IoT Gateways vs IoT Modems
By now, you have probably seen a wide array of IoT Gateways and IoT Modems in our growing catalog of products. We don’t blame you if you are feeling a little confusion. So now it’s time for us to address the topic of IoT Modems and IoT Gateways head on.
Defining this terminology requires we step back and look at the objectives of each technology. In some applications you may need IoT gateways. Other applications may need IoT modems. You may be surprised to learn that you might actually need both, depending on your IoT implementation strategy. Let’s start by defining these technologies from the viewpoint of NCD design engineers.
IoT Gateway Definition
Sensor
Raw Data
Gateway
Real-World Data
Cloud Platform
IoT Gateways are best defined as devices that receive wireless data from remote sensors, translate these data into meaningful real-world values, and communicate these data to popular cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Losant, MQTT, and more. The key component of IoT Gateways are their ability to translate data from raw sensor bytes into real-world values such as temperature, humidity, pressure, speed, duration, frequency, current, voltage, and other types of meaningful data. As new IoT sensor types are introduced, IoT Gateways will require periodic firmware updates to include new translator profiles.
IoT Modem Definition
Sensor
Raw Data
Modem
Raw Data
Communication Technology
IoT Modems are best defined as devices that receive wireless data from remote sensors and forward these data to a different communications format, such as Bluetooth, TCP, Serial, RS-485, or other popular communication technology. IoT modems simply transfer data bytes from one format to another format. Unlike IoT Gateways, IoT Modems never require firmware updates as they are not capable of interpreting the data in any way. Converting data types means all of the data parsing (interpretation of IoT sensor data) is performed at the software or server level rather than the hardware IoT gateway level.
Using IoT Modems as IoT Gateways
Because modems only translate data types, modems may be used as the hardware component of a custom IoT Gateway, provided software is utilized to translate the incoming data into real-world values. IoT Modems are typically used in conjunction with Node-Red to provide an IoT Gateway solution with incredible power and flexibility.
Node-Red allows logical flow-building, so reactions and events may be generated based on actual sensor values.
*Example of Node-Red Flows