Plasma is proud to announce the award of a patent for an invention within the field of Internet of Things. The patent, titled “System and Method for a Dynamic Connectivity Update System” covers Plasma’s invention of a dynamic system and methodology for interacting with low-powered IoT devices.
Plasma’s invention addresses several technological limitations that have arisen as a result of the explosive growth in the use of IoT devices across a wide spectrum of industries. The following is a high-level summary of those limitations as well as how Plasma’s patented invention helps solve them.
The Problems
The explosive growth in the variety of smart, connectable, devices (sensors, monitors, controllers, etc.) has created significant challenges related to ongoing management of increasingly complex IoT ecosystems. Those challenges include:
- Most IoT devices have limited on-board memory. Much of this limited memory can be consumed via storage of the connected device’s profile, leaving reduced memory for other functions.
- In many cases the proliferation of the number of devices within an individual IoT ecosystem has exceeded the original design limitations of that ecosystem. This has created increasing burdens and inefficiencies for companies responsible for device ecosystem management (adding new device types, software fixes, software revision updates, etc.).
- Some connected devices within a large ecosystem may be operating under different software versions due to delays in communication between the devices and their governing gateways. These communication delays can be the result of the sheer volume of devices involved and the overconsumption of device memory and gateway computing capacities.
Plasma’s Patented Solution
Plasma’s invention provides an elegant solution to these problems and limitations. Specific components and capabilities of the invention include:
- A gateway and server that connects to—and communicates with—low-powered, low-memory IoT devices.
- Device connection is facilitated by loading a temporary device profile onto the gateway device. Once device connection has been established, the temporary device profile is immediately deleted from the memory of the gateway device and stored on a remote server that the gateway is connected to. This helps mitigate the problem of device and gateway memory overconsumption.
- These gateways provide users with the flexibility of adding or changing their lists of connected devices by simply updating their user profiles onto the gateway. The gateway will automatically use the device definitions that are relevant. Individual users/customers can have completely different lists of devices that will be fully supported without the necessity of cumbersome firmware updates.
- A Graphical User Interface within the gateway for the performance of functions such as device identification, connection, management, data mapping, etc.
Plasma’s patented invention will allow individual users as well as corporations to more effectively manage their connected devices within IoT environments that are becoming increasingly large, diverse and complex.