US industrial wireless products manufacturer SignalFire Wireless Telemetry has joined the Eclipse Foundation, a community for open innovation and collaboration on solutions for in industrial internet of things (IIoT), as a contributing member.
SignalFire has also joined the Eclipse Sparkplug Working Group as a participant member. Sparkplug is an open-source protocol that uses MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) as a transport, and is used by SignalFire’s RANGER Sensor-to-Cloud Platform, that connects sensor data via an IIoT device to the cloud over an LTE-M cellular connection.
As part of the working group, SignalFire will help drive awareness of the Sparkplug protocol, and collaborate to develop an open branding and compatibility programme. This will enable Sparkplug to become a standard in ensuring open and interoperable IIoT deployments. SignalFire also hopes to help reduce the complexity of using an MQTT broker as the foundation of IIoT solution architectures by developing a technology compatibility kit. The kit will improve the interoperability and scalability of solutions and provide a support framework.
‘By joining the Sparkplug working group, SignalFire will work alongside other companies to further the adoption of the Sparkplug protocol, providing a truly seamless multi-vendor IIoT solution. ‘Utilising Sparkplug in the RANGER allows our customers to quickly and easily bring sensor data into their existing SCADA systems, while at the same time being power efficient,’ says Josh Schadel, general manager and CTO of SignalFire.
Arlen Nipper, Cirrus Link CTO, Sparkplug Working Group chair and co-inventor of MQTT, says that the RANGER is a ‘perfect example’ of a product using Sparkplug, and that he is ‘excited’ to see SignalFire joining the Sparkplug Working Group.
