Explanation

What IEMS is

IEMS solves fleet-scale edge AI operations. Without a control plane, deploying models to many field devices requires manual SSH access, file copies, and per-device Docker commands — slow, error-prone, and hard to audit.

IEMS replaces that with:

• A central dashboard (FastAPI + server-rendered HTML)
• A device agent on each edge node that executes commands
• MQTT for outbound commands (deploy, stop, restart, delete)
• HTTPS for inbound heartbeats and acknowledgements
• PostgreSQL (production) or SQLite (local dev) as the source of truth

Architecture

 Browser / TapisUI iframe
         │  HTTPS (Tapis OAuth or portal SSO)
         ▼
 ┌──────────────────────────┐       ┌─────────────┐
 │  Edge Control Plane      │◄─────►│ PostgreSQL  │
 │  (FastAPI, port 8765)    │       └─────────────┘
 └──────────────────────────┘
         │ MQTT commands
         ▼
 ┌──────────────────────────┐
 │  Edge devices + agents   │
 │  (Docker model containers)│
 └──────────────────────────┘

Key concepts

Term	Meaning
Model card	A deployable AI model plus its container spec (image, env, mounts, compatible device generations)
Deployment	One model card sent to a target (device, group, or generation)
Device agent	On-device program that runs containers and reports heartbeats
Heartbeat	Periodic device health message (CPU, memory, temperature, running containers)

Integrations

• Tapis — OAuth login, Pods hosting, tenant identity
• Patra — model card and artifact provenance (PATRA_BASE_URL)
• MQTT broker — command delivery to devices
• MediaMTX / relay streaming — live camera preview and inference streams (see deploy/STREAMING.md)
• ICICLE TapisUI extension — embeds the control plane in the ICICLE portal sidebar

Repository layout

intelligent-edge-management-service/
├── README.md                    # This file (ICICLE catalog + Diátaxis docs)
├── component-info.yaml          # ICICLE component catalog metadata
├── RELEASE.md                   # Release notes
└── edge_fleet_control_plane/    # Main application
    ├── app/                     # FastAPI app, routes, services, agent package
    ├── config/                  # Seed data (models, device generations)
    ├── deploy/                  # Pod specs, env templates, deployment guides
    ├── smart_docker_apps/       # Example edge inference containers
    ├── Dockerfile
    └── requirements.txt

For a longer-form briefing, read edge_fleet_control_plane/deploy/SYSTEM_OVERVIEW.md.