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We developed a complete system for a leading European and global manufacturer of hygiene products and supplier of hygiene solutions. It involved the central recording of the delivery meters and quantities of hygiene devices such as soap, disinfectant and paper dispensers equipped with radio sensors. The system consists of a network of decentralised access points that wirelessly record the sensor data of spatially distributed devices and transmit them to a centralised system. This acts as a local administration and monitoring instrument for the operator.
All collected sensor data are also periodically stored in a cloud environment, which enables advanced, comprehensive evaluations for the operator or customer. Linova developed the system architecture, from the radio interface to the hygiene devices to the cloud, as well as the software for the access points, the local centralised systems and the web-based cloud evaluation component. The system is installed in numerous environs such as hospitals and football arenas.
In addition to radio transmission with a proprietary protocol for sensor communication with the hygiene devices, the general conditions for networking all components in the various target environments posed a particular challenge. On top of that, the access points must often be hidden from the operators (e.g. in ceiling panels), which required a “blind” WLAN configuration of the components, which also had to be suitable for users without any significant IT knowledge.
The storage of the numerous sensor data in the centralised cloud required efficient solutions for uploading and synchronising the data, especially in larger system environments such as football arenas, even in the event of temporary connection failures, as well as a high-performance cloud database. The application for the evaluation and analysis of cloud data by the end customer also had to be able to handle the large amounts of data and provide the user with the easiest and clearest possible access to the extensive sensor values collected.
We developed a complete, customer-specific system whose components meet the specific requirements. In terms of the wireless accessibility of the hygiene devices, an architecture with dispersed, scalable, self-sufficient access points (Linux single-board computer) as well as a centralised system for coordination was designed, independent of the end customer’s other networks. These systems allow local access for configuration (via PHP-based web interfaces) as well as the most important on-site monitoring capabilities.
An efficient, scalable connection to the cloud system (SAP HANA), as specified by our customer, was implemented for data uploads. The scope of the cloud evaluation was implemented as a graphically appealing and easy-to-use web application with REST services.
Java, Vaadin, PHP, Linux Shell Scripting, SQLAnywhere, SAP HANA, REST
