IoT Show: IoT Plug and Play bridge on an IoT Edge Gateway

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>> We have a special episode of the IoT Show where Ugan is coming back.

Last time it was about introducing the IoT Plug and Play bridge, today its about showing how it works as an IoT edge module.

If you dont understand anything of what I just said, you have to watch the episode.

If you understand what that means, I dont even have to tell you what to do.

Thats today on the IoT Show.

[MUSIC] >> Hi, everyone. Welcome to the IoT Show.

Im Olivier, your host.

Today Ugan is back on the IoT Show to tell us more about the IoT Plug and Play bridge.

Ugan, thanks for coming to the show today. How are you.

>> Hey, Olivier, Im doing well, how are you? >> Fantastic. Tell me Ugan, for those who have not seen the first episode, first shame on them.

They have to go and watch it.

But can you give us a short introduction of yourself again? >> Yeah, Im Ugan. Im a Program Manager on the Azure agent platform team on the sensors and connected team working on the IoT Plug and Play bridge.

>> Nice. In that first episode with you, you came and introduced the IoT Plug and Play bridge.

Well send people to watch the video, but, short can you tell us what is the IoT Plug and Play bridge? >> Yeah. The IoT Plug and Play bridge is a really low code way to integrate existing legacy brownfield devices into the IoT Plug and Play ecosystem and service them as IoT Plug and Play devices.

>> To sum it up, for people who are not familiar with Plug and Play as well, Plug and Play is that solution, the last to have devices declared the capabilities to the Cloud, to IoT Hub and IoT Central and other services like Digital twins.

The bridge allow us to very easily transform existing infrastructure you were saying, such as what? Modbus? Serials? Others? >> You could take Modbus or Serial devices and if, theyre already attached to an IoT edge gateway, then youd be able to connect the bridge and then servers those as IoT Plug and Play devices.

Those would be able to work with anything like Azure, IoT Central or IoT Hub.

>> Nice. Last time I remember, I think I teased you at the end asking you how about having an IoT Edge module format for the IoT Plug and Play bridge? You told me that your team was working on that.

Today youre here to tell us more about this IoT Edge module version of the IoT Plug and Play bridge.

>> Yeah, exactly. Recently weve added support for the IoT Edge runtime.

Now youll be able to run your bridge not only as a native application, but also as an IoT Edge module.

>> Why would someone want to do that? >> Sure. We have a pre-recorded demo.

Ill walk you through how we actually connect to legacy Modbus device attached to an IoT Edge gateway as an IoT Plug and Play device to IoT Hub.

>> Okay. Lets look at a demo and see how youre taking advantage of IoT Edge here.

>> Yeah. In this demo, what well do, is we actually have a DL 303 environmental sensor.

Its a Modbus device. Nothings been done to it.

Its just Legacy Device.

Then we connect over Modbus TCP to the IoT Plug and Play bridge.

The Plug and Play bridge does the work to actually translate the Modbus addresses into IoT Plug and Play compliant messages.

Those get transferred over the IoT Edge runtime to an IoT Hub.

The IoT Hub well be able to see the device show up as a Plug and Play component of the bridge module.

Its super powerful because if you think about it, youll be able to configure the bridge from the Cloud to add any existing devices as Plug and Play devices.

It really meshes together the IoT Edge and IoT Plug and Play ecosystems.

>> Under native version with no IoT Edge runtime support and module, when you wanted to add a new device, did you have to do some manual operation, recompile the code or something like that? >> Yeah. In the native version of the bridge, there was actually a configuration JSON that youd have to go and manually update on the device itself.

But with the IoT Edge runtime support, youll actually be able to configure that from the Cloud.

>> Okay.

>> Awesome. Ill walk you through the rest of the demo.

First will go into the setup, and then well go into the actual demo itself.

In terms of setting up the IoT Plug and Play bridge, its pretty similar to a lot of the other, Ill pause for a second.

Though in terms of setting up the IoT Plug and Play bridge, its very similar to any other IoT Edge custom module.

You clone our repo, build it as a module, and upload it to a container registry.

Here we can see the bridge showing in our own Azure container registry.

Then what we do is we actually update the deployment manifest of our IoT Edge device to connect to this container registry so that they can consume the bridge image and deploy it.

Within the deployment manifests itself, we also have the option to actually configure the ridge.

This is super powerful because we have to add any new devices.

We actually just configure it within the IoT Edge deployment manifests itself.

Here were going through the Modbus parameters and mapping them to IoT Edge or IoT Plug and Play interfaces.

We have various things like TCP host and port addresses and things like that that are mapped to the specific CO two detector that we have.

Then we actually just identify it as a IoT Plug and Play device with DL 670 and then we go through all the different properties, telemetry and commands that can be mapped through the Modbus addresses.

Then we go ahead and well build this IoT Edge solution and deploy it.

Now we can see the Play and Play bridge running as an IoT Edge module with the module identity.

Here we have a real life version of the demo running.

We actually have in our dev leads office a Modbus device running.

Its sensing environmental data just as like 21.7 degrees Celsius within the ambient temperature.

CO two levels and humidity.

What the bridge does is its actually connected via the IoT Edge runtime to an IoT Edge gateway thats connected to this Modbus device.

Then the bridge will do the work to actually read the Modbus addresses on this device, read this temperature reading, and then can translate that to an IoT Hub compliant message.

You actually see here that is 21.7 degrees Celsius is read into the IoT Hub as a temperature, all in Plug and Play compliant messages.

Then on the side you will actually see within the developer console that the bridge is running as Module 19.

>> Nice. Ugan, thats a project that is open-source.

Everything is available on GitHub.

>> Exactly. Everything is open source and youll be able to get everything off the GitHub.

>> Yeah. We have actually a link that were going to bring up here that is aka.ms/IoTShow/IoTPnPBridgeEdge.

Lets make sure it shows up. Yes, there you go.

This link actually will send nothing to the documentation.

Were seeing that you are actually building the module and then no showing how to make it in a demo available in a container registry.

Is thats something that will be available in the Azure marketplace at some point.

>> Yeah. We do have plans to actually upload the bridge as an Azure marketplace modules sometime in the feature.

>> Nice. Ugan, fantastic demo, great feature.

I think it makes transforming your existing brownfield infrastructure of devices into IoT Plug and Play once.

I really love the bridge.

Im going to play more with that.

Ugan, hope youre going to come again on the show.

Assert time was even more for the bridge.

>> Awesome, see you soon.

>> See you soon, bye.

[MUSIC]

Microsoft IoT Developers: IoT Show: IoT Plug and Play bridge on an IoT Edge Gateway - IoT Development