Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration • Hacker News Board

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#21

Post by roymurdock » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:01 PM UTC

staticvar wrote: post #15

mrtree wrote: post #7

I have been doing "IoT" for 10 years and after checking the website and the github repo I still have no clue about what flogo does. Isn't it like some basic http api for "triggers"? Is this what people think IoT is about? More importantly, can these basic set ups make money for some?

The gist I get is that it's a daemon for a gateway device (like a Raspberry Pi) that you configure data flows via JSON files. The Flogo CLI seems to be a JSON generator ( https://github.com/TIBCOSoftware/flogo-cli/blob/master/READM... ). They compare their functionality to Nodered ( http://nodered.org/ ) except it doesn't have a GUI (they mention working on it) and instead of being written in Node.js, it's written in…

Nice work with the open pipe project. Looks perfect for DIY sensor/telemetry projects.

If you are looking to monetize connectivity services, you certainly will need a bi-directional architecture to push values back to end nodes, and compute resources available at the gateway for data filtering, preprocessing, and security.

But these are tasks that AWS IoT, Azure IoT, and GCP IoT are currently tackling with a lot of resources. So it would be hard to compete at that level.

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#22

Post by ausjke » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #21

staticvar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gist I get is that it's a daemon for a gateway device (like a Raspberry Pi) that you configure data flows via JSON files. The Flogo CLI seems to be a JSON generator ( https://github.com/TIBCOSoftware/flogo-cli/blob/master/READM... ). They compare their functionality to Nodered ( http://nodered.org/ ) except it doesn't have a GUI (they mention working on it) and instead of being written in Node.js, it's written in…

Nice work with the open pipe project. Looks perfect for DIY sensor/telemetry projects. If you are looking to monetize connectivity services, you certainly will need a bi-directional architecture to push values back to end nodes, and compute resources available at the gateway for data filtering, preprocessing, and security. But these are tasks that AWS IoT, Azure IoT, and GCP IoT are currently tackling with a lot of r…

libwebsockets is better suited comparing to the pub/sub model for that? two-way communication is pretty tricky(NAT-traversal etc) sometimes, I am still opt for the old but reliable polling mode for most of IoT nodes.

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#23

Post by staticvar » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #21

staticvar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gist I get is that it's a daemon for a gateway device (like a Raspberry Pi) that you configure data flows via JSON files. The Flogo CLI seems to be a JSON generator ( https://github.com/TIBCOSoftware/flogo-cli/blob/master/READM... ). They compare their functionality to Nodered ( http://nodered.org/ ) except it doesn't have a GUI (they mention working on it) and instead of being written in Node.js, it's written in…

Nice work with the open pipe project. Looks perfect for DIY sensor/telemetry projects. If you are looking to monetize connectivity services, you certainly will need a bi-directional architecture to push values back to end nodes, and compute resources available at the gateway for data filtering, preprocessing, and security. But these are tasks that AWS IoT, Azure IoT, and GCP IoT are currently tackling with a lot of r…

Thanks. While our examples are usually "pull from some device and push to a database", with farmOS we experimented with "pull from a database and push to a device". In this way, pipes are used to transfer state of a device two ways. This depends on a database UI giving users the option to modify the state of something, something that IoT databases like Phant (http://data.sparkfun.com) and Adafruit IO (http://io.adafruit.com) don't currently support.

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#24

Post by zok3102 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 7:02 PM UTC

12 hours off HN & your project gets posted! Phew :)

I'm the PM on Project Flogo and welcome your questions + feedback. As some have noted on the interweb, it's a pretty big step for an enterprise sw vendor like us, to open up a core piece of our technology, so your constructive feedback gets a lot of attention around here and shapes it!

Couple of quick clarifications:

- All the repos (CLI, Library, Contrib and Services) except the top-level repo are BSD-licensed. The top-level repo is docs+samples, so we have put it under a free-beer license. However, we are in principle open to putting it out under BSD or a CC license as well.

- At its core, Flogo is a process engine that executes flow definitions consisting of activities. These flows are triggered by events happening in the real world. Triggers could be HTTP, MQTT, CoAP, etc. & activities could be AWS IoT, Log, HTTP, Send MQTT, etc. There is a fairly simple SDK to build your own activity or trigger and bring those along.

- We are actively working on a Web UI to model the flows instead of handcrafting the json DSLs or writing code.

- The runtime footprint comparison is for apps with equivalent functionality (Think a flow like MQTT Trigger -> Log Message -> HTTP Request -> Send MQTT). We just chose 2 common frameworks to showcase the difference in runtime footprint. We love Node & Java - it's just that for Edge integration microservices we chose Golang - and the runtime footprint was a key decision factor among others.

