Enhancing Internet of Things Data Visibility for Electronics4All: A Comprehensive Solution by AllCode

Client Introduction

Electronics4All is a machine manufacturer that builds custom devices for customers. With a specific emphasis on customer needs, they employ teams of experts and senior designers to work with clients to design, develop, and deploy their products faster. Their expertise also extends to developing and producing IoT devices for their customers.

Problem/Client Challenges

Electronics4All is frequently contracted to develop IoT devices for multiple customers. While functional, a common complaint among their customers was the lack of visualization tools to interpret and read the data their IoT devices collected in the field. Electronics4All lacked the data visualization solution their customers requested and the means to properly develop a solution that would work across their different IoT projects. AllCode was then brought in to help build the IoT visualization tools.

Solution

AllCode built a web application that needed to support some heavy lifting to tolerate the traffic put out by their IoT devices.  The web app needed to support up to four geolocations, each with a thousand devices.  Additionally, each device puts out a 90-byte report once every fifteen minutes.

For the backend of Electronics4All’s web application, we were to build an admin board that would be deployed to the same AWS environment as the main application using a CloudFormation Template.  The admin board was required to have specific functionality:

Logins

The platform could provision new users through AWS Site Entity User with a single sign-on to the Admin Console enabled by AWS Cognito.  The client was provided with an ample description of how to procure new users and reset passwords as needed.

Device Management

The Admin Console could oversee every aspect of any device connected to the front end.  Users on the console have full visibility and control over device aliases, the option to delete a device or purge its data, and the option to toggle a device on or off.  Device names and statuses are rendered through AWS Grafana and can be made to display their MAC address, label, or both.

Gateways

Like the devices, the Admin Console has full visibility and control over gateways into the AWS environment.  Users have control over a gateway’s data and its operational status, but data that’s already inbound is still allowed in before the gateway is shut completely.  All information on the gateways is rendered using AWS Grafana and can be adjusted to display the gateway’s ID, label, or both.

Data Monitoring

Locations are also monitored from the Admin Console with options to toggle the location’s operation or purge data remotely.  The dashboard can also toggle whether the location ID, the label, or both are displayed.

AWS Integrations

Amazon Web Services is used extensively for the entire project. AllCode built a reusable cloud solution on AWS that made use of AWS Apache Flink, Amazon TimestreamDB, and AWS Managed Grafana to enable Electronics4All to offer a solution to their clients, which enables their clients to visualize the custom data captured by their clients. Data captured from IoT devices are sorted through gateways into an AWS Virtual Private Cloud using AWS Kinetic Stream to keep data securely retained.

Once inside the VPC, the data stream is fed through AWS Kinetic Data Analytics to format data to the database requirements. The reformatted data is then fed into an AWS Timestream database for further analysis. The database will handle everything from finding trends to establishing alerting and monitoring protocols for specific patterns and developments. AWS Grafana then simplifies data visualization and arranges dashboards and charts for user viewing. AWS Single Sign-on provides a simple, but secure access point for Electronics4All and their clients to use.

Results

A proper solution for data visualization was an undesirable outcome for Electronics4All and its customers who wanted IoT devices.

Universal Solution: Electronics4All now has a default data collection option to deliver with their IoT solutions.

Data Visibility: We have built a cloud solution to render the IoT Data from Electronic4All’s clients, making data easier to read.

Conclusion

The collaboration between Electronics4All and AllCode demonstrates our capacity to build new client-oriented solutions, plan and build IoT-centric applications, and understand how to handle Big Data. More importantly, the solution built for Electronics4All is easily and infinitely repeatable for however many of their clients need IoT packages. The data tool offers excellent insight into IoT data, has the capacity to work at scale, is easy to use, and offers a secure environment for preserving and protecting collected data.

This partnership provided Electronics4All the solution they needed for a persistent problem and established a strong foundation for future growth, showcasing AllCode’s commitment to driving tangible business outcomes as a trusted technology partner.