Textbook in PDF format Build a living digital replica of your real-world systems! Digital Twins in Action is a hands-on guide to designing and building effective digital twins. In it, you’ll build a home-scale digital twin from the ground up. You’ll start with a framework for gathering requirements to ensure that what you deliver is perfectly suited to your needs. You’ll then work through the complete project step by step—from setting up sensors, to handling hardware, to working with embedded software. By the time you’re finished, you’ll have a twin that can generate 3D models from your phone, extract insights from video and text with computer vision, and even employ an AI agent. Along the way, Greg will point out techniques you can use to scale up your small twin too. A digital twin is a software-based replica of a physical system that can be used to operate, monitor, and maintain it remotely. Working together, IoT sensors, 3D visualizations, simulation algorithms, AI models, and even robotics give a digital twin an impressive degree of control. This virtual environment is perfect for testing ideas, exploring "what if" scenarios, and unlocking insights—all without making costly changes in reality. Digital twins have been a hot topic for several years now and there is a lot of excitement, interest, and opportunity in the field. A lot of this is because the technology that enables you to build a digital twin has become accessible to just about anyone now, opening up endless possibilities for innovation. Despite all the buzz, there’s surprisingly little practical guidance available. Google "digital twins" and you’ll find countless glossy brochures, white papers, and marketing materials filled with futuristic 3D renderings but often lacking real substance. When you try to go deeper, you quickly discover there’s no comprehensive, practical guide explaining what a digital twin actually is and, more importantly, how you can build one yourself. This gap isn’t surprising. Unlike well-established technologies like the Java programming language or relational databases which have dozens of excellent books dedicated to them, a digital twin isn’t a single technology but rather a system integrating multiple advanced disciplines: the Internet of Things, computer graphics, databases, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning, each complex enough to warrant its own book. Digital Twins in Action teaches you how to: Define clear business objectives for digital twins Create digital representations of physical systems Blend computer vision, OCR, and generative AI with 3D geometric models Stream IoT sensor data into a twin Represent real-world systems as knowledge graphs Machine learning and agentic AI for analysis and decision-making Author Greg Biegel has developed numerous industry-scale digital twin platforms from the ground up. In Digital Twins in Action, he shares this unique experience with real-world insights about state of the art digital twins you can put into action today. There’s no niche academic theory—just a complete, practical introduction to every layer of the digital twin stack. Bridging the physical and digital worlds Mapping physical systems to a digital representation Sensing the real world Data integration and management Modeling reality Data visualization and dashboards 3D visualization and spatial representation Simulation and analysis AI and machine learning integration Digital twins in production Appendix A. Building a LoRaWAN network Appendix B. Building a custom IT sensor Appendix C. Home Assistant Appendix D. Capturing a 3D model using photogrammetry