Eclipse Kapua™

Eclipse Kapua™ is a remarkable modular integration platform designed specifically for IoT devices and smart sensors. Its primary goal is to bridge the gap between Operation Technology and Information Technology, creating a seamless connection between the physical and digital worlds. The device connectivity aspect of Eclipse Kapua™ is managed through a multi-protocol message broker. In the initial contribution, the IoT protocol MQTT is used for device connectivity, while the broker also supports other protocols like AMQP and WebSockets for seamless application integration. The device connectivity module is responsible for authenticating connections, enforcing appropriate authorization, and maintaining a comprehensive Device Registry. This registry stores crucial device information such as the device profile, connection status, and connection log. It also enables efficient device organization through custom attributes and tags. The Message Routing component of Eclipse Kapua™ allows for flexible handling of message streams. It avoids hard-coded behaviors by enabling configurable message routes, ensuring that data published by devices can be directed to the appropriate consumers. For instance, command and control messages are directed to the Device Management component, while telemetry data can be archived in the IoT Platform or redirected to other systems. The Device Management component enables the IoT platform to perform remote operations on connected devices. It exposes an open contract towards the devices, with no assumptions about the device software stack. In the initial contribution, the device management contract is based on an open application protocol over MQTT, which is already implemented by the Eclipse Kura project. With this protocol, the IoT platform can perform a variety of tasks, including introspecting and managing the device configuration, managing device services such as starting and stopping operations, managing device applications including installation, update, and removal, executing remote OS commands on the device, getting and setting device attributes and resources, and provisioning the initial configuration of the devices. In its evolution and with future community contributions, Eclipse Kapua™ may adopt additional device management protocols like the emerging LWM2M standard. Data Management is another crucial aspect of Eclipse Kapua™. It can archive the telemetry data sent by devices into a persistent storage for easy application retrieval. A reference message payload is defined, which includes a timestamp, a geo position, strongly typed message headers, and an opaque message body. The chosen encoding is based on an open Google Protocol Buffers grammar. In the initial contribution, a NoSQL data storage is used to allow for flexible indexing of the telemetry messages. Incoming messages are stored and indexed by timestamp, topic, and originating asset, and the NoSQL storage also enables indexing of the message headers. Additionally, Data Management keeps a Data Registry that maintains the topics and metrics that receive incoming traffic. Security is a fundamental aspect of the IoT platform, and Eclipse Kapua™ addresses this through a foundation layer that manages tenants, accounts, and users. The account model supports a hierarchical access control structure, following Role Based Access Control (RBAC). User identities can be defined and associated with one or more permissions, ensuring the principle of "least privilege". Devices connect to the platform using the credentials of one of these user identities or through SSL authentication. For integration with existing applications, Eclipse Kapua™ offers a modern Web Services API based on Representational State Transfer (REST). The REST API exposes all the platform functionality, including device management and data management. It also offers a "bridge" to the MQTT broker, enabling the routing of commands from applications to devices without a specific connection to the message broker. Technologies such as REST/Comet/WebSockets are included, allowing for real-time display of data published by the devices in web pages and mobile dashboards. Finally, Eclipse Kapua™ features a web-based administration Console that enables users to perform all device and data management operations. The platform has a mature status and a rich history of releases, with the latest versions available from 2024-09-30 to 2017-06-07. It is licensed under the Eclipse Public License 2.0, and is supported by an active community of member companies. Overall, Eclipse Kapua™ is a powerful and comprehensive IoT integration platform that offers a wide range of features and capabilities to meet the diverse needs of the IoT ecosystem.