HCP IoT Showcase using Sphero – Part 1: Overview

On July 7th 2016, SAP Korea hosted SAP Forum, one of the biggest marketing event in Seoul and Korea team operated an interesting booth using Sphero for customers. The booth was for experiencing IoT technologies including HCP, sensors, Raspberry Pi and MQTT by playing a maze game. A number of customers not only played, watched the game but gained some insights for applying IoT using HCP.

This initiative was inspired by Anil Bhaskaran, not just my manager but my mentor and Korea team (Former Member, Former Member and myself) developed and extended the idea.

Since seeing is believing, please watch the following videos.

The main goal of this maze game is, literally, to find a correct path from the start to finish point by controlling Sphero while minimizing the lap time.The overall architecture is as follows.

• Customers can control the Sphero by using Xbox 360 controller which is connected to the Raspberry Pi. In the behind scene, bluetooth pairing with Sphero and Xbox 360 connectivity are controlled by Python codes on Raspberry Pi.
• There are 16 pairs of infrared sensors embedded in the maze and those are dividing the maze into 16 areas. All sensors are also connected to Raspberry Pi and detect and track the location of Sphero in real-time and publish messages to MQTT broker. This is also controlled by Python code on Raspberry Pi.
• Another Python code on Raspberry Pi subscribe topics from MQTT broker and communicate with HCP IoT Services.
• HCP side has a simple UI with 3 Fiori style tiles – User Registration, Play Game and Leaderboard.

In these blog series, I’ll share how we build the game step by step.

Hope these blog series help you to get some insight and stay tuned for the upcoming postings!

Best,
Seungjoon