Building a Scalable Near Real-Time IoT System

Abstract

All Food Industry and retail companies in Europe are required to comply with strict regulatory demands[1] that are essential to the safety of consumers. The regulations require constant monitoring of all refrigeration systems, which often is resource intensive and unreliable if done manually. These companies also rely on fridges and refrigerated cabinets to store key business assets, and malfunctions could incur severe financial losses. While big enterprises already have solutions for cold chain monitoring, the small and medium sized businesses do not, due to complex installation processes, bad user experience, lack of information or elevated costs. Qold is a cold chain monitoring system being developed by Whitesmith to improve the way SME’s operate. It combines custom sensors with clean and simple web and mobile applications. Qold uses a network of devices to measure temperature values and report them to a cloud server. This data can be immediately consulted by clients and is analyzed to detect undesirable situations which are promptly reported, preventing possible damages. At the start of the internship, a minimum viable product (MVP) had been developed and deployed to early adopters. The product had been validated and a new system needed be developed, taking into account scalability concerns. The objective of this internship is the architectural design and implementation of a new system that builds on the MVP and meets the requirements of a system ready to tackle the European market.