MJ IoT
MJ IoT was a result of my work on the thesis titled “Design and implementation of Internet of Things System based on cloud computing model”. It is an IoT system built on Azure, consisting of a few applications that work together to deliver a platform for devices to connect with.
Technologies
- .NET Framework
- .NET Core
- AVR C/C++
- Microsoft Azure Platform
- Azure SQL
- Cosmos DB
- Azure Functions
Abstract
The thesis presents practical implementation of Internet of Things system that emphasizes the possibility of connecting many devices together. Another useful feature is the ability to collect telemetric data from connected “things”. This project makes use of cloud services, that are subject of most of the thesis.
The most important part of the designed platform exists in the cloud. The chosen cloud provider is Microsoft with its Azure subscription offering. Transport of data in the system is achieved by the means of IoT Hub service. Users’ data are stored in two database systems: Azure SQL and CosmosDB. The platform’s logic is hosted in a serverless architecture, delivered by Azure Functions.
Another crucial part of the thesis is modelling approach. Every “thing” that is connected with the platform has a corresponding model, which defines its properties set. Each of these properties is characterized, among others, by its data type that it can store. The user has the ability to define new models based on the ones that already exist. This feature is available through the usage of inheritance.
Connecting devices is done by associating together properties of these devices. Any property of a given device (such as state of a light bulb) can be used as an output or as an input. The simplest example would be a pair of a button and a light bulb. A button could have a property called “pressed”. It can be either true or false. That propertyl may be connected to the light bulb’s “powered” property. As a result we would get a button-controller light.
User has an option to set filters and calculations. Filters provide functionality to block communication in defined situations, while calculations enable the possibility of modifying messages before they are delivered to the recipient device. One of the available calculations is custom C# scripts. The user is able to create a program that can modify communication data in any way.
The user has access to the platform by the use of web application based on the Angular framework. Features of this application include: viewing a list of user’s devices with its details; defining and deleting connections; displaying telemetry data in a form of a chart or a list, with corresponding timestamps.
Control Panel
An essential part of the project was a web application allowing users to manage their devices. The app was created in Agular.
Devices
Here are a few examples of the devices that I’ve built for the needs of the project. Some of them are a mixture of hardware and software, while some others were purely software-based.
Heater
I’ve purchased a generic heater and modified it by including a controlled relay in its electrical circuit.
Temperature and Humidity sensor
One of my sensors was a simple temperature and humidity sensor that I’ve connected with a microcontroller.
Display
A purely software-based device - a display. It could be connected to other devices to display their outputs (e.g. when connected to the temperature output of the temperature and humidity sensor we could observe the temperature).
Hysteresis Controller
Another software-based device was a hysteresis controller that allows for an automated control of other appliances based on configuration parameters.
Chat App
One of the most interesting “devices” that I designed was the chat application. Its input was an incoming message. The output was an outgoing message.
Applications
As part of my work, I have also prepared a few practical use-cases of the MJ IoT Platform.
Temperature Control
Connecting a few of my devices together and using the capabilities of MJIoT Platform I was able to have a working room temperature control system. This system uses some basic automation principles like the feedback loop.
Here’s how I’ve connected various devices together to get a working system:
The Heater was obviously responsible to heat the room. Depending on the input from the Hysteresis Control, it was either ON or OFF. In order to change the temperature settings I used two instances of the Chat App. In order to configure Set Point (desired temperature) and Hysteresis Gap (a characteristic of any hysteresis controller) I’d just send a message to the controller. The controller wouldn’t be able to work properly without a feedback signal. Such a signal came from the Temperature Sensor that I’ve connected to the Controller. Additionally, to have live temperature information I’ve added the Display. It was connected to the output of the Temperature Sensor.
All of the connections were configured via the MJ IoT Control Panel as follows:
With all that, I achieved typical temperature control characteristics with a hysteresis controller:
The blue color represents the controller output (commands for the heater to be on or off); the yellow color represents the desired temperature; the green color represents the actual room temperature. You can see that it has a sinusoidal shape, which is typical for the type of a controller that I’ve designed.
World-wide Chat Service
A really fun application of MJIoT was to use it as a chat platform. I have connected two instances of my Chat app together (output of one goes as an input to another) and got a simple chat system.
The image shows an example of how I’ve been testing the solution. The PC on the left was in Poland (me), while the one on the right was in Tunisia (my friend’s). We were able to communicate similarly to other popular solutions such as Facebook Messenger.
Links
The thesis was written in the Polish language. It’s available here: GitHub.
All of the code is open-source and can be found on my GitHub (all microservices and apps are under different repos with the name including “MjIoT”).