Prototyping the Monitoring Applications in Public Buildings using Edge Computing Paradigm

The presented work describes a prototype (mockup) of a system for monitoring environmental parameters in residential and public premises. The developed system consists of a set of edge computing nodes aimed to collect sensor data that are sent to the server for further processing. On the example of single-board computers Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone we analyze the peculiarities of their use as edge computing nodes within one distributed system. The MQTT protocol facilitated data transmission between the server and the edge nodes. A specialized time series database, that is optimized for temporal data storage and processing, was utilized for storing the transmitted data. Grafana was employed for the collected data visualisation. The essential information, such as period averages, has been displayed as graphs on dashboards with help of created database queries. Additionally, a REST API was implemented to manage key objects and retrieve information, necessary from potential client applications. Based on the completed work and on the obtained data, we can conclude that the development of a system for controlling environmental indicators in residential and industrial premises, consisting of several edge computing nodes on the basis of different devices is possible, but when deciding on the design of such a system, it is required to consider the technical characteristics and configuration features of the used devices.