This post tells the use of FIWARE made by the developers of BotCar/Wadjet, winners of the mention as Best IoT Solution in the FIWARE Excellence Challenge (October 2014). Thanks to them for the collaboration!
I'm sure you remember The Knight Rider well, don't you? Many times along the TV series, Michael Knight said to KITT: "keep your scanners peeled"; and we all thought: "wow, how amazing it would be to talk to your car". Do you remember it? Well, this is what we can do with BotCar, an IoT platform that lets drivers talk to their cars and that was recently recognized as the Best IoT solution within the FIWARE Excellence Challenge celebrated last October in Las Palmas, where we competed under the Project name of Wadjet.
Nowadays a standard vehicle has among 60 and 70 sensors, such sensors are producing tons of data each time you drive. Your car is itching to share all these data with you in real time as KITT used to do, but it is simply not able to do it, it can't connect with you.
BotCar solves this for you, our solution gathers all the data produced by the car, processes them and gives back to you in real time the insights you need to save up to 20% of your fuel consumption, while letting you know, just in time, the meaning of the orange light which has just switched on again in the dashboard of your car and how to solve it, improving the safety of the passengers on board by giving the car the capability of sending an immediate alert to the emergency services in case of crash.
BotCar comprises a combination of a hardware device and a software solution developed with Node.js and Mongo.db. The hardware device is connected to the car through a plug & play solution and captures all the information from the sensors of the vehicle. As the device includes both a GSM and Bluethooth 4.0 modules, the information is sent to a server directly or via smart phone. Then the logs of data are processed in real time giving back to the user specific feedback via web service and mobile app.
As you can imagine, the architecture of BotCar fits quite well with the FIWARE Technology. On the one hand, we tackle a global need and we wish to change the world, so we need to be ready for a huge and rapid scalability. On the other hand, we face specific needs related to Big Data and to machine to machine automations based on physical sensors.
In such a context FIWARE is the perfect match, as it was designed fully focused in supporting the Internet of Things world as it was already proven in several Smart Cities across Europe. This IoT specialized approach is what makes the difference among FIWARE and other platform technologies, so, for a project like BotCar, purely IoT, FIWARE is the right choice; on the other hand, our Startup nature can leverage from the zero investment requirement of using FIWARE, which undoubtedly gives to FIWARE a singularity. Therefore we have chosen four FIWARE Generic Enablers to enhance our solution. Our selection comprises: the FIWARE Cloud GE, Object Storage GE, COSMO GE, and ORION Context Broker.
The FIWARE Cloud provides us a GUI to manage the services and resources deployed. We use the Object Storage GE to store all the logs generated in a given trip, these data is storaged in a raw manner, without any kind of processing. The Big Data needs are solved by the COSMO GE, it let us to anonymize all the data which lets us optimize data mining, providing aggregate added value to the users through benchmarking features, and to third parties like insurance companies, automotive industry, fleet transport companies, or Smart Cities. Finally, the ORION Context Broker GE gives us the capability of storing those logs specifically related to automations and alerting features like the last position in which the car was located to alert about steals or parking incidents.
So, remember, with FIWARE technologies you can say to all of your Things "keep your scanners peeled", to empower the users to interact with their Things is easier, cheaper and more scalable using FIWARE.
