The Internet of Things (IoT) has recently become one of the most significant tools in the technology industry. It gives us the ability to link a variety of devices. It also opens up a world of possibilities for developing innovative systems and products in almost every field. On the other hand, closed proprietary technologies characterize the current structure of the IoT market. Therefore it limits compatibility between solutions and locks consumers into a specific system. IoT can only succeed if it is based on the same ideals that have made the Internet successful. In short, we require open standards and an open-source IoT community to drive innovation in the IoT industry. Eclipse IoT is the answer to this problem.

This tutorial will look at one of the popular IoT communities known as the Eclipse IoT community. Also, we will take a look at the Smarthome project, one of Eclipse’s services. Finally, we will go through Eclipse Hono and Eclipse Hawkbit.

Introduction to Eclipse IoT

It is a collaborative space where peers develop projects that serve as the basis for our IoT products. In other words, It is a linkup of industry and academia to lay the foundation of IoT. Owing to it to create a set of open-source technologies. Hence their focus is always on; Producing open-source implementations of IoT standard generation. In addition to this, developing open-source frameworks and services for use in IoT solutions. Moreover, growing tools for IoT builders.

Standards and Protocols

Mosquitto provides a server implementation of MQTT.
Californium is a Java implementation of Constrained Application Protocol.
OM2M implements the OneM2M specification, which is a set of Java and OSGi utilities.
Wakaama is a system and service management platform based on the OMA Lightweight M2M protocol. Wakaama is written in C and can run on POSIX-compliant machines.

Services and Frameworks

Eclipse SmartHome is a Java and OSGi set of services for home automation integration. This project creates a single point of entry for a variety of home automation systems and protocols.
Ponte is a mediator who will link various IoT norms. These specifications are accessible through a REST API.
Krikkit is a project that aims to specify rules for messages passing across edge devices.
Mihini is a Lua-based platform for building IoT and M2M gateway apps. A closely related project, Koneki, incorporates a Lua IDE and makes it simple to launch Mihini applications.

Eclipse IoT- Smarthome

Eclipse SmartHome is an Eclipse Foundation-hosted Internet of Things (IoT) project. It is, more generally, a platform that enables consumers to create smart home applications with diverse ecosystems. That is solutions that interact with the convergence of several protocols or standards. Its goal is to give standard access to devices and make them easy to use. This architecture contains a set of OSGi packages. We can install them on an OSGi runtime and describe OSGi resources as extension points. The stack can function on any device that can operate an OSGi stack, like multi-core servers, residential gateways.

Although we can use Eclipse SmartHome by itself, we use it as a base for developing smart home solutions. The openHAB project, which is both open-source and the source of the Eclipse SmartHome project, is one of these approaches. The project focuses on developing an IoT integration network by connecting devices from different providers. That uses various protocols and, by necessity, doesn’t “know” or “understand” one another. As a result, we refer to the instruments in Eclipse SmartHome as Things. Channels reveal the capabilities of these things. A channel is usually stateful and can also accept commands.

These bundles explain the channels and configuration parameters that a thing can have. Furthermore, how to discover it automatically. A box also includes a ThingHandler, which handles the direct correspondence with the real device. It establishes the relation, checks for changes in value or polls for them, and passes out instructions. We leave the real-world representation with Items and replace it with an approximation. They are the objects for which users communicate. As a result, they could be connected to channels to monitor a system.

Eclipse Hono

The Eclipse Hono service provides network frameworks that are far from linking a large range of IoT devices to universally communicate with them without regard for the tool connectivity protocol used. It is a collection of remote service APIs for linking various IoT devices to a back end and universally communicating with them, independent of user connectivity protocol. Its telemetry and event APIs, in particular, allow flexible and convenient consumption of high amounts of sensor data.

Hono’s Command & Manipulate API allows you to send commands (request messages) to devices and receive a consistent response asynchronously. Eclipse Hono provides APIs for provisioning and managing linked gadget identities and credentials.

Key Features

Hono can link various IoT devices. Its horizontal scaling is allowed by its microservice-based architecture and use of a reactive programming model.
It can connect the (cloud) back end to a variety of various devices.
Irrespective of platform protocol, it can communicate all the devices using the same basic API.
Hono offers APIs for the following popular IoT communication patterns: Devices can use remote monitoring and event notifications to monitor sensor readings, while apps can use Command & Control to control devices.
Hono is built by giving priority to safety.
It uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) while communicating with devices. It also supports standard authentication protocols to validate a device’s identity.
Hono has a convenient way of adding custom protocol adapters.

Eclipse Hawkbit

Eclipse HawkBit aims to develop a domain-agnostic backend approach for deploying software upgrades to resource-constrained devices. Also more powerful controllers and gateways connecting to IP-based network connections.
Gadgets are connected to this server either directly via an integrated interface or indirectly through unified devise control servers.

Why Hawkbit?

In most IoT cases, It is essential to update software (components) on constrained edge computers. Also, on more efficient controllers and gateways. IoT solution manages this process itself. But it is often supported by a dedicated device control system. In the IoT space, this method creates needless repetitive work. Particularly when it comes to the difficulties of enforcing a secure and dependable remote software upgrade process. The method of updating applications must never fail and must never be risked. On the one side, it can address virtually every problem on the computer. But it still presents the most challenging security issue if malware implements through it.

The method of updating software is frequently viewed as a sub-process of overall system management. Most configuration management systems have the ability to automatically upgrade groups of equipment, as well as an artifact registry and simple reporting and tracking features. This is valid for all IoT-specific systems and systems emanating from the mobile space.

A complete device management system’s broad functional spectrum adds needless difficulty to many IoT programs. It is especially true for IoT solutions that deal with restricted hardware, where generic system management specifications are often small. But, a stable and efficient software upgrade mechanism is always needed. As a consequence, we need a domain-independent approach:

That is suitable for the vast majority of IoT programs.
Which goes beyond mere updates and takes care of the more complicated deployment strategies required by large-scale IoT ventures.
That is based on software upgrades in the IoT space simultaneously.
And one that can work independently in simple situations while still being able to connect with current device management systems and protocols.

References

Primary Source
Smarthome
Hono
Hawkbit