Device Hub
The Device Hub is your single interface to integrate any connected device into your workflows. In combination with our IoT gateways and the open API, the Device Hub is a modular and scalable solution to capture data from connected sensors and remotely manage devices all along their lifecycle.
Data Sovereignty
You maintain complete sovereignty over your data with on-premise solutions and end-to-end encryption of data streams - all the way from the device to the database.
Speed
The Device Hub is available as SaaS solution to get started quickly and scale with your growing business. Validate your use case without the need to invest into a major IT project.
IoT Gateway
Our plug-and-play gateways are a robust solution to capture data from Bluetooth devices, in locations with bad mobile reception, or to minimize required user interaction.
Medical
Our main focus are medical wearable devices and their application for clinical research and health care. The Device Hub is GCP compliant and in use for device and treatment validations.
Open REST API
We are integrators. Knowing the challenges of getting different systems to work with each other first hand, we make sure that our solutions provide open and robust interfaces.
Interested? We help you integrate the Device Hub into your business workflows.
How it Works.
Connect Devices
Not every device can communicate directly over the internet based on a Wifi or mobile network connection. Bluetooth devices and devices used in locations with insufficient mobile network coverage require a gateway as intermediary.
Leitwert provides software to turn any connected device into a gateway – be it a smart phone or standalone hardware like a Raspberry Pi. This way, you can connect any device anywhere. Gateways are managed remotely with the Device Hub to monitor their status and coordinate roaming within a gateway network.
The standalone gateways are a very viable solution when data needs to be captured automatically and robustly, like in clinical trials or for patient monitoring.
Manage Devices
Devices communicate with the Device Hub via its REST API to request updates and their current settings. The Device Hub maintains a digital twin of each device, which reflects its current state – like its firmware version or settings configuration. Every exchange between the devices and the Device Hub is logged for auditability and efficient customer support.
Each device can be assigned to a specific distribution channel to manage access to new firmware releases. Administrators can set up separate channels as desired, e.g. for testing, factory programming, different regions or licensing models. Channel subscriptions are defined as device setting.
The server-side update delivery procedures are adaptable to your needs. The Device Hub can for example check update compatibility based on the digital twin of a device before providing the download link. Another use case is to implement a separate procedure for factory programming.
For device-server-authentication and communication security, the Device Hub can manage device specific encryption keys and access tokens. User rights to change settings or release updates can be managed per device group and workflows like a 4-eye-principle are enforceable.
You can integrate the Device Hub with your current IT infrastructure via its REST API, allowing you to deploy firmware directly from your repository of choice or to synchronize existing device lists.
Manage Data
The Device Hub is your device-agnostic logistics center to direct the data streams of all integrated devices in a single place. It makes sure that data streams are stored in the right database and can only be accessed and shared by its rightful owners.
Data streams are automatically enriched with metadata. This can include information taken from the digital twin of a device (e.g. settings at time of measurement) or application specific attributes like who is wearing the device or which factory is being inspected by a robot.
Stream processing pipelines allow you to deploy your own analytics algorithms, transform data and to analyze data streams in real time. Alarms can be defined and triggered based on incoming data. In the notification center you define who receives a push message for certain alarms or other data events.
All functions and data can be accessed via the open REST API, giving you a single interface to utilize data from any device in your business processes, export data for analysis with your software of choice or to feed your customized dashboards. You can adapt a white-label version of the standard front-end to your needs or develop a complete customized front-end based on the API.
The Device Hub is available as Software As A Service. If you want complete data sovereignty, you can direct all data to your own databases with end-to-end encryption or even host the Device Hub on-premise.
The Device Hub maintains an immutable audit trail and provides configurable approval workflows to comply with your quality requirements and application specific regulations like GCP, HIPAA or ISO 13485.
Features.
The Device Hub offers granular permission management to define roles for user- and device groups. Rights can be given for specific objects like data streams or device models. It allows for example to give a distributor administrator rights for a subset of devices to provide 1st level support and onboard customers.
A saferpay.com integration is available for online payments, e.g. to sell upgrades and additional features to device users. Such features can then automatically be enabled based on a firmware upgrade or by changing a device setting.
For on-premise installations, the Device Hub provides endpoints to monitor system performance e.g. with Prometheus.
Each device is registered with its unique ID and categorized within a product line and model type. Thereafter, the Device Hub tracks the device’s firmware version, settings and all device-server-interactions to give you an overview on the device state all along its life cycle.
Devices request their current settings via REST API from the server by using the corresponding key. Of course, this requires that those settings are implemented endpoints on the device side. This allows for example to change sample rates, change the firmware distribution channel, unlock premium features or lock the device completely.
The device detail view is modular. Additional tabs can be created for specific device types, e.g. a separate log for gateway-device interactions. All the functions of the device view are available as REST API endpoints, enabling the implementation of customized front-ends according to your business workflow.
Distribution channels for firmware updates allow making new updates available only to specific device groups. Devices subscribe to one channel (e.g. staging, beta test, production), which can be changed based on device settings.
Devices request the currently available firmware version in their channel from the Device Hub. If that version is higher than the one installed on the device, the device can start the update procedure.
Update procedures allow to define the steps undertaken by the Device Hub before providing the update link to the requesting device. This can include device-specific encryption of the update or a compatibility check to make sure the currently installed version on the device can be directly upgraded to the new version.
A great use case for the above features is to define a channel and update procedure to deliver firmware to the production line in the factory. The Device Hub can deliver test firmware – including the bootloader – to program newly produced devices. After successful testing, the devices are directly registered as digital twin, can request their settings and receive the newest firmware.
content is in the making
content is in the making
content is in the making
Architecture.
The device management server offers a RESTful API. The API is structured into endpoints that deal with one type of an object. For example, there is an API that deals with Model instances.
The API is self-documenting: By visiting an API endpoint with a web browser, a HTML representation of the endpoint is shown that contains documentation of the API itself. The developer is able to view the data that is being returned and is able to place manual requests against the API for development purposes.
The Device Hub can be deployed on premise as follows:
- Remote access to Linux server:
- The customer provides a (virtual) Linux server, on which Leitwert installs the Device Hub including databases per remote access.
- Docker images:
- Leitwert provides the following images, which need to be installed together:
- Web Application: Requires a volume mount to save files (downloads, user updloads, etc.)
- Background task workers: Require the same volume mount to save files and can be scaled as required.
- Databases need to be provided separately (also possible as docker container):
- PostgreSQL for relational data
- Redis task queue
- MongoDB for event and data storage
- Leitwert provides the following images, which need to be installed together:
The following minimum requirements need to be met by the server:
- OS: Debian 9
- RAM: 4GB (8GB recommended)
- CPU: Modern 4-core CPU
- Storage: 50-100 GB SSD (depending on the use case)
- Access: Root access via SSH
- Communication: Access to email server for user account activation
