Last year I did an IoT session at the Dutch BizTalk User Group, and since then I have had several requests for more information on this topic. After having had a couple of very busy months at my client, I finally decided to make a series of blogposts on this topic. IoT is a major growing industry, and gives a lot of really nice opportunities for us integration specialists. All the code and projects I will be creating will be provided along with the posts, and can be downloaded from here. Coming from a nautical background myself, I see more and more scenarios here where IoT might be a real game changer, so this will be the scenario I will be using throughout these series.
Scenario
In the upcoming weeks I will be creating my blogposts from the following scenario. In this scenario an engine supplier for ships, like Caterpillar or ABC, might want to get information about the health and status of their engines. In general, a ship has several engines for propulsion (main engine and bow thrusters), generators, pumps on tankers, etc. All these engines already have a lot of data about their health, like temperatures, oil and filter conditions, or issues that might occur during operations. Currently most of this information is displayed to the crew of the ship, and they have to interpret this information, which often means issues are not noticed until it becomes a real problem, and they have to go in for repairs or adjustments, where every day they are not out working can cost a lot of money, especially if the ship is working under contract.
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