Beer, Beer, Beer – IoT brewing Part 3

[peakMeissner]

Introduction

After connecting the brewery to the SAP Cloud platform in the previous article, I'll show you how to evaluate the data using a standard IoT application. For this I use SAP IoT Application Enablement (AE) and SAP Web IDE.

 

Previous posts

1	Beer, Beer, Beer – IoT brewing Part 1
2	Beer, Beer, Beer – IoT brewing Part 2
3	Beer, Beer, Beer – IoT brewing Part 3

 

Goal / Requirements

My goal is to control my brewing process as precisely as possible. It is true that the technology cannot replace many years of experience by far. Technology can be a good support for achieving reproducible results. Especially the recording and evaluation of measured data offers a good basis for root cause analysis. For this reason I would like to create an application which presents the collected data and allows a quick check of the current result in order to make adjustments in time if necessary.

 

SAP IoT Application Enablement

In order to be able to use the data sent from the brewing plant to SAP IoT Service, we should create a new package with a unique name. You can access the package manager from the dashboard of your IoT tenant. Depending on you requirements you can either make the package visible privately or across the tenant.

https://<yourtennant>.iot-sap.cfapps.<zone>.hana.ondemand.com

In the next step you should create the properties of the device via the Thing Properties Catalog. Within the catalog you should select the previously created package, define a new Property Set and add the necessary properties.













Afterwards you are ready to set up the thing type of the device using the Thing Modeler.













In the last step, you must establish the connection between SAP IoT Service and SAP AE. To do this, you create a new thing based on the defined thing type. To link the incoming data from SAP IoT Service to SAP IoT AE chose the previously created device as well as the specific sensor and check the mapping between the properties. In case the device is sending data you will be able to see the last record in the value field.







 

SAP Web IDE

The goal is to create an IoT application. In order to create the application we use the SAP Web IDE. As a matter of fact SAP Web IDE runs in the Neo Enviroment. Therefore the following architecture results:



In order to set up a connection between the two environments it is necessary to configure the trust. A detailed how-to can be found here. Afterwards we're able to continue with the creation of the actual application. In this scenario I will be using a predefined SAP template. Nevertheless you're free to code your own application using SAPUI5. To create the application access your SAP Web IDE and process with the steps described in the SAP Help Portal. After completing the setup you will end up in the SAP Web IDE Worksapce with the generated application. In order to check the results of the freshly created application you can run the application as follows:

IoT Application

The build application consists of up to four pages. Starting with the landing page, where all location based assets are being displayed on a map.



Additionally, you have the ability to add a page that presents all things within a list view. The third page displays detailed information, such as general data or measured values, of the devices.



Finally, the detailed measured values of the devices can be evaluated within variable time intervals in the analysis page.



The final step is to deploy the application. My college f.lehmann wrote a nice blog on this topic. After deploying the app to the Cloud Foundry environment you are finally done 🙂 .

 

Roundup

In this series it all started out using a Raspberry Pi a temperature sensor and some software. So far the brew controller is connected to the SAP Cloud Platform via MQTT and it is possible to monitor the current state of the machine via the created application. Therefore, I now have the ability to monitor my brewing process.

 

Outlook

This whole project was lots of fun therefore I want to launch the second and third phase. Although I'm able to control the brewing process I still can not determine when my beer is ready to drink. Therefore I want to build a digital hydrometer (iSpindel) connect it to my brew controller and monitor the data using the created application. Furthermore, I want to connect my fridge to a SAP S/4HANA system to manage my warehouse.