ENABLING INDUSTRIAL SENSORS For Edge Computing Using EdgeX

For industrial prototyping and design, we often need industrial-grade sensors devices plus industrial platforms like EdgeX.

- VIJAY KUMAR GOPU

But interfacing and using those industrial-grade sensors with our known boards is very difficult and unknown to us. So here we use the industrial platform Edgex and industrial sensor and interface them with the known Raspberry Pi.

Here we read the temperature and humidity values of the SHT20 sensor and leverage the EdgeX framework running on Raspberry Pi to provide gateway functionality. Using EdgeX framework microservices, we process the sensor data and send it to the cloud. After that we actuate LEDs to on/off when temperature readings cross threshold values. The author's prototype is shown in Fig. 1.

EdgeX framework speeds time to market by providing replaceable reference services for device-data ingestion, normalization, edge intelligence, and sharing to support new IoT data services and advanced edge computing applications. The scope of this case study is to leverage and exercise the functionality of the EdgeX framework and demonstrate monitoring temperature and humidity sensors. Industrial-grade temperature and humidity transmitter SHT20 is used for the case study.

Typical block diagram using EdgeX in Fig. 2 shows the high-level block diagram for edge computing using EdgeX. It is taken from the image source https://docs.edgexfoundry. org/1.3/general/EdgeX_deployments png

Prequestie setup

For using EdgeX and industrial temperature sensor we need the Ubuntu operating system (OS) for Raspberry Pi 4. The latest Ubuntu OS can be downloaded from the link below and the SD card can be prepared by following the steps given therein.

https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/ how-to-install-ubuntu-on-your-raspberry-pi#1-overview

Ubuntu installation

After preparing the SD card with Ubuntu OS make the following changes before booting Raspberry Pi using the micro SD card in which Ubuntu has been installed: