Abstract
Abstract In the scientific field, data acquisition using commercial or self-developed sensors is a necessity for many research activities. Data security and data privacy are important requirements in all types of IoT applications, especially in the medical context. IoTree42 is a powerful, OpenSource platform that closes the gap between cost-efficiency, the ease of use and digital sovereignty. The flexible and user-friendly design makes the platform ideal for the originally conceived research context. Nevertheless, it can be used for smaller budget-oriented setups and industrial applications with thousands of sensors and actuators likewise. The platform was developed with security in mind by minimizing interfaces and the use of stable software components and transport protocols. IoTree42 utilizes lightweight OpenSource software cast into a flexible backend, allowing the deployment not only on full-fledged servers but also on single board computers like the Raspberry Pi. Data is transmitted with low overhead via MQTT, a robust protocol optimized for machine to machine communication. The transmission technology between all components is freely selectable. Besides data acquisition, IoTree42 enables control of actuators and automation through interfaces with visual programming tools. This allows for remote interventions without requiring prior programming experience. The incoming data can conveniently be visualized in dashboards or easily be exported for further analysis. The network consists of a central server and satellites (gateways) arranged in a star topology. Sensors and actuators connect to the gateway. The initial setup of the server and the gateways is automated, well documented, and can be done within minutes. Thanks to the increasing usage and the contribution of the community, the pool of code examples for sensors is growing and lowers the entry hurdle for users without programming background. IoTree42 is a fast-growing, multi-user, hardware and cloud agnostic, easy to deploy, privacy compliant and competitive solution compared to commercial IoT alternatives.
Highlights
In the scientific field, data acquisition and secure data handling of commercial and self-developed sensors is a necessity for many research activities
The prefix "universe" indicates that the message will be forwarded to the platform and "temp_sensor" is a container for the temperature data received from a DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor connected to an ESP32 microcontroller wired to a ESP32 microcontroller that communicates with the Raspberry Pi via WiFi and acts as the gateway
An exemplary deployment scenario: The IoTree42 platform is currently being implemented as a control and monitoring system for our research group within several laboratories in the Munich University of Applied Sciences (MUAS)
Summary
Data acquisition and secure data handling of commercial and self-developed sensors is a necessity for many research activities. Proprietary systems can handle these tasks but are expensive, take sovereignty of the data, and are hard to adapt to non-commercial hardware. Programmed solutions seem to be a cheap alternative, but they require time and expertise to develop, test, and implement. They are prone to failure leading to data loss. The IoTree platform was developed out of the needs of our researchers in field studies with wearable devices and in the research facility, e.g., with experimental setups and equipment monitoring.
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