Submitted by Larry Bellehumeur on
I remember the old joke well....”What does PCMCIA, as in PCMCIA cards, stand for?” The joke was that it stood for “People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms”, and there was a lot of truth to that. While it is not quite as bad in the world of M2M (with the number of acronyms, at least), it can be daunting to keep up with this growing market’s new terminology.
While I have done various engineering roles over the years, I am far from an engineer, and like many people, I need to break down much of the “nerdiness” into simple to understand examples and language. I also find that this is one of the reasons for Novotech’s success.....making the complex simple is a commonly used phrase at our company.
Here are a few key terms, broken down into my “down-
M2M
Ok, let’s start with the big one. Standing for Machine to Machine (and not the Warner Music band from Norway), M2M is a term that I have yet to hear perfectly defined. The reason is that the definition can be as broad or as narrow as you want it to be. For some people,
For me, I circle back to the SCADA definition, so there are basically two parts to it. The first part is the “SC”, which stands for Supervisory Control. In layman’s terms, this means being able to make a remote device do something over the air. So, it may mean that you want to open a door, lift a security gate or open a valve to release pressure. The 2nd part is “DA”, which is Data Acquisition. Like it sounds, this means gathering data from remote devices.....how many cans of Coca-Cola were sold in a vending machine, how warm is my swimming pool or being told that I left the garage door open via an app on my smartphone.
M2M doesn’t have to be complicated....It tends to get that way when we have to put the data into big systems, which brings me on to my next term....
Big Data
While Big Data has a lot of other ways that information can be created, M2M and Big Data seem to
IoT
For the most part, I would say, “see above answer for M2M”, as I don’t see a lot of difference. However, IoT does seem to encompass a wider “net” for application potential, as M2M didn’t usually refer to consumer-based applications.
Dual-band, Tri-band, etc
Dual-band refers to a device that is capable of working on more than one frequency. A good example is your WiFi router at home. There is a trade-off to using one
Tri-Band is just that.....it works on 3 different bands. In the world of antennas, this usually referred to being able to work on both bands that your cellular carrier uses, and the ability to receive a GPS signal, all on the same antenna. This was usual for in-vehicle applications, such as in police cars or transit buses.
In future blogs, we will look at terms such as:
- Active vs. Passive antennas
- AVL/LBS
- 2G/3G/4G
- SCADA protocols
- OTA
- Input/Outputs
- Sensors/Nodes
- RSSI
As always, Novotech is ready to assist with your M2M needs. Whether you’re looking to control, track, monitor or
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