Santa Clara, CA. Avnet Inc., a global technology distributor, has introduced the Avnet MicroZed Industrial IoT Starter Kit, an out-of-the-box system, backed by technology from IBM, Wind River, and Xilinx, designed to simplify customers’ prototype and development efforts, while providing an easy and quick transition to production. The company demonstrated the kit at Internet of Things World this week.
The MicroZed Industrial IoT Starter Kit builds on Avnet’s commitment to support customers’ edge-to-cloud development of Internet-connected solutions and includes the necessary building blocks for developing a production-ready, IoT-enabled, industrial-processing system. The platform is based on Avnet’s MicroZed system-on-module (SoM) with a Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC from Xilinx and pluggable sensor solutions from Maxim Integrated and STMicroelectronics. The kit integrates the IBM Watson IoT Platform agent on top of a custom-configured, certified image of the Wind River Pulsar Linux operating system, now standard on MicroZed and PicoZed system-on-modules. Using a standard MQTT messaging protocol, IBM’s Watson IoT Platform agent enables registered, secure connection to the Watson IoT Platform and additional cloud services and applications from the IBM Bluemix portfolio. These provide a rich palette of composable services to rapidly enhance IoT solutions with cognitive capabilities.
“The market for IoT-connected systems is exploding, but ensuring that all the pieces of an edge-to-enterprise solution work properly requires a broad range of technologies and expertise,” said Eric Williams, vice president, Internet of Things, Avnet Inc. “Avnet has done much of the integration from sensor data collection to cloud connectivity, saving IoT developers months of effort, while giving them a superior foundation for building and producing truly differentiated IoT-enabled, industrial processing systems.”
In addition to a MicroZed 7010 SoM, the Avnet Industrial IoT Starter Kit includes a MicroZed Arduino carrier card; pluggable sensors (including a motion and environmental sensor board from STMicroelectronics and a thermocouple-to-digital Pmod sensor module from Maxim Integrated); Ethernet, USB, and power cables; and a free trial of IBM Bluemix services.
“The Xilinx Zynq All Programmable SoC is a unique platform that enables a variety of innovative Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) products,” said Christoph Fritsch, director, industrial, scientific, and medical market business, Xilinx. “The MicroZed Industrial IoT Starter Kit is an excellent development environment for customers wishing to enter the IIoT space by exploring the vast capabilities of Zynq for securely integrating flexible sensor to cloud connectivity, big data optimization and analytics, cyber security, and real time control. The MicroZed Starter Kit comes with a comprehensive SDK as well as support for best-in-class IIoT application platforms that accelerate our customers’ learning experiences.”
“Avnet’s MicroZed Industrial IoT Starter Kit, supported by IBM’s Watson IoT Platform, enables IoT developers throughout the channel ecosystem to create new products that offer a differentiated level of user interaction and experience,” said Jack Desjardins, vice president, Alliances & Ecosystem Business Development, IBM Watson IoT. “By simplifying IoT device-to-cloud integration with this kit, IBM and Avnet are helping to inspire a new generation of cognitive IoT systems and applications that have the ability to learn from the physical world. This is a significant step forward in the drive to capture the full value proposition of the IoT.”
The Avnet Industrial IoT Starter Kit sells for $299 and is available for ordering now with shipments starting later this month. For more information on the Avnet Industrial IoT Starter Kit, visit www.microzed.org/product/microzed-iiot-starter-kit.
Avnet offers a range of resources from the edge to the enterprise to develop IoT solutions that effectively gather information, connect to the Internet and cloud environments, integrate with data centers, and securely manage and analyze data. The company also recently introduced a new collaboration with IBM to develop IoT solutions built on the IBM Watson IoT Platform, as well as the Visible Things platform for the development of IoT systems and applications.