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I have been doing "IoT" for 10 years and after checking the website and the github repo I still have no clue about what flogo does. Isn't it like some basic ht

by mrtree 10y ago

I have been doing "IoT" for 10 years and after checking the website and the github repo I still have no clue about what flogo does. Isn't it like some basic http api for "triggers"? Is this what people think IoT is about? More importantly, can these basic set ups make money for some?

cobookman 10y ago
Agreed. It also doesn't solve the biggest it challenge which is giving each thing a unique identity and a means to prove its identity. I find that real-time event processing had been solved already through dataflow and Apache Beam. Along with generic pub sub systems.
- riskable 10y ago
  No, the biggest challenge in IoT right now is security and in that same vein, updates. IoT devices identifying themselves (authentication) is only a tiny sliver of the security picture. You also need to worry about authorization, encryption, and (security) monitoring. One really annoying security problem with IoT devices right now is SSL/TLS's complete fundamental incompatibility with the concept of "roaming". Want to connect to your device via SSL/TLS? Better get used to ignoring warnings about the certificate name not matching the device's IP/hostname.
  - cobookman 10y ago
    Identity and encryption are tied hand in hand. It's about knowing where all the iot data is coming from, and knowing it wasn't spoofed. It's kind of like HTTPS. nobody can snoop on you, but it's more about stopping malicious actors from lifting your identity. And making sure you are connected to the true requested server.
salex89 10y ago
Hear, hear! I can only see it being compared with dropwizard which is "only" a REST framework for Java. What's the problem this is solving?
- zok3102 10y ago
  Fair point, we just chose a common Java REST or microservices fraemwork. Is there any particular Java IoT Integration framework you would like to compare or contrast Flogo with? Some OSGI framework like Kura perhaps? Flogo's problem domain is broadly speaking, IoT integration. Using Flogo you can build integration apps/services/microservices that are lightweight enough to run dozens of these edge apps on IoT edge gateways & devices. Specifically, these edge integration services can be built as flows & triggers (yes, a visual flow modeler is coming soon!). Hope that clarifies - but we'll take your feedback to improve the docs. (Disclaimer: I'm a TIBCO PM working on Project Flogo)
staticvar 10y ago
The gist I get is that it's a daemon for a gateway device (like a Raspberry Pi) that you configure data flows via JSON files. The Flogo CLI seems to be a JSON generator (https://github.com/TIBCOSoftware/flogo-cli/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/TIBCOSoftware/flogo-cli/blob/master/READM...). They compare their functionality to Nodered (http://nodered.org/ http://nodered.org/) except it doesn't have a GUI (they mention working on it) and instead of being written in Node.js, it's written in Go. I'm of the opinion that these frameworks for Gateway devices are reinventing Unix pipe and cron, that integrations for devices and databases should be written in any language (as CLI), and running logic on the gateway is 90% of the time not what you want to do, you just want to pull data from a device and push it to a database somewhere. Shameless plug, in my free time I work on Open Pipe Kit, a project that is building CLI for devices and databases. We're currently working on a series of DIY LORA Nodes for Agriculture. If anyone is interested in lending a hand, please reach out. http://openpipekit.github.io http://openpipekit.github.io
- roymurdock 10y ago
  Nice work with the open pipe project. Looks perfect for DIY sensor/telemetry projects. If you are looking to monetize connectivity services, you certainly will need a bi-directional architecture to push values back to end nodes, and compute resources available at the gateway for data filtering, preprocessing, and security. But these are tasks that AWS IoT, Azure IoT, and GCP IoT are currently tackling with a lot of resources. So it would be hard to compete at that level.
  - ausjke 10y ago
    libwebsockets is better suited comparing to the pub/sub model for that? two-way communication is pretty tricky(NAT-traversal etc) sometimes, I am still opt for the old but reliable polling mode for most of IoT nodes.
  - staticvar 10y ago
    Thanks. While our examples are usually "pull from some device and push to a database", with farmOS we experimented with "pull from a database and push to a device". In this way, pipes are used to transfer state of a device two ways. This depends on a database UI giving users the option to modify the state of something, something that IoT databases like Phant (http://data.sparkfun.com http://data.sparkfun.com) and Adafruit IO (http://io.adafruit.com http://io.adafruit.com) don't currently support.
asimuvPR 10y ago
Whats your take on using JSON in IoT devices?

