Design Objective

In 2019 I delivered a design to integrate the IoT platform Device Simulator with IoT platform Connection and Analytics Services.

The objective of this design is to improve the customization of simulated device data and by automation of Data Management configurations enabling data to be stored in the DB2 data lake by the Connection Service.

“A LOB engineer running a POC can use out-of-the-box simulated device data and in a minute with no other actions required start exploring simulated entities and apply analytics functions to the simulated entity data”

Design Requirements

  • The requirements on this design
  • Device simulator shall by default be Activated
  • The Device Simulator editor shall provide a setting to “Save device events to the data lake”
  • The Device Simulator shall automatically generate and activate a physical and logical interface for a simulated device if the “Save device events” property is selected
  • The Device Simulator editor shall optionally allow a CSV file to be uploaded containing a simulated time series of data.
  • The Device Simulator shall construct an event payload schema from CSV file column names and data types.
  • The Device Simulator shall, by rows in the CSV file, send data events with column values as event payload.
  • The Device Simulator editor shall run (as-is) in the client browser. Closing the browser will terminate simulation and ingest of simulated data
  • The Device Simulator shall support the export/import of the simulator configuration.
  • Limitation: A user shall not be allowed to edit the simulated device type and the event payload schema after the physical and logical interface has been defined.

Production Design

The final Device Simulator production design.

ChrisDevon

Meet Chris is the Application Developer and Devon is the Edge Device Developer. 

Chris and Devon are the most frequently used personas in the developer experience design across the platform capabilities.


Simulated Devices Design

The Device Simulator design in Watson IoT Platform enables developers to build and test the IoT applications without deploying physical devices beforehand.