GEA Group and Welotec have collaborated to establish an open ecosystem for Machine Builders and Software Companies, facilitating vendor-neutral Edge and Cloud Computing. This initiative aims to foster innovation by making the Reference Architecture and Source Code of individual components Open Source.
Eclipse SEALMAN provides a user-friendly edge computing ecosystem for machine builders, featuring a Linux-based OS, robust device management, and seamless cloud integration with comprehensive APIs and protocol compatibility.
Eclipse SEALMAN is an open-source project born from the collaboration of machine builders, offering a comprehensive suite of building blocks for intelligent machines. At its core, Eclipse SEALMAN empowers machine builders to seamlessly integrate edge computing, robust device management, seamless cloud connectivity, and efficient remote maintenance capabilities into their solutions. With a strong emphasis on cyber security, Eclipse SEALMAN provides a secure architecture that safeguards machines from the edge to the cloud, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of data throughout the entire lifecycle.
GEA and Welotec fully own the code contributions and that no legal issues are expected.
The concept of an open ecosystem hinges on neutral governance. To this end, we have chosen to initiate the project under the auspices of the Eclipse Foundation. This decision also is driven by the recognition of potential synergies within the manufacturing and IoT domains.
Potential synergies with the Eclipse projects 4diac, Sparkplug, Mosquitto, Hono and Ditto
Integration and documentation of the existing contributions
Integration for applications to run at the edge on top of the plattform that already exist under Eclipse or new developments for standard functionallity dedicated to machine builders.
Infrastructure twin of the edge compnents in the cloud
Well defined API's for a seamless integration of all components
Following project approval, we will begin donating source code to the project incrementally. Concurrently, and until the end of 2025, a well-documented integration of the various project components will be pursued. In 2026, we plan to add more components for both Edge and Cloud deployments.
Q1 2025: Overall architecture of the system, API's for seamless integration of existing solutions.
Q2 2025: Testing environment including qemu images, container for the edge for remote maintenance applications
GEA Group
Welotec GmbH
Unicef / LearningPassport
Edge Computing OS (Code-Owner: Welotec GmbH)
Scope: creation of a lightweight manageable Operating System for Running Container Workloads with seamless integration into Cloud Systems.
The OS is based on the Yocto project and consists of two relevant repositories:
- Yocto Repository - containing the relevant Yocto-Layers - main stacks: C, Bitbake
- Functions Repository - containing the main functions for providing the CLI and specific functions (firewall, docker, network, ...) - main stacks: Python, C++
Lifecycle and Device Management Software (Code-Owner: Welotec GmbH)
Scope: creation of a containerized device management solution for Edge Devices providing firmware updates and configuration for large device fleets.
The solution is based on the Symphony framework provided in a single repository - main stack: PHP
Remote Access Solution (Code-Owner: Welotec GmbH)
Scope: providing an OpenVPN based solution for creating large distributed infrastructures with a high grade of automation.
The solution connects the device management to an Open Source Firewall with a specific extension and provides a containerized Certificate Generation Tool. In addition to that a containerized connector for distributed devices is part of the solution. The projects consists of 3 main repositories:
- Firewall extensions - main stack: PHP
- Certificate Generator - main stack: PHP
- Containerized Device Connector - main stack: Python
SEALMAN Communication Layer
(Code Owner: GEA Group)
The SEALMAN Communication Layer defines a lightweight semantic communication and discovery framework for system participants based on the MQTT protocol. The primary focus is on the semantic representation of JSON states over MQTT, enabling programming language-independent communication between Edge Modules that implement the API.
Currently, it supports:
- API Methods – Request/response pattern
- Node Discovery – Utilizing MQTT retain flags and last will messages
- Node Event Emitters
The layer includes an API implementation as an installable library for Python 3.
SEALMAN IoTEdge Proxy
(Code Owner: GEA Group)
The SEALMAN IoTEdge Proxy is an official IoT Edge module compliant with Microsoft’s IoT Edge specifications. It seamlessly extends IoT Edge by integrating the SEALMAN Communication Layer.
Its core functionality is to bidirectionally translate all API communications between SEALMAN and IoT Edge, ensuring full support for IoT Edge module functionalities within SEALMAN, including IoT Edge twins.
The proxy is implemented in Python 3.
SEALMAN REST Proxy
(Code Owner: GEA Group)
The SEALMAN REST Proxy provides a standardized REST interface to interact with all SEALMAN MQTT-based API definitions.
The proxy is implemented in Python 3.
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