Hi All,
Welcome back.
Today I am going to share with you two points -
1.What prompted me to start this Blog.
2.The purpose of this Blog.
For some tech buddies few topics may be boring and looks repetitive,but keeping in mind the young techies, I decided not to skip a thread in between so that they have an idea how this industry has been evolving over decades.My request for the experts of the specific domain please bear with me and I need your valuable inputs/feedback in the area of your expertise.
What Prompted me to be here today?
I am basically an Electronics & Instrumentation Engineer by certificate and during my Journey, as part of my job requirements I have completed various courses/certificates which include Unix/Network admin, DBA,SQL,C/C++,VC++,JAVA,R,..... ,various types of vendor specific protocols and recently Big Data courses.These are in addition to Management courses and various application software of Honeywell,ABL,SIEMENS... .
This is not the case of just mine,every Industry Automation Techie might have gone through the same.All these years, Automation Engineers have struggled a lot due to lack of open standards.
Right from beginning this Industry lacks proper platform for learning and in Institutes also we learn a little about this field except may be in few now.Due to these reasons not only the techies but also consumers and the industry also struggled.
I remember in my first job I have to deal with pneumatic transducers and control valves which were controlled by pneumatic signal.And we have to run a long length of copper tube and after few night calls I realised how difficult that job was to go night and work on running plant.
In those days I used to feel jealous of the electrical engineers by seeing their electrical cables.In the mid night calls I used to curse,”what the hell, why can not we use cables instead of these air pipes?”.
After few years most of the new plants/utilities started operating with electronic controllers and many places air/hydraulic tubes were replaced by signal/control cables except in few hazardous locations.
And the era of integrated control centres (with PLC/DCS/SCADA) started.This brought into fore the other problem of multiple vendors and their custom protocol/software&hardware and the volume of signal cables has gone up by huge multiples.
Top & Middle management decision support systems like ERP started receiving the real time process/plant/utility data from these control centres.
Then once the wireless/cellular technology came, we started dreaming of the days when majority of the sensors can be connected wirelessly and there can be open software.
Finally that era also emerging,But this again brought a double whammy -Huge real-time data generated not only by sensors/machines but also by humans and the environment.And the necessity of integrating this huge data (with both business intelligent systems and plant/utility level control systems) is going to be a big challenge for Automation industry in the days to come.
Many existing plants/utilities are already equipped with sensors/intelligent devices dealing with vendor specific protocols.And these industries can not afford to replace these sensors over night.So we have to deal with both vendor specific and open standards as part of this data integration.
This world has been expanding by many folds as both the plant/utilities sensor data and human/environment data started coming together under one umbrella.That is IOT/IIOT.
By now I hope that we are clear about the amount of complexities this is going to bring and the efforts we need to put in to be successful in this domain.But the Question lies
It is like a sleeping giant.once it wakes up, to sustain in this competitive world every industry will run for solutions( off course this run has already started in few countries,if I am not wrong).
Yes we are not well prepared for this,there is a dearth of talented/trained techies.But thanks to the initiation taken by few organisations in this domain.
If we will not act now and prepare for these challenges,these challenges are going to out power the capabilities of Automation experts/industry.And the Countries/Industries which are not going to prepare well for this are going to struggle.
And these problems can not be solved by few individuals/firms as we are going to be in a highly interconnected world.
Main purpose of this Blog is to provide a systematic learning path for aspiring techies of this domain.
You will be learning right from the sensors/controls to data analytics.This Blog will give you brief knowledge about Open source software tools,Protocols,BigData tools and Data Analytics.
Due to the dynamic nature of this technology,for may of us this is always going to be a new domain.After going through this Blog you can identify your strengths and choose a career in one of the niche fields of this promising IoT/IIoT industry.And there are many ways to get expertise in your chosen field.
One more important purpose of this blog is to interconnect the techies of this promising industry so that it will facilitate us in providing better solutions.
And finally I have my own selfishness also in starting this Blog.
Let me go back and share few of my stories in short:
I remember in my first job I have to deal with pneumatic transducers and control valves which were controlled by pneumatic signal.And we have to run a long length of copper tube and after few night calls I realised how difficult that job was to go night and work on running plant.
In those days I used to feel jealous of the electrical engineers by seeing their electrical cables.In the mid night calls I used to curse,”what the hell, why can not we use cables instead of these air pipes?”.
After few years most of the new plants/utilities started operating with electronic controllers and many places air/hydraulic tubes were replaced by signal/control cables except in few hazardous locations.
And the era of integrated control centres (with PLC/DCS/SCADA) started.This brought into fore the other problem of multiple vendors and their custom protocol/software&hardware and the volume of signal cables has gone up by huge multiples.
Top & Middle management decision support systems like ERP started receiving the real time process/plant/utility data from these control centres.
Then once the wireless/cellular technology came, we started dreaming of the days when majority of the sensors can be connected wirelessly and there can be open software.
Finally that era also emerging,But this again brought a double whammy -Huge real-time data generated not only by sensors/machines but also by humans and the environment.And the necessity of integrating this huge data (with both business intelligent systems and plant/utility level control systems) is going to be a big challenge for Automation industry in the days to come.
Many existing plants/utilities are already equipped with sensors/intelligent devices dealing with vendor specific protocols.And these industries can not afford to replace these sensors over night.So we have to deal with both vendor specific and open standards as part of this data integration.
This world has been expanding by many folds as both the plant/utilities sensor data and human/environment data started coming together under one umbrella.That is IOT/IIOT.
By now I hope that we are clear about the amount of complexities this is going to bring and the efforts we need to put in to be successful in this domain.But the Question lies
Are we well prepared to face this in coming future?
It is like a sleeping giant.once it wakes up, to sustain in this competitive world every industry will run for solutions( off course this run has already started in few countries,if I am not wrong).
Yes we are not well prepared for this,there is a dearth of talented/trained techies.But thanks to the initiation taken by few organisations in this domain.
If we will not act now and prepare for these challenges,these challenges are going to out power the capabilities of Automation experts/industry.And the Countries/Industries which are not going to prepare well for this are going to struggle.
And these problems can not be solved by few individuals/firms as we are going to be in a highly interconnected world.
Purpose of this Blog:
Main purpose of this Blog is to provide a systematic learning path for aspiring techies of this domain.
You will be learning right from the sensors/controls to data analytics.This Blog will give you brief knowledge about Open source software tools,Protocols,BigData tools and Data Analytics.
Due to the dynamic nature of this technology,for may of us this is always going to be a new domain.After going through this Blog you can identify your strengths and choose a career in one of the niche fields of this promising IoT/IIoT industry.And there are many ways to get expertise in your chosen field.
One more important purpose of this blog is to interconnect the techies of this promising industry so that it will facilitate us in providing better solutions.
And finally I have my own selfishness also in starting this Blog.
This is a little effort by a tiny techie,hope that I(we) will succeed in this endeavour with all your support and this Blog will benefit our community.
Sorry I tried to keep this as short as possible,but could not
Thanks,
Sailendra
e-mail:sailendrafl@gmail.com
IoT-IIoTsolutions
Sorry I tried to keep this as short as possible,but could not
Thanks,
Sailendra
e-mail:sailendrafl@gmail.com
IoT-IIoTsolutions
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