In the past few years, the idea of extending the Grid to cover also the remote access, control, management of instrument devices has been explored in a few initiatives. Existing tools lack in generality and require advanced specialized computer science knowledge, thus making them difficult to be broadly adopted in the scientific community. In this paper we present a new open source initiative that is designed to overcome these problems. The Tiny Instrument Element project defines a high level architecture for plugging instruments into the Grid and provides the corresponding skeleton implementation. This lightweight approach, as opposed to existing middleware-based solutions, reduces the effort required to Gridify existing instruments. The paper evaluates the proposed abstraction with a case study from a pervasive computing scenario.

Some relevant Key words: IoT, Internet of things, smart devices, cloud computing, web service, ubiquitous computing, plugin.

In this paper we present the Tiny Instrument Element project showing our proposed novel approach to the integration between instruments and the Grid. Instead of building a new middleware we propose to use a semifinite artifact (i.e., a skeleton software) that can be tailored to meet the requirements of a specific instrument characteristics. This approach not only provides an uniform access to the Gridified instruments but also leaves the flexibility to customize and tune the Tiny Instrument Element for optimal monitoring and control of the instruments. From the case study we have seen that none of the code included in the Tiny Instrument Element release was redundant and that the time required in order to gain a good understanding of the API and the corresponding skeleton was quite small. This supports the idea of template-based software development. The Project has started full open source activities in September 2008. If we exclude our personal activity and the one performed by the case study participants, until the end of 2008, the project website attracted 304 unique visitors (7 Returning many times). The source code was downloaded 40 times and the authors were contacted with positive feedback by 2 users of the community. Whereas the project has been running for a relatively short time, these numbers are promising and show the benefit of a transparent development process to achieve wider dissemination of our research ideas

Full article available at the following link:

The Tiny Instrument Element:
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-01671-4_27

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Your help in sharing the idea is very welcome!

Cite this paper as:

F. Lelli and C. Pautasso The Tiny Instrument Element Project In proc of 4th International Conference on Grid and Pervasive Computing (GPC) , Geneva, Switzerland, May 2009

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• The Many Faces of the Integration of Instruments and the Grid

The #tiny Instrument Element for integrating #IoT and #Cloud . An early precursor of #EdgeComputing
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Abstract: Current grid technologies offer unlimited computational power and storage capacity for scientific research and business activities in heterogeneous areas all over the world. Thanks to the grid, different virtual organisations can operate together in order to achieve common goals. However, concrete use cases demand a closer interaction between various types of instruments accessible from the grid on the one hand and the classical grid infrastructure, typically composed of Computing and Storage Elements, on the other. We cope with this open problem by proposing and realising the first release of the Instrument Element (IE), a new grid component that provides the computational/data grid with an abstraction of real instruments, and grid users with a more interactive interface to control them. In this paper we discuss in detail the implemented software architecture for this new component and we present concrete use cases where the IE has been successfully integrated.

Keywords: grid; instrument; Instrument Element; IE.

Authors: F. Lelli*, E. Frizziero, M. Gulmini, G. Maron, S. Orlando, A. Petrucci and S. Squizzato

We cope with this open problem by proposing and realizing the first release of the IE, a new grid component that provides the computational/data grid with an abstraction of real instruments, and grid users with a more interactive interface to control them. The main benefits of the proposed solution are: A highly modular and flexible solution: (a) The middleware deployment is organised into pluggable independent components. (b) The IE architecture is not tied to specific technologies or third-party software. (c) Multiple and independent I/O interfaces: Commands and Controls directed at Instruments, Fast Data Publishing, Data Movement to/from the grid.

• A highly modular and flexible solution: (a) The middleware deployment is organised into pluggable independent components. (b) The IE architecture is not tied to specific technologies or third-party software. (c) Multiple and independent I/O interfaces: Commands and Controls directed at Instruments, Fast Data Publishing, Data Movement to/from the grid.
• High scalability: (a) IE is portable to different platforms. (b) The target environment ranges from large farms to embedded devices.
• IE middleware aims to be used in production environments: Mature middleware has been used, whenever possible, to assure robustness and stability.
• Fine customisation of the IE: The IE is easily adaptable to diverse scenarios and needs.
• High level of abstraction in the IE interfaces: (a) Service Oriented Architecture (b) Adherence to standards: WS-I-compliant web services.
• EGEE (gLite) compatibility: Many grid facilities and tools can be reused, for instance GridFTP or SRM interface for data movement.

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A #SOA ( #service Oriented Architecture) approach for #integrate #InternetOfThings devices into a #CloudComputing infrastructure. #servicedesign
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Lelli, F., Frizziero, E., Gulmini, M., Maron, G., Orlando, S., Petrucci, A., & Squizzato, S. (2007). The many faces of the integration of instruments and the grid. International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 3(3), 239. 

https://doi.org/10.1504/IJWGS.2007.014953

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Mentor: Francesco Lelli 

In the coming 10 years not only computers will be connected to the Internet but also small and heterogeneous devices will be part of the web too. These devices will support people in carrying their everyday life activities. This trends is known as Internet of Things.

Toward this idea in this project the candidate will design and implement a generic controller for an embedded device i.e he/she will produce Web APIs for Instruments and Devices. Moreover this control system should expose its APIs in the web in order to allow remote access to the resource. The device that will be targeted in this project is the Lego Mindstorm robot [1] and at the end of the project a working prototype is expected.

In the past year libraries and framework have been proposed for the control of the Lego chip. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the status of the art of these developments proposing new architecture and design guidelines. In addition the candidate will contribute to existing open source project in order to improve the present tools. 

The candidate will use: 

• A Lego Mindstorm [1]
• The Lejos [2] library in order to access and control of the robot using java APIs.
• The Instrument Element [3] tools for exposing Web Service APIs.
• Any tool that she knows for the realization of a user interface.

The candidate can choose any configuration of the robot that she prefer such as car, arm, walking robot etc. She also will choose the User Interface according to the selected configuration. 

In this video an example of prototype is presented: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8VvTENzPGI 
This is just an example; the candidate is encouraged to propose a different prototype. 

Knowledge and Skills:

Web Programming, Java Programming and basic knowledge of Distribute Applications and Embedded Devices. 

References:

[1] Lego Mindstorm NXT: https://shop.lego.com/en-US/category/mindstorms
[2] Lejos Project: http://lejos.sourceforge.net/ 
[3] Instrument Element Project: http://instrumentelem.sourceforge.net/ 

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