Utilizing Sink for IoT Communication Challenges

Mike Waud's presentation covers the difficulties SparkMeter encounters in managing communication between their IoT fleet of devices and servers that span across development environments with unstable connectivity and energy. In particular, challenges arise with different software versions, inconsistent state across environments, and potentially quarantined devices. The solution proposed is Sink, an event-based communication protocol specifically designed to navigate these issues by ensuring data synchronization, reliable message delivery, and proper event log structuring. Sink handles the complexities of machine-to-machine communications in a way that traditional protocols like MQTT may not. This communication solution aims for devices to operate autonomously on the ground and synchronously update to the cloud. Open-sourced on GitHub, Sink is structured to track the state of devices and the acknowledgment of events, although it requires a deep understanding to implement effectively. Waud emphasizes the utility of Elixir in such distributed systems for its message-passing capabilities and also highlights contributions from the Nerves team for device updates and remote troubleshooting.