Framework and Development Process for IoT Data Gathering

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a growing area in everyday life. New applications under the umbrella term IoT are being developed continually. This development has raised the need for framework definitions for different purposes. This research introduces a special software/hardware framework for data gathering systems to be used in IoT related systems. The purpose of the research is to show the usability of a certain software/hardware combination in prototype development. The software/hardware framework has been developed during several research projects by following the same prototype development process. This is proposed as a descriptive model for the prototyping process. The main contribution of this research is the framework itself. The framework consists of a model of the system with selected components. The placement of the sensor network is also presented. The purpose of the framework is to guide and assist the construction of data gathering prototypes. Furthermore, the advantages of the framework are to support re-usability, portability, and interchangeability. This research introduces the framework, its main components, and their interconnections. In addition, the prototype development process used is presented.Peer reviewe

Rapid IoT Prototyping: A Visual Programming Tool and Hardware Solutions for LoRa-Based Devices

LoRa technology has gained popularity as one of the most widely used standards for device interconnection due to its ability to cover long distances and energy efficiency, making it a suitable choice for various Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring and control applications. In this sense, this work presents the development of a visual support tool for creating IoT devices with LoRa and LoRaWAN connectivity. This work significantly advances the state of the art in LoRa technology by introducing a novel visual support tool tailored for creating IoT devices with LoRa and LoRaWAN connectivity. By simplifying the development process and offering compatibility with multiple hardware solutions, this research not only facilitates the integration of LoRaWAN technology within educational settings but also paves the way for rapid prototyping of IoT nodes. The incorporation of block programming for LoRa and LoRaWAN using the Arduinoblocks framework as a graphical environment enhances the capabilities of the tool, positioning it as a comprehensive solution for efficient firmware generation. In addition to the visual tool for firmware generation, multiple compatible hardware solutions enable easy, economical, and stable development, offering a comprehensive hardware and software solution. The hardware proposal is based on an ESP32 microcontroller, known for its power and low cost, in conjunction with an RFM9x module that is based on SX127x LoRa transceivers. Finally, three successfully tested use cases and a discussion are presented

Data center environment monitoring system

The Internet of things (IoT) is applied to many cases in the smart cities topic. We apply an IoT-developed platform using LoRa communication to a Data Center to understand temperature behavior within a concentration of servers and the working behavior of these server machines. We describe our work as an IoT platform to measure temperature, humidity, and energy consumption in these data centers. In the end, the gradient temperature was found in the rack, and the increasing temperature is correlated with energy consumption and the backup routines in the night. Our developed approach can be used to understand CPU usage and related temperature and the energy consumption.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Modular hardware platform for monitoring and control at small office and home office

Dissertação de Mestrado em Engenharia Física apresentada à Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra.Este trabalho consistiu no desenvolvimento de uma plataforma modular de hardware para controlo e monitorização, criando, deste modo, a base para a rápida prototipagem de produtos e sensores capazes de se ligarem a Internet. Utilizam-se produtos e dispositivos disponíveis comercialmente para o público em geral na criação da plataforma, como é o caso do Raspberry Pi e de Arduinos, interligados pelos módulos de rádio NRF24L01+. A plataforma desenvolvida foi usada na construção do Qold, um produto para monitorizar temperaturas de forma automática, sem fios e totalmente integrado com uma aplicação online, tendo sido testado num cenário de utilização real, mostrando-se um sistema fiável (80.7% e 74.8% de up time no principal instalação feita). Um total de 5 gateways e 14 nodos foram instalados.In this project it was developed a modular hardware platform for monitoring and control. This platform will allow the faster development of products and sensors able to be connected to the Internet. We used commercial o the shelf products, such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi, and we connected them using the NRF24L01+ radio modules. The created platform was used in the development of Qold, a product designed to automatically measure temperatures and that is totally integrated with a web application. Qold was tested in real situation scenarios, with a reliable performance (with up times of 80.7% and 74.8% in the main pilot tested). A total of 5 gateways and 14 sensor nodes were installed

