IOT - Collecting industrial machine data - what hardware?

Question

Starting to use AWS IOT for collecting manufacturing data off of machines on the floor. That data could be productivity (when was the machine on or cycled) or process (what temperature is the over). Of course the kinds of data collected could get out of hand real quick, the potential is endless.

My question is about hardware. It is confusing. Let's say I have 50 machines and I want to send a MQTT packet to AWS IOT for each machine each time that machine was cycled. We currently have one machine and I am using a [Opto22 Rio](https://www.opto22.com/products/groov-rio) to collect a few simple data points and sent a MQTT message to AWS. They run in the $750 each range currently.

We started out using Raspberry Pi's for this but they were a bit painful. For us the pain of writing the python, securing the devices, putting the pi in a plastic din rail was not worth the low cost of the equipment.

The questions:
* Is this a reasonable piece of hardware to use for this? Seems a bit overpowered and expensive for no more than what it is doing.
* Would this be considered a gateway and my sensors/inputs be considered things?
* In our use case (many machines with a few inputs) what kind of hardware solution would you recommend for collecting the data and sending the MQTT packet to AWS with?

Answer

> Is this a reasonable piece of hardware to use for this? Seems a bit overpowered and expensive for no more than what it is doing.

I think the answer depends a lot on scale; how many of these will you deploy? By your own admission, it saved you a lot of time and effort compared to the Pi. The answer also depends on how robust this needs to be (temperature, dust ingress, water ingress, vibration, shock and so forth); this device might pay for itself if it's more robust than cheaper alternatives.

> Would this be considered a gateway and my sensors/inputs be considered things?

I would say that your inputs/machines have more need to be Things in AWS IoT if you need granularity for security and/or if each machine would be managed individually (configuration, command/control, software updates etc). If all you are doing is ingesting data, there's probably not a strong case to model each machine as an individual Thing.

> In our use case (many machines with a few inputs) what kind of hardware solution would you recommend for collecting the data and sending the MQTT packet to AWS with?

I recommend you search the AWS Partner Device Catalog: https://devices.amazonaws.com/search?page=1 . I note that Opto 22 have a device in the catalog: https://devices.amazonaws.com/detail/a3G0h0000076iDGEAY/groov-EPIC . You will find many possible alternatives. Please also consider to reach out to your nearest AWS office to dive deeper into your requirements.

IOT - Collecting industrial machine data - what hardware?

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