SCPI: IoT and the Déjà Vu of Instrument Control

Abstract

Efforts to provide coherent support for interoperability for devices using new technologies remains an ongoing process. Those involved in standards development know this all too well. The challenge remains: How best to keep up with rapidly evolving paradigms such as the IoT, IIoT, Industry 4.0, and similar major shifts? Recent work as part of the IEEE P1451.x standards development looked backwards to identify standards that are mature and extensible, offering a rich functional suite adaptable to new devices and architectures. Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments (SCPI-1999) is one such industry standard, which long ago solved the problem of communicating with devices from many manufacturers. SCPI was an elegant solution for converting unreadable vendor-specific commands to a universal set adaptable by all. Developing interoperability between IoT devices could benefit from a similar SCPI-like approach. To investigate this potential, a typical IoT scenario was developed. Existing nonreadable commands were converted into a SCPI-like command structure. The results of this effort were compelling and suggest that such an approach could achieve interoperability among a wide variety of IoT devices and vendors.