Avionics Architectures for Exploration: Ongoing Efforts in Human Spaceflight

The field of Avionics is advancing far more rapidly in terrestrial applications than in spaceflight applications. Spaceflight Avionics are not keeping pace with expectations set by terrestrial experience, nor are they keeping pace with the need for increasingly complex automation and crew interfaces as we move beyond Low Earth Orbit. NASA must take advantage of the strides being made by both space-related and terrestrial industries to drive our development and sustaining costs down. This paper describes ongoing efforts by the Avionics Architectures for Exploration (AAE) project chartered by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program to evaluate new avionic architectures and technologies, provide objective comparisons of them, and mature selected technologies for flight and for use by other AES projects. The AAE project team includes members from most NASA centers, and from industry. It is our intent to develop a common core avionic system that has standard capabilities and interfaces, and contains the basic elements and functionality needed for any spacecraft. This common core will be scalable and tailored to specific missions. It will incorporate hardware and software from multiple vendors, and be upgradeable in order to infuse incremental capabilities and new technologies. It will maximize the use of reconfigurable open source software (e.g., Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC's) Core Flight Software (CFS)). Our long-term focus is on improving functionality, reliability, and autonomy, while reducing size, weight, and power. Where possible, we will leverage terrestrial commercial capabilities to drive down development and sustaining costs. We will select promising technologies for evaluation, compare them in an objective manner, and mature them to be available for future programs. The remainder of this paper describes our approach, technical areas of emphasis, integrated test experience and results as of mid-2014, and future plans. As a part of the AES Program, we are encouraged to set aggressive goals and fall short if necessary, rather than to set our sights too low. We are also asked to emphasize providing our personnel with hands-on experience in development, integration, and testing. That we have embraced both of these philosophies will be evident in the descriptions below

Decoupling User Interface Design Using Libraries of Reusable Components

The integration of electronic and mechanical hardware, software and interaction design presents a challenging design space for researchers developing physical user interfaces and interactive artifacts. Currently in the academic research community, physical user interfaces and interactive artifacts are predominantly designed and prototyped either as one-off instances from the ground up, or using functionally rich hardware toolkits and prototyping systems. During this prototyping phase, undertaking an integral design of the interface or interactive artifact’s electronic hardware is frequently constraining due to the tight couplings between the different design realms and the typical need for iterations as the design matures. Several current toolkit designs have consequently embraced component-sharing and component-swapping modular designs with a view to extending flexibility and improving researcher freedom by disentangling and softening the cause-effect couplings. Encouraged by early successes of these toolkits, this research work strives to further enhance these freedoms by pursuing an alternative style and dimension of hardware modularity. Another motivation is our goal to facilitate the design and development of certain classes of interfaces and interactive artifacts for which current electronic design approaches are argued to be restrictively constraining (e.g., relating to scale and complexity). Unfortunately, this goal of a new platform architecture is met with conceptual and technical challenges on the embedded system networking front. In response, this research investigates and extends a growing field of multi-module distributed embedded systems. We identify and characterize a sub-class of these systems, calling them embedded aggregates. We then outline and develop a framework for realizing the embedded aggregate class of systems. Toward this end, this thesis examines several architectures, topologies and communication protocols, making the case for and substantial steps toward the development of a suite of networking protocols and control algorithms to support embedded aggregates. We define a set of protocols, mechanisms and communication packets that collectively form the underlying framework for the aggregates. Following the aggregates design, we develop blades and tiles to support user interface researchers

An electronic architecture for mediating digital information in a hallway fac̦ade

Ubiquitous computing requires integration of physical space with digital information. This presents the challenges of integrating electronics, physical space, software and the interaction tools which can effectively communicate with the audience. Many research groups have embraced different techniques depending on location, context, space, and availability of necessary skills to make the world around us as an interface to the digital world. Encouraged by early successes and fostered by project undertaken by tangible visualization group. We introduce an architecture of Blades and Tiles for the development and realization of interactive wall surfaces. It provides an inexpensive, open-ended platform for constructing large-scale tangible and embedded interfaces. In this paper, we propose tiles built using inexpensive pegboards and a gateway for each of these tiles to provide access to digital information. The paper describes the architecture using a corridor fa\c{c}ade application. The corridor fa\c{c}ade uses full-spectrum LEDs, physical labels and stencils, and capacitive touch sensors to provide mediated representation, monitoring and querying of physical and digital content. Example contents include the physical and online status of people and the activity and dynamics of online research content repositories. Several complementary devices such as Microsoft PixelSense and smartdevices can support additional user interaction with the system. This enables interested people in synergistic physical environments to observe, explore, understand, and engage in ongoing activities and relationships. This paper describes the hardware architecture and software libraries employed and how they are used in our research center hallway and academic semester projects

A Highly Scalable IoT Architecture through Network Function Virtualization

As the number of devices for Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly growing, existing communication infrastructures are forced to continually evolve. The next generation network infrastructure is expected to be virtualized and able to integrate different kinds of information technology resources. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) is one of the leading concepts facilitating the operation of network services in a scalable manner. In this paper, we present an architecture involving NFV to meet the requirements of highly scalable IoT scenarios. We highlight the benefits and challenges of our approach for IoT stakeholders. Finally, the paper illustrates our vision of how the proposed architecture can be applied in the context of a state-of-the-art high-tech operating room, which we are going to realize in future work