Sense
Poll real equipment over real protocols and keep each reading's quality. A failed read is bad, never zero, so a dead sensor doesn't trip every low alarm.
Version 4.18.11 is out for all four core products
Automation loops for the real world.
Home automation is a toy right up until the day it matters. Industrial automation works, costs a fortune, and comes with a guy who has to drive out to change a setpoint. HotLoop is the thing in the middle that should have existed ten years ago: it reads real equipment, keeps the history, raises the alarm, and moves the machine, from a Pi on a shelf to a whole plant. It's free for you, and free for your business through EmberNet.
A loop, running
TT-101 · modbus tcp · holding:40001- Error
- +0.00
- Output
- 50%
Normal
Inside deadband. No alarm raised, nothing paged.
A simulation in your browser. Drag the setpoint and watch the loop decide whether this is worth waking somebody up for. In the Gateway, the write that moves it crosses one gate. Out of range is refused and never clamped, and the refusal is written down.
10
Native protocol drivers in the Gateway, for talking to PLCs and other equipment. No placeholder drivers, and a table that admits which ones have never met a real PLC.
79
Node types in Flow, our Node-RED-compatible wiring tool. Each one says how close it is to Node-RED, and the build fails if one lies about it.
44.8MB
The whole Flow 2.3.0 container image (amd64), as Podman reports it. The method and the caveats are on the Flow page, because a benchmark without caveats is marketing in a lab coat.
Running at
HotLoop runs at the plants of Shepherd Boy Farms and DayGlo, both through EmberNet.
The loop
Sense, decide, act, and around again.
That's the whole product. A rule you set once and pray over is not a loop. A loop is something you can walk away from, because it tells you the truth when it can't see and it refuses to do something stupid when somebody tells it to.
Decide
ISA-18.2 alarms (the industrial alarm standard), so an alarm that cleared before anybody saw it is still on the list at shift change. Rules compile on save, so a typo dies in the editor.
Act
Every write, from a person, a rule, or an agent, crosses one gate nothing routes around. Out of range is refused, not clamped. Go try to break it.
The full detail behind these cards
Sense
Poll real equipment over real protocols, and keep the quality of every reading, not just the number. A failed read is bad, never zero, so a dead sensor doesn't trip every low alarm on the unit and send the night shift chasing a tank that's fine.
Decide
ISA-18.2 alarms (the industrial alarm standard), including the one homegrown systems forget: the alarm that cleared on its own before anybody saw it. It's still on the list at shift change. Rules compile when you save them, so a typo dies in the editor, not at 3am halfway through a batch.
Act
Every write, from a person, a rule, or an agent, crosses one gate that nothing routes around. Out of range is refused, not clamped, and the refusal gets written down. Want to watch it say no? Go try to break it.
The products
Six products, from a Pi on a shelf to the whole plant.
HotLoop is six products for the plant floor: four that grow with a site (IoT, Edge, Gateway, Edge Relay), plus Flow for wiring and Cascade for workflows.
HotLoop core line, 4.18.11
Flow line, 2.8.1
Cascade line, 0.1.2
What we refuse to fake
Every integration says how far it has actually been proven.
Most integration pages are a wall of logos. Ours has four tiers, and the top one is empty on purpose, because nothing has earned it yet. You'd rather know that now than at commissioning.
Certified 0
Proven on real plant equipment by somebody standing next to it. Nothing has earned this yet. The day something does, that zero becomes a one, and not a day before.
Verified live 8
Ran against a real target, and the row names exactly which one. Real is not the same as certified, so it doesn't get to say certified.
Decode tested 2
Tested hard on the raw protocol messages (frames) and never run against a physical PLC. The first real one is part of commissioning, not a formality.
Gateway mode 8
No driver, on purpose. These come in through the gateway your site already has, instead of a half-built one of ours.
Latest
What changed last, and whether you can download it.
Licensing
What the license means One license, no keys.
Every HotLoop product is under the HotLoop Business Source License 1.1. Home and lab use is free. A business signs up for EmberNet, free, and runs HotLoop there, free. Each version turns into GPL-3.0 or later four years after it ships. There's no key to type in and nothing waiting behind a paywall. Want somebody else to own the rollout, SLAs and warranty included? That's our Official Systems Integrator, Fireball Industries.