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#25

Post by zok3102 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

staticvar wrote: post #15

mrtree wrote: post #7

I have been doing "IoT" for 10 years and after checking the website and the github repo I still have no clue about what flogo does. Isn't it like some basic http api for "triggers"? Is this what people think IoT is about? More importantly, can these basic set ups make money for some?

The gist I get is that it's a daemon for a gateway device (like a Raspberry Pi) that you configure data flows via JSON files. The Flogo CLI seems to be a JSON generator ( https://github.com/TIBCOSoftware/flogo-cli/blob/master/READM... ). They compare their functionality to Nodered ( http://nodered.org/ ) except it doesn't have a GUI (they mention working on it) and instead of being written in Node.js, it's written in…

Except the daemon part, I think you got the gist of it right - thank you!

The one thing I would like to add is that flogo-lib is a full-fledged process engine which means you can craft (or soon enough visually model!) rather expressive flow definitions unlike a request-reply pipeline or HTTP middleware.

(Disclaimer: I'm a PM working on Project Flogo at TIBCO)

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#26

Post by reitanqild » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

reitanqild wrote: post #17

craigcabrey wrote: post #3

>Internal Use Only License Grant. TIBCO hereby grants you a limited, non‐transferable, non‐exclusive license to use the software solely for your internal business purposes. "open source"

Seconded. Don't let them advertise it as open source when it is just shareware with readable source. (Yes, I understand this might be "open source" for some definition of "open" but it is now what we talk about when we mean open source, and I think that holds true both for MIT/BSD/ASL loves such as myself as well as for the (A|L)GPL crowd.

See also no_protocol s link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12643676

It seems some of this is actually opensource.

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#27

Post by zok3102 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 8:23 PM UTC

salex89 wrote: post #11

mrtree wrote: post #7

I have been doing "IoT" for 10 years and after checking the website and the github repo I still have no clue about what flogo does. Isn't it like some basic http api for "triggers"? Is this what people think IoT is about? More importantly, can these basic set ups make money for some?

Hear, hear! I can only see it being compared with dropwizard which is "only" a REST framework for Java. What's the problem this is solving?

Fair point, we just chose a common Java REST or microservices fraemwork. Is there any particular Java IoT Integration framework you would like to compare or contrast Flogo with? Some OSGI framework like Kura perhaps?

Flogo's problem domain is broadly speaking, IoT integration. Using Flogo you can build integration apps/services/microservices that are lightweight enough to run dozens of these edge apps on IoT edge gateways & devices. Specifically, these edge integration services can be built as flows & triggers (yes, a visual flow modeler is coming soon!). Hope that clarifies - but we'll take your feedback to improve the docs.

(Disclaimer: I'm a TIBCO PM working on Project Flogo)

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#28

Post by zok3102 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 8:46 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #13

betimsl wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Initially I thought the same, but looks like it's only a web application, not the software you'd ship with the node.

I'm not so sure. "Build IoT applications that run on edge devices... " The moment I see "runs on Raspberry Pi", I know they haven't done any thinking about low cost or low power consumption edge nodes. Get back to me when it can run on a CortexM0 with 128KiB of flash.

Good point - yes, we have M0-3 class target platforms on our roadmap. IoT Gateway devices was where the need was most pressing for our customers and we just went there first.

Now, we will likely end up doing a whole lot less functionality on an M0 profile, compared to a typical Flogo flow app on an IoT gateway, but the idea is to offload the right level & kind of edge compute onto lower power nodes.

One point worth mentioning is that pretty much any framework can run on a Pi, but running dozens of these Edge apps - "12-factor" style[1], that is where Flogo's advantage shines through.

[1] https://12factor.net/processes

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#29

Post by zok3102 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 9:00 PM UTC

Dowwie wrote: post #14

A Tibco project?! What the.

lol. This goes up on my review deck with execs. But yes, a (new) TIBCO & a new TIBCO project :)

(Disclaimer: TIBCO PM working on Project Flogo)

Re: Project Flogo – Open Source Framework for IoT Integration

#30

Post by zok3102 » Wed, Oct 05, 2016, 9:04 PM UTC

mdani wrote: post #2

Google Brillo and Weave are essentially providing the same functions for Google's evosystem for IoT which connects to Google Cloud Platform. How does Flogo compare with Brillo + Weave?

We havent seen a whole lot of real world demand yet, but something that could likely end as a trigger or activity in Flogo.