One of the project partners, Develco Products (DP), develops, produces, and supplies IoT solutions within smart home, smart energy, healthcare, and building management. DP products are based on a wide range of wireless technologies such as WiFi, Zigbee, Z-wave, and Bluetooth, including:
-
Squid.link Gateway (hardware)—All-in-one solution for connecting IoT devices across models and wireless protocols. The gateway supports various communication protocols, including Zigbee, Z-Wave, WLAN, Wireless M-Bus, and Bluetooth Low Energy. The gateway hosts a programmable Linux-platform and is integrated with a wide variety of cloud solutions.
-
Squid Smart App Wireless platform (software)—The Squid.link Gateway includes an application called Squid Smart App, which consists of a restful API, providing an interface between applications and the devices. Squid Smart App includes easy-to-read templates with predefined commands for the devices. This means that users will only have to configure the devices' settings, rules, and actions through the API or templates instead of programming an application.
-
SmartAMM API—The application API can be accessed from applications running on the gateway and a hosted application running remotely. The remote access runs through a separate channel established between the gateway and the server. For easy access, a server middleware (SmartAMM server) is available through which you can debug the wireless communication with the development tool. The 3rd party application connects to the application API via a socket connection.
Based on DP’s IoT solutions, this project aims to develop an integrated systematic IoT solutions, including:
ZigBee “Controller”
The ZigBee “Controller” can decide which gateway should accept a specific device. The following method is expected to be developed, tested and documented:
-
A ZigBee device sends out a request to join a network.
-
All ZigBee PAN Coordinators (ZPC) receiving the request, reports this to the “Controller”.
-
The Controller selects the ZPC with the best connection, by telling the selected ZPC to add the device address to the trust center and let it join.
-
The device joins the ZPC, which gates data between the device and the Controller.
-
The controller is one single point of contact for the entire network.
This controller is intended to be implemented in the next generation high-performance Squid.Link 2X gateway—eventually including an LTE modem for redundant data. The connected gateways can be implemented in the more cost-effective Squid.Link 2B. Communication between the gateways is done over IP via Ethernet (shown in Fig. 2).
Cross-platform registering system
Develco Products offers an IoT gateway, including a ZigBee personal area network (PAN) Coordinator. The PAN coordinator is capable of monitoring/controlling up to 1-200 sensors, relays, lightbulbs and other IoT devices. When a ZigBee device is powered up, it will search for PAN coordinator, which will accept it to join the network. The PAN coordinator in a specific gateway is to be told if a particular device can join, which facilitates deployment and management of multi-gateway networks.
This automatic configuration of large-scale networks will be realised based on a cross-platform mobile application. This cross-platform mobile application for Android and iOS will be implemented, which serves as an entry point for registering sensors and creating the needed association to a physical context i.e., room, as shown in Fig. 3. This is done by scanning the QR codes of the sensors and the room. To reduce flexibility, the component's metadata is stored as an URL in the QR code that points to a database that can be altered. This provides flexibility because metadata can be changed in the database without changing the fixed QR codes.
Posting the scanned devices from the app to the room-API triggers the registering of the sensors. Afterwards the room-API begins configuring the pairing between the sensors and gateways associated with the room. The strongest connection is then determined by pairing every sensor to every gateway.
In pre-studies we have created methodising tests for the range between gateways and sensors to determine the quantity of gateways to cover a given infrastructure. ZigBee radio waves’ strength decays very differently depending on the environment, making conclusions difficult. We’re have also explored different pairing strategies between the devices, i.e., first come, first served or balancing the number of sensors in each room to optimise signal strength.
Fleet management of large-scale IoT networks
The Squid.Link gateway has a ZigBee trust center (TC) which decides whether to allow or disallow new devices into its network. The TC is usually the network coordinator but is also able to be a dedicated device. It is responsible for security roles such as Trust Manager, to authenticate devices that request to join the network, Network Manager, to maintain and distribute network keys. Configuration Manager, to enable end-to-end security between devices. The data required to include the connected ZigBee device and sensors.
This project will develop an application that is a software infrastructure using data from connected sensors and devices that also runs on the gateway. Data from TC and applications can be backed up and restored in case of failures to maintain a solid IoT network environment without untimely network outages and the disrupted network connectivity and data loss they cause. The fleet management software module will be implemented on the Squid.Link 2 × gateway to primarily facilitate:
Building energy performance diagnostics software
This project will develop a software solution for diagnostics building energy performance based on inputs from the proposed IoT solutions. The tool uses a scalable and adjustable approach combining Rules-Based Methods, Performance Indexing and statistics-based FDD. The tool will focus on the common faults and uses validated data from IoT devices.