0 1 00:00:00,320 --> 00:00:06,050 In this chapter, we'll speak about the solutions to consider to design our IoT platform. 1 2 00:00:06,410 --> 00:00:08,810 But I'll be straight with you from the start. 2 3 00:00:09,020 --> 00:00:12,660 I will never be able to present all the available solutions. 3 4 00:00:12,680 --> 00:00:17,780 I will not even pretend to present a tiny part of them because there are so many. 4 5 00:00:18,170 --> 00:00:24,050 Nevertheless, I want to propose here some solution that we could use to build our own IoT platform. 5 6 00:00:24,380 --> 00:00:30,350 Most of these solutions are free and open source, and most of them can work in both directions. 6 7 00:00:30,350 --> 00:00:32,540 So uplink and downlink. 7 8 00:00:32,750 --> 00:00:37,130 But we know that in the IoT world we mostly gather data from sensors. 8 9 00:00:37,130 --> 00:00:41,150 So the stream we are more interested in is the uplink stream. 9 10 00:00:41,300 --> 00:00:46,460 And this is even more true with LoRaWAN than with any other protocols because as we have seen in the 10 11 00:00:46,460 --> 00:00:50,570 previous chapter, LoRaWAN has very limited downlink capability. 11 12 00:00:51,200 --> 00:00:56,750 So we need to find services capable to execute each action that our IoT platform needs to run. 12 13 00:00:57,020 --> 00:01:03,330 Some services like Node-RED, for example, have the ability to do almost everything, not what can 13 14 00:01:03,330 --> 00:01:06,900 easily be connected to any LoRaWAN server using MQTT. 14 15 00:01:07,230 --> 00:01:13,890 It can provide a graphical user interface and it works in both direction, uplink and downlink. 15 16 00:01:14,280 --> 00:01:18,540 We've started to work with Node-RED already and that's indeed a very good solution. 16 17 00:01:18,720 --> 00:01:25,380 But in our case we'll use Node-RED only for one part of this stream, let's explain right away the solution 17 18 00:01:25,380 --> 00:01:26,460 that we'll use. 18 19 00:01:26,820 --> 00:01:35,100 First, we'll use Node-RED to connect our IoT platform to our LoRaWAN server: TTN, Actility, Chirpstack or whatever. 19 20 00:01:35,340 --> 00:01:39,330 And Node-RED will also help us to select the data we want to store. 20 21 00:01:39,900 --> 00:01:45,390 Then with a special node, we'll send these data to an influxdb database. 21 22 00:01:45,960 --> 00:01:52,080 Once the data is stored, we're going to create a dashboard and customize the user interface. 22 23 00:01:52,230 --> 00:01:54,780 For that we will use Grafana. 23 24 00:01:55,530 --> 00:02:03,810 So at the end we'll use three services for our IoT platform Node-RED, Influxdb and Grafana. 24 25 00:02:04,740 --> 00:02:10,410 And if we need a broker for the MQTT connection with the LoRaWAN server, then we'll use mosquitto. 25 26 00:02:10,830 --> 00:02:12,450 Mosquitto, Influxdb, 26 27 00:02:12,480 --> 00:02:13,710 Node-RED, and Grafana. 27 28 00:02:13,890 --> 00:02:20,760 This service used is called the MING Stack and of course M stands for Mosquitto I for Influxdb, 28 29 00:02:21,090 --> 00:02:22,410 N for Node-RED, 29 30 00:02:22,410 --> 00:02:23,880 And G for Grafana. 30 31 00:02:24,810 --> 00:02:27,430 Obviously this is not the only choice. 31 32 00:02:27,450 --> 00:02:33,630 For example, we could have used the ELK Stack: Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana. 32 33 00:02:33,930 --> 00:02:38,220 But I would like to stick with the first choice because it's a very good solution when dealing with 33 34 00:02:38,220 --> 00:02:39,330 timestamps data. 34 35 00:02:39,990 --> 00:02:45,900 On top of that, we have already started to work with Node-RED, so I guess it's more consistent. 35 36 00:02:46,590 --> 00:02:47,160 Great. 36 37 00:02:47,160 --> 00:02:52,950 So this is what we can use to create things by ourselves, but we might just want to use an IoT platform 37 38 00:02:52,950 --> 00:02:54,450 without creating one. 38 39 00:02:54,480 --> 00:02:57,080 Of course there are many available. 39 40 00:02:57,090 --> 00:03:01,920 They are often proposed as a complete package to be installed on a server, but there's often a cloud 40 41 00:03:01,920 --> 00:03:03,480 version available as well. 41 42 00:03:03,870 --> 00:03:07,950 Of course this is a professional service, so it's not free. 42 43 00:03:08,100 --> 00:03:13,980 But there is usually a free online edition with limited functionalities so you can try it out. 43 44 00:03:14,430 --> 00:03:19,950 Usually we allow to register only a few devices and to create a few dashboards. 44 45 00:03:19,950 --> 00:03:25,170 So indeed a professional IoT platform can be a good choice if you have a big project. 45 46 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:27,930 Of course this is not the purpose of this course. 46 47 00:03:27,930 --> 00:03:31,850 So in our case we'll set up each service by ourselves.