Pachube support added to Opengear smart management appliances, developer discounts extended to Pachube community
Opengear, provider of remote site monitoring and management appliances, yesterday announced integration with Pachube, a web service to store, graph and share real time data from sensors and devices, to help form the fabric of the Internet of Things (IoT). Open source developer David McCullough has demonstrated using Opengear ACM5000 series hardware to connect a weather station to Pachube, and published a tutorial at the Pachube community site.
To encourage similar projects, Opengear is offering 25% off MSRP of the ACM5000 range for the Pachube developer community, or free of charge for developers who get in touch with novel and interesting projects, to be published as a Pachube tutorial. Opengear’s embedded Linux system under the hood and free Custom Development Kit allows for rapid development and deployment of such projects.
The Opengear ACM5000’s legacy as an industrial-grade, rugged device, proven in harsh environments, and wide array of connectivity options – from 3G cellular and Ethernet to serial, USB and digital IO – make it an ideal solution to provide Internet connectivity and sensor telemetry for distributed “things” such as weather stations.
“Making Opengear hardware available to our community to quickly and easily connect sensors to Pachube is a fantastic way to facilitate the bubbling up of some awesome projects,” said Ed Borden, Pachube’s Chief Business Development Officer. “Opengear’s hardware has very different feature set than many of the platforms the community is using right now, so we expect to see many projects that really push the bar.”
As the number of Internet-connected things, such as environmental sensors, smart meters, building management and process control systems, outpace the number of Internet-connected people, the importance of Internet of Things is rapidly accelerating. The fundamental principles that allow data sharing between disparate things to interoperate as a system, mirror Opengear’s commitment to open source and open standards.
“The proliferation of sensors and smart widgets means soon we will be able to sample data from anything at any time – from domestic hot water system temperature to intercontinental gas pipeline flow,” said Robert Waldie, VP Business Development for Opengear. “The challenge is both in opening up this mass of data, and turning it into usable information. That way, every day things can make smart decisions based on their environments – say a hot water system that activates only as needed based on learned household habits, or even negotiates a tariff with the gas provider.”
“Opengear smart devices aren’t limited to providing the plumbing to securely connect these systems, they are capable of making the smart decisions at the edge,” he adds. “We are already seeing them rolled out in these kinds of applications, particularly in utilities, security and health sectors and as part of smart cities initiatives.”