. The function of the equipment management platform can save time to reduce costs To improve security, and to provide you with the key of monitoring and management tools, to keep your device online Updated and optimized to meet your specific application needs all of these benefits will give you the best ROI on your investment.
