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· 3 min read

Accelerating IoT application development by ten times, Shifu has been selected for 2022 Amazon IoT Innovation Case Study.

Click here to view full PDF of the casebook (Chinese)

Click here to view pages concerning Shifu (Chinese)

Shifu + Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) full-stack IoT solution makes developing an industrial scenario as easy as developing an app. It greatly reduces the comprehensive O&M costs. IoT development and device hosting framework Shifu easily completes Kubernetes deployment with the help of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), it has achieved efficient cloud-edge collaboration, this can help its customers to integrate massive IoT devices at low cost.

Edgenesis Provides Full-scene Device Hosting​

Edgenesis has developed Shifu, an IoT open source development framework based on K8s, which provides a transparent framework for customers' full-scene device hosting and integrated software development. By using Shifu, developers can connect, monitor and control any IoT devices more simply.

Shifu Nails Kubernetes With The Help Of Amazon EKS​

Since Kubernetes is the underlying structure of Shifu, it needs to be deployed in the cloud for efficient cloud-edge collaboration. While working for a Industry 4.0 factory, Shifu has used AWS's EKS service. The architecture diagram is as follows.

Building a Full-stack IoT Solution Architecture​

Application Scenario​

An Industry 4.0 factory

Objective​

Integrate all production and experimental equipment into Shifu to achieve 24x7 fully automated production with very low development cost.

Implementation​

The AWS-hosted Kubernetes allows Edgenesis to focus on the development of Shifu and create clusters with a single click. EKS also supports automatic elastic scaling for high-speed iterations of products, which greatly reduces expenses. AKS-hosted services have grealy reduced our comprehensive O&M costs。 Developers can integrate their devices into Shifu, and then develop automated process on the automatically generated digital twins to manage their applications.

Shifu makes developing an industrial scenario as easy as developing an app.

Cost Reduction & Efficiency Improvement​

The original initial development cycle was two years and requires twelve engineers, but now it only takes two engineers two months to complete the task. The follow-up iteration cycle has been shortened from once every six months to once every two weeks, which greatly improves the customer's production and research efficiency.

One-stop Solution for Device Integration, Application Ddevelopment and System O&M Problems​

Customer testimonial:

Shifu not only helps us integrate a large number of IoT devices at a very low cost, but also allows us to completely decouple the applications development from the hardware, which greatly improves the reusability of applications and development and iteration efficiency, making us to achieve the highest production and research efficiency in the industry, which significantly improves the competitiveness of the company.

With the support of Amazon EKS, Shifu can help IoT developers with their problems of device integration, application development and system O&M. Shifu is a one-stop solution for IoT application development, making the development of an industrial scenario all as easy as developing an APP!

· 4 min read

EquipTalk Ltd. is dedicated to develop software-defined high-end equipments. Leveraging the aerospace measurement technology as the next-generation digital foundation for high-end equipments, EquipTalk strives to empower high-end equipment in all aspects.

As EquipTalk's data base, Shifu spares EquipTalk developers the need to develop the underlying infrastructure and device abstraction layer, transforming traditional IoT application development into simple web development, greatly improving the efficiency, quality and reusability of IoT application development.

User Profile​

The core team of EquipTalk comes from universities both at home and abroad, with many famous professors and experts in the field of national defense, and has been deeply engaged in the field of rocket testing for more than 20 years, and has developed rocket testing systems deployed in China's four major launch sites and industrial sectors, as four series of China (Long March 5, Long March 3, As the core equipment of four series of rockets (Long March 5, Long March 3, Long March 2 and upper stage series), it has guaranteed hundreds of major space engineering tasks such as China's Beidou system network, space station, lunar exploration and fire exploration.

EquipTalk mainly serves the manufacturers and users of high-end complex equipment in the field of aerospace, rail transportation, ships and marine engineering, energy, etc. to ensure the reliable and safe production and use of high-end equipment.

Objectives​

  1. achieve the integration of measurement, control and management of high-end equipment
  2. improve system availability to 99.9999%
  3. decouple hardware and software, significantly increase the software iteration speed
  4. ensure full-link network security

Required Equipment​

Generalized and modularized rocket rapid test equipment (four models)

Product interface and architecture​

EquipTalk data control platform

EquipTalk's overall architecture diagram

What is Shifu​

Shifu is the next generation of open source industrial IoT development framework, making developing an industrial scenario as simple as developing a Web app. Shifu's high scalability allows it to access almost any device and protocol. Once integrating a device, Shifu generates a digital twin of the connected device in the form of a microservice in the system and opens up the device data and capabilities in the form of APIs. In this way, traditional IoT application development is reduced to simple web development, which greatly improves the efficiency, quality and reusability of IoT application development.

Shifu acts as EquipTalk's data base, sparing EquipTalk developers the need to develop the underlying infrastructure and device abstraction layer. As a result, EquipTalk is able to focus on developing business logic, abstracting the expertise of several well-known professors and experts in the defense field into the EquipTalk software platform, and creating a one-stop solution for high-end equipment testing.

The new architecture of EquipTalk after integrating Shifu​

Overall architecture diagram

If we take out only the architecture related to the D91DY power supply, we have the following schematic

The following diagram shows the interaction between EquipTalk and Shifu

Outcome​

  1. 85% reduction in device integration cost with Shifu's device access module
  2. 200% increase in application development efficiency with Shifu's application development module
  3. Increase overall system availability to 99.9999% with Shifu's system operation and maintenance module

Summary​

This paper introduces the joint solution of EquipTalk and Shifu. The solution has successfully empowered high-end equipment, including Long March rockets, created customized measurement and control equipment for customers. The solution bears the characteristics of rapid deployment and flexible configuration, helping enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency. The solution uses distributed wireless communication to shed off the shackles of cables, using central measurement and control that is more efficient and stable. The solution uses massive data to extend digital applications including life-cycle health management and digital twin. The joint solution significantly improves the efficiency of development, production and operation and maintenance.