SignalFire Wireless Telemetry has joined the Eclipse Foundation as a contributing member of the community for open innovation and collaboration of IIoT solutions as well as a participant member of the Sparkplug Working Group.

As part of the Eclipse Sparkplug Working Group, SignalFire will help drive awareness of the Sparkplus protocol and collaborate on developing an open branding and compatibility program. In doing so, the Sparkplug protocol can become a standard in ensuring open and interoperable Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) deployments.

SignalFire uses Sparkplug — an open-source protocol that uses MQTT as a transport — in its Ranger Sensor-to-Cloud Platform that connects sensor data via an industrial IoT device to the cloud over an LTE-M cellular connection. The battery-powered Ranger uses the MQTT Sparkplug protocol for easy integration of data from attached sensors with a private cloud or SCADA platforms. The Ranger can interface to a wide variety of sensors including analog, digital, Modbus, HART and SDI-12. The data is published natively using the popular MQTT/Sparkplug format which is being rapidly adopted by many hosting platforms.

“One of the goals of the MQTT Sparkplug specifications is enabling OEM device manufactures to implement out-of-the-box ‘plug and play’ capabilities in their products,” said Arlen Nipper, Cirrus Link CTO, Sparkplug Working Group chair and co-inventor of MQTT. “The SignalFire Ranger is a perfect example of a product leveraging the MQTT Sparkplug specification. I am excited that Signal Fire will participate in the Sparkplug Working group from an OEM product manufacturer point-of- view.”

As a collaborator within the Eclipse Sparkplug Working Group, SignalFire will help reduce the complexity of using an MQTT broker as the foundation of IIoT solution architectures by developing a Technology Compatibility Kit that will improve the interoperability and scalability of solutions as well as provide an overall framework for support in Industry 4.0.

“By joining the Sparkplug working group, SignalFire will work alongside other companies to further the adoption of the Sparkplug protocol, providing a truly seamless multi-vendor IIoT solution,” said Josh Schadel, General Manager and CTO of SignalFire. “Utilizing Sparkplug in the Ranger allows our customers to quickly and easily bring sensor data into their existing SCADA systems, while at the same time being power efficient.”

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