IoT: Multisensor Network Management Solution for a Carmaker

Customer

The customer is the world’s leading manufacturer of automotive measurement and test systems with over 5,000 employees and $1.4 bln in annual revenue.

The company provides multiple end-to-end products including mechanical, electrical and software systems to help car manufacturers perform a range of pre-production tests, such as gas emission, endurance, engine performance, fuel consumption and more.

Challenges

To extend their offering, the customer commissioned HQSoftware to develop a system for managing a network of connected smart sensors that would collect, process and measure a wealth of data from vehicles and vehicle components under simulated road-driving conditions.

The project team was challenged to create a multisensor environment with limited CPU and RAM resources while staying compliant with the industry’s high testing standards.

Solution

The environment included Windows CE-based and Linux-based sensors (measurement tools). Despite the difference in technology, HQSoftware’s team exploited the capabilities of ASP and Node.js, respectively, to create user interfaces with the same look and feel across all sensors.

As the sensor UIs were designed to help vehicle test engineer manage each device separately, the team also implemented a web interface in the cloud for more holistic management and better insight to the entire network. This way, the system would collect all the data from the sensors, aggregate it in the central cloud storage and then turn into visually-rich graphs.

The system’s functionality allowed engineers to:

• Monitor sensor data in real time, including gauge measurements, numeric values and more.
• Log and track events, such as a sensor turning on/off or surpassing a predefined threshold, over a certain period.
• Configure settings on each device separately or access the central cloud server to schedule automatic setting updates for complex test scenarios.
• View and upload user manuals via the web interface

Outcome

HQSoftware created a system to manage a range of sensors collecting, processing and visualizing data from test vehicles in a realistic simulation of road-driving conditions. The customer integrated this test automation solution into a series of their products, thus enabling car manufacturers to cut testing costs, especially while developing vehicles with complex designs.

Read more about our IoT services and automotive IoT solutions.