DMC's client wanted to create an Industrial IoT (IIoT) solution to monitor all aspects of their vehicle operation used for maintaining infrastructure in a variety of municipalities. DMC developed a system to collect information about each vehicle in use utilizing J1939 CAN bus and GPS cellular to communicate to vehicle systems.
A system to monitor all facets of vehicle operation and relay that information to a server was written by DMC using the Microsoft stack, including ASP.NET, SQL Server, and Google Map integration. The system oversees all parameters associated with auxiliary systems on a custom vehicle, including location and fuel consumption. Units on the vehicles are running Linux with networking, while the data collection was programmed in Python.
Since data integrity was a key requirement, DMC implemented a system that is capable of internally logging data if the cellular connection is severed. Once the connection is reestablished, the backend services can connect to the device to send out data. The system has second level redundancy to cache data and send it to a database if the system is offline.
The use of protocol buffers allows for densely packed data, drastically reducing the size of packets sent between mobile assets and the server. This resulted in a considerable cost savings on the client's cellular network.
DMC developed an entire web interface to communicate with the backend database using ASP.NET. The front end includes all user management functionality expected of an enterprise-level website. This includes the ability to configure various roles and permissions so our client's superusers can easily administer their system.
DMC also maintains the server infrastructure on Microsoft's Azure cloud service and manages all the cellular connectivity accounts, eliminating the burden from the client's internal resources.
DMC's solution provides our client the ability to offer a service that optimizes fleet operations, saving time and resources.