IoT Monitoring and Analysis System

For a Leading Supply Chain Visibility Company

Service

Mobile Development, Web Development, Internet of Things
Business Domain

Logistics & Delivery & Supply Chain
Technologies

Kotlin, .NET, React

BUSINESS OVERVIEW

Enhance tracking and monitoring of the products during transportation

The company provides logistics and cargo monitoring, management, and information solutions serving the worldwide perishable product supply chain. The company develops solutions to monitor the condition and location of the cargo during the transportation of various perishable products (Food and L&S).

The client approached us to develop an IoT prototype to allow tracking and collection of information about the cargo at the case level through NFC and UHF enabled smart labels. The solution would potentially solve a problem of tracking at the case level at low cost, touchless transfer of the data into the cloud for decision making, proof of delivery, and integrity of the products.

CHALLENGE

Ensure robust communication between tags and software

The main challenge was to ensure a stable connection and smooth integration between tags and software since we had two types of tags — NFC and UHF — that required different software and firmware. Also, we needed to understand how to read data from tags and set up configuration without proper documentation.

The NIX team needed to develop:

A web portal for admins to manage info from tags in real-time
Mobile apps for sending notifications to users, as well as monitoring and reading NFC tags
An IoT system for defining GPS locations, measuring temperatures, and transferring these data to a readable device
A system for risk analysis, route construction, and forecasting

SOLUTION

System for temperature monitoring and crime risk analysis

We needed to work with the Azure IoT Hub to connect, collect, and process telemetry from the devices. This included gathering information from NFC and UHF tags that provided location and temperature information.

The first project was to create an IoT solution designed for temperature monitoring and GPS tracking of various products. For example, when transporting medicine, vegetables, or fruit, the product can deteriorate if the temperature goes beyond acceptable limits.

To prevent this from happening, each of the containers had an NFC or UHF/NFC tag. These tags can collect the current temperature of the product and be read by using mobile phones in the case of NFC or by UHF readers to collect the data and transfer to the cloud.

The temperature and scanned GPS location is sent to the Azure cloud and analyzed in real-time through the mobile app or web-portal. This way we can continuously see how the cargo had been moving and how the temperature was changing, and in case of unwanted heating or cooling the administrators and drivers were notified with a warning immediately.

The project includes:

A web portal for admins based on ReactJS to capture info from the tags and map movement and temperature variations in real-time
An IoT system for monitoring and analysis based on the Azure IoT Hub. As for communication between devices, we used HTTPS, WSS, AMQP, and MQTT protocols to support different clients
Mobile apps, both native iOS and Android, for sending notifications to users, and monitoring and reading NFC tags
A desktop application for the UHF reader

Mobile app features:

Configure and read the current temperature from the NFC tag
Display the data from the tag as a chart
Show on the map points where the data were read
Receive notifications if the read data doesn’t match parameters configured by the user.

The second project was to develop a system for crime risk analysis, route construction, deviation, and monitoring of transportation and temperature simulation.

We developed a sandbox to simulate product temperature, taking into account the initial product temperature and external temperature measurement. The system allows one to:

Visualize and predict whether the products will exceed the permissible limits during transportation
Perform crime risk analysis based on empirical data on crime in different parts of the world to ensure a safe route
See distance and risk analysis of deviations from the desired route

OUTCOME

Multi-operated IoT system for ensuring the integrity of goods

As a result, the client received a fully-equipped IoT system for iOS and Android and desktop applications for monitoring and analysis of NFC/UHF tags. The system provides real-time location, status data, and critical activity alerts to enable proactive management of every shipment anywhere in the world.

This solution:

Ensures the integrity of the goods and provides prompt damage prevention during transportation
Enables transparency in the relationship between suppliers, customers, and end-users

Tech stack

.NET, Kotlin, Firebase, ReactJS, Azure Maps, Azure Storage, Azure IoT Hub, Azure Functions, Azure Service Bus, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SignalR, Mapbox, BLE, Dagger, Cicerone, RxJava, Retrofit, MPAndroidChart, NDEF, NfCA
Team

Project Manager, .NET Developer, C++ Developer, iOS Developer, Android Developer, QA Engineer