We developed the Digital Cockpit at pragmatic industries GmbH as our platform for customer projects focuses mainly around the digitalization of machines and automation lines. So we wanted to have a very modular system with a service oriented architecture where it is easy to add new apps and services.
Common concerns like Login, Storage, PLC Connectivity and such should be handled by services that every app can consume if needed.
Also we wanted to have a single UI that is easy to customize e.g. if machine manufacturers built solutions based on the cockpit to enable them to use their CI.
The Eclipse Digital Cockpit provides a modular, polyglot and service-based Edge Runtime which enables fast and easy development of apps and services that interact with machines. The Eclipse Digital Cockpit also provides everything needed to setup an App Store backend and telemetry data Collection.
The Eclipse Digital Cockpit provides an Edge Runtime focused on industrial automation. It stands somewhere between a simple Edge Runtime, an "Android for the machine" and a lightweight "Application Server" where services and Apps can be deployed to.
Besides the Edge Runtime there are multiple backends like an App Store (under development) or a Telemetry Backend which takes telemetry values that Apps or Services from the Cockpit send out.
Most importants services for common concerns are
- User Management (with Keycloak integration)
- App Management
- Database Management (based on Flyway for updates)
- Telemetry Service
Especially in the automation domain there are specifc services which make it easy to interact with industrial machinery like
- PLC Template for very easy access to PLCs
- Device Registry
- Monitoring App
- Machine Counter Service / App
We think that the Eclipse Model fits the project very well, especially with the recent acitvity towards IoT, Industrial IoT and industrial automation / industry 4.0.
Also, we have already integrated many Eclipse Projects in our Eco-System and our Digital Cockpit like Eclipse Hawkit, Eclipse Ditto, Eclipse Milo, Eclipse Paho and Eclipse Mosquitto.