Business Challenge
DataArt is a global technology consultancy that develops and supports software solutions. With offices all over the globe, it was important to find a common solution that would help to keep and maintain comfort temperature conditions in them. The main challenge was to create an easy-constructible solution with a modern user-friendly interface.
Most of our offices contain an automatic HVAC system, but unfortunately they are prone to frequent breakdowns and can’t guarantee stable and optimal temperatures in offices.
Climate monitoring is especially efficient when placed in the supply and exhaust ventilation. When the ventilation is operating normally, if the temperature in the office is too high then the system must supply cold air. In case of failure, the air conditioning system switches off and the temperature will rapidly increase. This failure can be detected easily with a simple temperature sensor located inside the ventilation. Additional sensors can gather environmental information around and outside the office. All the data should be available on the web interface. Each malfunction should be immediately reported to the tech department.
Meeting the Challenge
DataArt used its expertise in designing and developing IoT solutions. The solution was built using the open source IoT platform, DeviceHive. DS18B20 temperature sensors were placed on top of the ESP8266 SoC. Since DeviceHive has a special firmware chip which already implements connectivity with cloud services, it was simple to implement the connectivity, the project just reuses the same source code. DeviceHive was deployed to a cloud service and an additional microservice was created in order to fetch the data from the sensors, display it on the web interface, analyze it, and send fault notifications.
Business Benefits
The DataArt team developed a simple and elegant solution, which effectively maintains a comfortable temperature in the offices. Due to the ventilation sensors, it immediately detects air system defects and speeds up failure response times.
Technology
DeviceHive, C, .NET, DS18B20, 1-wire, ESP8266