Industrial IoT

Industrial IoT that gets the data off the machine and in front of the people who act on it.

Most plants already have the signals. They sit in controllers, meters and sensors that were never meant to talk to a dashboard. We connect them through gateways, process what matters at the edge and build the telemetry pipeline, dashboards and alerts on top, without touching the control logic.

Scope your industrial IoT project →

DIRECT ANSWER

Industrial IoT connects machines and field sensors to software that stores, analyzes and alerts on their data. This engagement covers gateway integration (MQTT, OPC UA, Modbus), edge processing, a telemetry pipeline, dashboards and alerting for agreed equipment.

Best for

Plants and field operations whose machine data is locked in controllers or local panels
Teams that know which signal matters and need a working pipeline, not a platform pitch

Consider another approach

PLC programming, firmware development or changes to safety-related control logic
City and utility sensor networks on LoRaWAN, which have their own page

Start with one line, one machine class, one question

Pick equipment where a missing signal costs real money, for example unplanned downtime, energy use or a quality drift nobody sees in time. That keeps the first scope testable. If you are building a connected product rather than connecting a plant, start with Internet of Things. Municipal and utility sensor networks on LoRaWAN belong with Smart City IoT.

Connect through gateways, read first

Industrial networks were built for control, not for analytics. We keep that boundary intact and agree every write path with the person responsible for the equipment.

Protocols via gateways

Read OPC UA, Modbus and other fieldbus data through an industrial gateway or an existing SCADA layer, then publish it as MQTT. Which protocols and devices are in scope is confirmed during the assessment.

Read-only by default

The pipeline reads values. Any command back to a machine is a separate, explicitly agreed scope with the equipment owner, never a side effect of a dashboard.

Network separation

Keep the plant network and the cloud apart. Agree which side opens which connection, how the gateway is authenticated and who can change its configuration.

Device and tag inventory

Name every signal once, with unit, sampling rate and source. A tag list everyone shares prevents three dashboards inventing three names for the same sensor.

Process at the edge, store what you will use

Not every value belongs in the cloud. Filtering, aggregation and buffering at the edge keep bandwidth and storage costs predictable and survive a network outage without losing data. Downstream, timestamps, units and gaps are validated before data reaches a dashboard. When the telemetry needs to be joined with ERP, finance or sales data for reporting, that warehouse and BI work is scoped in Data Engineering.

Assess, pilot, then extend

Each phase is scoped and quoted before work starts. Hardware, gateways and connectivity are listed separately so they do not surface as a surprise later.

Assessment
Receive an equipment and signal inventory, protocol and gateway options, network and access constraints, and a pilot plan with acceptance criteria.
Pilot and acceptance
Receive a working pipeline for the agreed equipment, the dashboards and alert rules, tested against real or recorded machine data and accepted by a named owner.
Extension and support
Additional lines, sites and signals are agreed separately with a scope and response responsibilities. This does not establish 24/7 coverage or an uptime SLA.

Bring the people who own the equipment and the network

We need the equipment list, what you know about its controllers and protocols, existing gateways or SCADA, the network zones involved, a named equipment owner and an IT or OT contact who can approve access. Sample data or a test gateway shortens the assessment considerably. Safety and machine-directive responsibilities stay with the operator; this engagement does not certify equipment or networks.

What we have built, and what we have not

Our field-device experience comes from city-scale LoRaWAN work inside IKB’s Smart City build in Innsbruck, covering infrastructure, multi-vendor devices and per-device codecs. We do not have a published factory or plant case yet. We write the software above the controller and the firmware, and bring in a specialist when a project needs PLC or firmware work. You get that boundary in writing before the pilot starts.

// proof

Adjacent field-device and telemetry engineering

IKB documents engineering inside Innsbruck’s city-scale LoRaWAN build alongside IKB’s own team, covering extension of the Kubernetes infrastructure, multi-vendor device integration and per-device codecs, with the platform handed over completely to IKB’s in-house team. It shows adjacent field-device and telemetry work, not an industrial plant deployment.

Complete Platform Handover

Smart City IoT for Innsbruck: extended and scaled the LoRaWAN infrastructure, evaluated and integrated multi-vendor devices, wrote …

Kubernetes LoRaWAN Docker

These are selected projects, not our full portfolio. We have shipped 100+ products since 2018.

Questions before you start

Do you program PLCs or write firmware?

No. We integrate with controllers and devices through gateways and existing interfaces and build everything above that layer. If your project needs PLC or firmware work, we say so in the assessment and involve a specialist.

Will you write commands back to our machines?

Not by default. The pipeline reads data. A write path is a separate scope, agreed with the equipment owner, with its own tests and approval.

Which IoT platform do you use?

The one that fits your data residency, scale and team. Options range from a self-hosted MQTT broker with a time-series database to a managed cloud IoT service. We compare them in the assessment and recommend one.

Can you work with our existing SCADA or historian?

Often yes, if it exposes an interface we are allowed to read. Reading from an existing layer is usually safer than adding new connections to the machines themselves.

Do you have an industrial IoT case study?

Not a factory case yet. Our published IoT proof is IKB’s city-scale smart city build, where we worked on infrastructure, devices and codecs alongside IKB’s own team. We state that difference openly before you commit.

Scope your industrial IoT project

Describe the equipment, the protocols you know about and the signal you need to see. A rough outline is enough. Do not send network diagrams or credentials in the first message.