Product Overview: Litmus Edge
Litmus Edge is a comprehensive industrial edge data connectivity platform designed to streamline the collection, analysis, and integration of data from various industrial assets, enabling enterprises to make informed decisions and improve their operations.
What Litmus Edge Does
Litmus Edge addresses the challenges of accessing and integrating data from heterogeneous industrial devices and systems, a common issue in Industry 4.0 environments. It connects to any industrial asset, processes and structures the data into a common format, and makes this data available for real-time analytics, machine learning, and other applications. This platform integrates operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) systems, facilitating a unified data environment that supports smart manufacturing, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and other industrial use cases.
Key Features and Functionality
Edge Connectivity
Litmus Edge boasts over 250 pre-built drivers, allowing it to connect to almost any industrial asset out-of-the-box, including PLCs, SCADA systems, MES, historians, sensors, and more. This extensive library of drivers ensures rapid device connectivity and minimizes the time-to-value for enterprises.
Data Collection and Processing
The platform collects industrial device data, processes it in real-time, and normalizes it into a standard format (such as JSON) using its message broker. This normalized data can be easily shared between edge, big data, cloud, or enterprise systems, facilitating seamless integration across different environments.
Real-Time Analytics and Machine Learning
Litmus Edge includes advanced analytics capabilities, enabling users to derive key performance indicators (KPIs), perform predictive maintenance, and run machine learning models. The Analytics module supports functions like anomaly detection, statistical prediction, and TensorFlow ML models. Historical data can be ingested from InfluxDB, and outputs can be sent to cloud or IT systems.
Flows Manager
The Flows Manager is a graphical logic builder that uses a low-code or no-code environment, similar to Node-RED, to build logic into message broker data. This allows users to read, process, and output values from industrial assets based on specific requirements.
Data Visualization and Application Deployment
Litmus Edge supports the deployment of various applications, including visualization tools like Grafana, directly on the edge device. Users can build, deploy, and run custom applications at the edge, enabling use cases such as process control, traceability, and vision systems.
Integration and Data Storage
The platform integrates with cloud services, databases, and message brokers, allowing data to be published directly to these systems. It also includes the Dell Streaming Data Platform (SDP) for persisting data over time. Local data is stored in InfluxDB on Litmus Edge, with the option to forward data to cloud or enterprise systems once the connection is reestablished.
Device and Data Management
Litmus Edge features the DeviceHub dashboard for connecting and managing industrial assets. The DataHub module manages data storage in a NoSQL time-series database, enabling users to store data for specific periods and perform batch analytics on historical data.
Flexibility and Scalability
The platform is highly flexible and scalable, allowing it to work alongside any existing OT or IT system. It can be deployed on virtual machines (VMs) or bare-metal hardware, such as gateways or embedded PCs, and can scale to any number of assets or sites with ease.
Conclusion
Litmus Edge is an all-in-one industrial edge platform that combines data collection, real-time analytics, application deployment, and data integration. Its extensive connectivity options, advanced analytics capabilities, and flexible deployment models make it an ideal solution for enterprises seeking to leverage industrial data for improved operations and decision-making in the Industry 4.0 era.