What Plug and Play Mean for IoT?

Whether you are a device builder or an IoT solution builder, developing IoT solutions has never been faster, easier, or more secure. IoT solution developers look for ways to achieve a faster time to market, but they are often struck by the tight coupling between IoT device software and the corresponding software in the cloud. It ultimately results in little or no code reusability.

Preventing IoT solutions from being future-proof, generating cross dependencies that require time-consuming collaboration between device builders and solution developers, and reducing overall extensibility for IoT solutions requires hours of coding for adding a new device.

Plug and play IoT platform is a new approach to building IoT solutions. It enables device-agnostic solutions that accelerate the time to market for new IoT solutions. With this technology, system builders can describe device capabilities with a declarative model to understand the type and shape of data the devices send to the cloud and the cloud-to-device interaction patterns.

What is IoT plug and play?

IoT plug-and-play solutions allow solution builders to integrate IoT devices with their solutions without any manual configuration. Now, they can develop device software that automatically describes its capabilities when it connects to the cloud.

Cloud-based IoT solutions can interact with device software by reflecting on the IoT plug-and-play description automatically. Solution developers can easily work with any device that describes its capabilities using IoT plug-and-play. It takes just minutes that reduce solutions development time and accelerates time to market.

From simple monitoring to predictive maintenance scenarios and beyond, across any industry, IoT plug-and-play makes everything in IoT easier. It enables solution developers to add devices to existing IoT solutions without any need for additional code development. As a result, solution builders can focus on the data that matters to their IoT solutions without any worry about finding devices that do not require additional code development. It reduces the solution development cycle and accelerates time to value.

Making use of IoT plug-and-play devices in your application

As a solution builder, you can use IoT central or IoT Hub to create a cloud-hosted IoT solution using IoT plug and play devices. You can monitor device conditions, create rules, and manage millions of devices and their data throughout their life cycle with the web UI in IoT Central.

The IoT plug and play devices connect directly to an IoT central application. It comes with customizable dashboards that allow you to monitor and control your devices.

While connecting an IoT plug and play device to an IoT hub, you can use the IoT explorer tool to view the telemetry, properties, and commands in the Digital Twins Definition Language (DTDL)model. If you already have sensors connected to a Windows or Linux gateway, you can connect these sensors and create IoT Plug and Play devices without having to write device software/firmware (for supported protocols).

Easing the work for IoT System Integrators

IoT plug and play solutions solve the biggest challenges for enterprises, solution providers, and other professionals working to develop applications for the Internet of Things (IoT). By providing a simple, open language with which manufacturers can describe their IoT devices, it lets you add them and their functionality to cloud solutions without writing embedded code.

As of now, IoT system integrators have to pick from a huge range of devices, whether it’s simple sensors, motors, switches, complete systems, or advanced Edge AI. The list is endless! The job of IoT system integrators becomes challenging when it comes to understanding and connecting thousands of different devices that work in diverse ways.

Without IoT, it is almost next to impossible to interconnect billions of devices and get them to exchange data. Things are still diversified. The devices can be identified and provisioned with multiple, competing connectivity standards, and limited standardization between manufacturers.

Solution builders need to know about the device, what it does, and how it sends and receives data. Till now, there is no clear standard to help them. Transferring data from IoT devices into cloud solutions requires multiple skill sets. It takes a lot of time to integrate devices in a bespoke and proprietary way. Plug and play IoT platform allows for detection and auto-configuration of devices that ultimately solved the problem of identifying, enumerating, and using diverse devices on Windows PCs.

Benefits of Plug and play IoT Solutions

IoT- powered plug and play offer many benefits for the IoT community. By giving developers ready access to a device’s full feature set, it builds more sophisticated applications or makes more efficient use of multi-role devices.

1. Faster time to market and achieve better ROI

With virtually zero design time and no added approvals, IoT-based plug-and-play solutions quickly connect with industrial applications. It helps solution builders to achieve better ROI.

2. Minimal integration effort

IoT Plug and Play feature dramatically enhance the developing experience for device developers and solution builders. They can build solutions that understand the device and interact with them automatically, without writing any embedded code.

3. Easy to deploy

IoT solution creators had to go through the tedious process of investing in the capabilities of multiple edge devices. Earlier, they had to write codes to exchange data streams with the cloud. By simplifying the process, plug and play accelerate IoT prototyping that allows enterprises to create and experiment with agile ideas and reduce the deployment time for advanced IoT solutions.

It becomes easier for everyone to build solutions with less custom code, less risk of error, and less need for extensive compatibility.

Gain the edge with Zenatix IoT-powered Plug and Play Solutions

With the growing demand for smart solutions, the application of IoT-powered connectivity is also rising. But, IoT is not enough. A strategy is also needed. Plug and play is an optimal solution to scale IoT technology. With Zenatix’s IoT-powered plug and play solutions, you can level up the connectivity of your devices.