It is finished! This year’s collaboration between North Dakota State University and Inwerken AG has come to a successful conclusion.

The sensors, LoRa transmission technology and the connection possibility to SAP were provided by WSN Technologies AG. This was not about the question of what we can get, but what we need. To begin with, there were a couple of sensors and LEDs on one device to make both the way from the sensors to SAP, and from SAP back to the device. Thus, we were not only able to read sensor data and evaluate it in SAP, but also to react based on these findings and, for example, to control an LED.

From a technological point of view, state-of-the-art frameworks / tools were used. These include the SAP IoT services, the SAP Cloud platform, SAPUI5, LoRa for transmitting the sensor data and Node-RED as a gateway tool to transfer the data to the SAP cloud.

The Scope of the project was the use of sensors for collecting environmental data such as room temperature, humidity etc. and the transfer of these to the gateway using LoRa technology. These are transferred by Node-RED to the SAP cloud platform. Finally, a UI5 application should visualize the entire concept.

Via the UI5 ​​/ Fiori application it is not only possible to map the current information of the sensors, but also to react accordingly to this data and, for example, also to control the device in order to switch an LED. Thus, within the framework of the project, a PoC was created to build further projects based on this scenario.

To further develop the prototype, we will expand the application in further stages of development. Sufficient ideas for this we have already collected in our product backlog. One of these features is the use of SAP’s new IoT enablement services with the Thing Modeler. This not only enables the presentation of the data, but also the modeling and configuration of all sensors connected to the IoT service.

Overall, the project was very successful and instructive. Thanks to good time management (despite the time difference) and barrier-free communication via weekly Skype meetings, we have been able to be kept informed about the current status of the project and any problems that arise in order to be able to provide appropriate assistance. Besides, it was an interesting one.