Basic edge analytics architecture

By basic edge analytics architecture, I am referring to an environment where the platform is made up of just the core physical components—a system where a standard operating system with custom code is used in place of a platform such as Microsoft Azure IoT. Let's face it—there are times when a simple solution is required and the costs of a vendor-specific platform cannot be justified. 

A basic edge analytics application consists of three major components. They are as follows:

• Sensors and actuators
• Edge computers
• Cloud-based dashboards

We can see how these components are connected together in the following diagram:

As we can see in the preceding diagram, our sensors and actuators are responsible for the action in our edge analytics application. These actions could be such things as taking the temperature using a DHT11 sensor or opening up a door, as is the case for actuators.

The decisions made in our edge analytics happen with the edge computer. The edge computer could be as simple as a microcontroller or as powerful as a quad-core desktop computer. What makes the computer an edge computer is its close proximity to the sensor and actuators.

The cloud used in our edge analytics application is responsible for dashboards and messaging to our devices. We may also use the cloud to create a control interface that may override decisions made by the edge computer.

We will be looking at the physical components used in this architecture in Chapter 2, How Does IoT Edge Analytics Work?