by mrtree 10y ago

cobookman 10y ago

Agreed. It also doesn't solve the biggest it challenge which is giving each thing a unique identity and a means to prove its identity. I find that real-time event processing had been solved already through dataflow and Apache Beam. Along with generic pub sub systems.

riskable 10y ago
No, the biggest challenge in IoT right now is security and in that same vein, updates. IoT devices identifying themselves (authentication) is only a tiny sliver of the security picture. You also need to worry about authorization, encryption, and (security) monitoring. One really annoying security problem with IoT devices right now is SSL/TLS's complete fundamental incompatibility with the concept of "roaming". Want to connect to your device via SSL/TLS? Better get used to ignoring warnings about the certificate name not matching the device's IP/hostname.
- cobookman 10y ago
  Identity and encryption are tied hand in hand. It's about knowing where all the iot data is coming from, and knowing it wasn't spoofed. It's kind of like HTTPS. nobody can snoop on you, but it's more about stopping malicious actors from lifting your identity. And making sure you are connected to the true requested server.

salex89 10y ago

Hear, hear! I can only see it being compared with dropwizard which is "only" a REST framework for Java. What's the problem this is solving?

zok3102 10y ago
Fair point, we just chose a common Java REST or microservices fraemwork. Is there any particular Java IoT Integration framework you would like to compare or contrast Flogo with? Some OSGI framework like Kura perhaps? Flogo's problem domain is broadly speaking, IoT integration. Using Flogo you can build integration apps/services/microservices that are lightweight enough to run dozens of these edge apps on IoT edge gateways & devices. Specifically, these edge integration services can be built as flows & triggers (yes, a visual flow modeler is coming soon!). Hope that clarifies - but we'll take your feedback to improve the docs. (Disclaimer: I'm a TIBCO PM working on Project Flogo)

staticvar 10y ago

The gist I get is that it's a daemon for a gateway device (like a Raspberry Pi) that you configure data flows via JSON files. The Flogo CLI seems to be a JSON generator (https://github.com/TIBCOSoftware/flogo-cli/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/TIBCOSoftware/flogo-cli/blob/master/READM...). They compare their functionality to Nodered (http://nodered.org/ http://nodered.org/) except it doesn't have a GUI (they mention working on it) and instead of being written in Node.js, it's written in Go. I'm of the opinion that these frameworks for Gateway devices are reinventing Unix pipe and cron, that integrations for devices and databases should be written in any language (as CLI), and running logic on the gateway is 90% of the time not what you want to do, you just want to pull data from a device and push it to a database somewhere. Shameless plug, in my free time I work on Open Pipe Kit, a project that is building CLI for devices and databases. We're currently working on a series of DIY LORA Nodes for Agriculture. If anyone is interested in lending a hand, please reach out. http://openpipekit.github.io http://openpipekit.github.io

roymurdock 10y ago
Nice work with the open pipe project. Looks perfect for DIY sensor/telemetry projects. If you are looking to monetize connectivity services, you certainly will need a bi-directional architecture to push values back to end nodes, and compute resources available at the gateway for data filtering, preprocessing, and security. But these are tasks that AWS IoT, Azure IoT, and GCP IoT are currently tackling with a lot of resources. So it would be hard to compete at that level.
- ausjke 10y ago
  libwebsockets is better suited comparing to the pub/sub model for that? two-way communication is pretty tricky(NAT-traversal etc) sometimes, I am still opt for the old but reliable polling mode for most of IoT nodes.
- staticvar 10y ago
  Thanks. While our examples are usually "pull from some device and push to a database", with farmOS we experimented with "pull from a database and push to a device". In this way, pipes are used to transfer state of a device two ways. This depends on a database UI giving users the option to modify the state of something, something that IoT databases like Phant (http://data.sparkfun.com http://data.sparkfun.com) and Adafruit IO (http://io.adafruit.com http://io.adafruit.com) don't currently support.

asimuvPR 10y ago

Whats your take on using JSON in IoT devices?