Hello readers!

This week we’re looking the future of the connected factory, the 10 biggest connectivity mistakes in IoT, LoRaWAN on distributed antenna systems, and more.

For years, the promise of the "smart factory" has outpaced the reality. Fragmented connectivity and cloud AI meant the factory floor has remained stubbornly dependent on centralized systems. A demo from Qualcomm and Siemens at MWC this week suggests the reality might be finally catching up to the dream.

Factory demos aren’t new, but the appeal of this showcase is what’s architecturally different. The AI isn't phoning home to a data center; it's running locally, on a Siemens industrial PC equipped with Qualcomm's Cloud AI 100 Accelerator Card, handling real-time quality inspection, diagnostics, root cause analysis, and worker assistance entirely on-premises. Meanwhile, autonomous guided vehicles and robotic arms coordinate over a private Industrial 5G network — no centralized Manufacturing Execution System required.

Traditional factory automation has been tightly coupled to MES infrastructure, which creates brittleness: if the system loses its connection to the center, decisions stall. What Qualcomm and Siemens are demonstrating is a different model: distributed, autonomous production cells that can coordinate locally and intelligently, making the factory more resilient as well as more efficient.

The combination of private 5G's deterministic low-latency connectivity with on-device AI inference is essentially the IIoT architecture that the industry has been describing in white papers for years. The fact that it's now a live, integrated demo from two of the largest players in their respective fields suggests we're crossing from concept to deployment reality.

The enabling stack — private 5G, edge compute, AI accelerators — has been assembling piece by piece for years. At MWC this week, those pieces showed up together, integrated, and working. For manufacturers still on the sidelines, that's a hint that it might finally be time to get off the bench.

Behind every successful IoT deployment is a network that functions seamlessly, reliably, and securely. But many IoT projects fail not because the hardware is faulty, or the devices are poorly designed or even that the software is buggy; IoT projects often fail because connectivity was treated as an afterthought. Choosing the wrong network, ignoring IoT roaming limitations, or failing to plan for scale can derail even the most innovative solutions.

Read more

In this episode of the IoT For All Podcast, Daniel Lang, Chief Marketing Officer at Toradex, joins Ryan Chacon to discuss navigating the complex and evolving landscape of embedded computing. The conversation covers trends in the embedded space, AI at the edge, recent cybersecurity regulations, transitioning from Windows CE to Linux-based solutions, and practical advice for companies navigating compliance.

YouTube • Spotify • Apple • YT Music • Amazon

Interested in becoming an IoT For All Partner? Reach out here!