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Tool Relations

Explore integrations, comparisons, and dependencies between manufacturing tools.

Kafka can stream high-throughput IoT sensor data into InfluxDB for time-series storage and analysis.

Eclipse Ditto connects to MQTT brokers like Eclipse Mosquitto to consume device telemetry and send commands. Ditto's Connectivity service supports MQTT 3.1.1 and MQTT 5 protocols.

Eclipse Ditto and Eclipse Hono are designed to work together in IoT architectures. Hono provides device connectivity and protocol abstraction, while Ditto provides the digital twin layer for state management and APIs.

Eclipse Hono

ThingsBoard

Competes with

Eclipse Hono and ThingsBoard both address IoT device connectivity, but they solve different layers of the stack. Hono focuses purely on protocol abstraction and northbound APIs, while ThingsBoard is a full IoT platform with built-in rule engine, dashboards and device management.

Node-RED can consume telemetry and events from Eclipse Hono's northbound AMQP or Kafka APIs, enabling visual flow-based processing of device data.

Eclipse Hono normalizes telemetry from IoT devices and forwards it to downstream consumers. InfluxDB is a common destination for time-series telemetry data ingested through Hono pipelines.

Eclipse Hono includes an MQTT protocol adapter that allows devices to connect using MQTT, similar to how they would connect to Mosquitto. Hono can use an existing MQTT broker as its messaging infrastructure or expose its own MQTT adapter endpoint.

ThingsBoard

United Manufacturing Hub

Competes with

Both are open-source platforms for connecting factory devices and visualizing data, but they target different users. ThingsBoard is a general-purpose IoT platform with multi-tenancy for service providers. United Manufacturing Hub is manufacturing-specific with built-in OEE, Unified Namespace, and Kafka-based data infrastructure for plant operations.

Node-RED can send processed data to ThingsBoard via MQTT or REST API. Some deployments use Node-RED for complex flow logic and protocol translation at the edge, feeding results into ThingsBoard for centralized dashboards and device management.

ThingsBoard's MQTT transport layer can connect to Mosquitto brokers, or ThingsBoard can act as its own MQTT broker (via TBMQ). Devices publishing to a Mosquitto broker can be ingested into ThingsBoard using the IoT Gateway's MQTT connector.

ThingsBoard can push telemetry data to Grafana via PostgreSQL or Cassandra as a shared data source. Some teams run Grafana alongside ThingsBoard for more advanced visualization, though ThingsBoard's built-in dashboards cover most monitoring use cases.

Malcolm includes Suricata as one of its ~15 Docker containers, running it in IDS mode for signature-based threat detection. Suricata is preconfigured with automatic rule updates and its EVE JSON alerts flow directly into Malcolm's OpenSearch cluster.

Grafana handles dashboards and alerting while Node-RED handles data flow orchestration and protocol bridging. Together they form the middle layers of the MING stack, with Node-RED collecting and routing data into databases that Grafana queries for visualization.

Mosquitto publishes MQTT messages that Telegraf (InfluxData's collection agent, part of the InfluxDB ecosystem) subscribes to and writes into InfluxDB. Telegraf acts as the bridge — it's a standalone agent from InfluxData that collects metrics from 300+ sources, including MQTT brokers, and writes them to InfluxDB. This Mosquitto → Telegraf → InfluxDB pipeline is the data ingestion path in the MING stack.

BaSyx uses PLC4X as a data provider component for bridging PLC protocols into the Asset Administration Shell world.

StreamPipes uses PLC4X as its connectivity layer for S7, Modbus, and other PLC protocols. PLC4X handles the low-level protocol communication while StreamPipes provides the visual pipeline editor and analytics on top.

Malcolm's OpenSearch data can be visualized in Grafana as an alternative to OpenSearch Dashboards, integrating OT security alerts into existing plant monitoring dashboards.

Wazuh provides endpoint monitoring and SIEM correlation that complements Malcolm's network-layer analysis, forming a complete OT security monitoring stack.

Malcolm embeds Suricata as its signature-based detection engine, running it in IDS mode against live traffic or uploaded PCAPs and indexing all alerts into OpenSearch.

Suricata EVE JSON alert data can be visualized in Grafana via Elasticsearch or Loki, providing real-time security dashboards alongside OT metrics.

Suricata feeds network-level alerts into Wazuh for correlation with host-based events, creating a unified IT/OT security monitoring stack.

Apache StreamPipes

Node-RED

Competes with

Both are open-source tools for connecting and processing IIoT data, but serve different audiences. StreamPipes targets non-technical manufacturing users with built-in analytics algorithms and a self-service UI. Node-RED is a general-purpose flow-based programming tool that requires more technical skill but offers greater flexibility through its massive ecosystem of community nodes.

StreamPipes can sink processed data to InfluxDB for time-series storage, and read from InfluxDB as a data source for historical analysis pipelines.

StreamPipes processes and enriches IIoT data streams, then routes results to databases like PostgreSQL or InfluxDB where Grafana visualizes them. StreamPipes handles the real-time analytics pipeline; Grafana provides the dashboarding layer.

StreamPipes connects to Mosquitto as an MQTT data source via its built-in MQTT adapter, enabling real-time ingestion of sensor and telemetry data from the factory floor into StreamPipes analytics pipelines.

United Manufacturing Hub

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Grafana

Integrates with

UMH ships with pre-configured Grafana dashboards for OEE and production monitoring

Grafana visualizes ERPNext manufacturing metrics

United Manufacturing Hub

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Node-RED

Integrates with

UMH includes Node-RED for custom data flow orchestration and protocol bridging

Node-RED writes sensor data to InfluxDB

Grafana reads from InfluxDB via Flux queries

Node-RED automates ERPNext workflows via REST API

Node-RED triggers Grafana annotations

United Manufacturing Hub

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Mosquitto

Integrates with

UMH uses Mosquitto as its internal MQTT broker for the Unified Namespace

Node-RED connects to MQTT brokers natively

Grafana subscribes to MQTT topics for real-time dashboards

CalAmp

Samsara

Competes with

CalAmp and Samsara compete in the fleet telematics market, both offering vehicle tracking, driver safety, and compliance solutions. Samsara focuses on modern cloud-native architecture and broad IoT sensor integration, while CalAmp emphasizes its 40-year track record and proprietary hardware ecosystem.