Welcome to my first blog post. For those who don’t know me, I’ll briefly introduce myself. My name is Mareica Apel, I’m 18 years old and I live in Ettenkirch (Germany). In September I started my apprenticeship as an assistant for office management in the department Ravensburg.

I’m taking part in this year’s IoT and Me competition. We, the trainees and students of the Minol-ZENNER Group, have had the opportunity to try out and experiment with the help of sensors and our ideas. For this purpose we were provided with three different LoRaWAN® sensors. The Sensative Strips Multi-Sensor +Drip, the Sensative Strips Presence and a Browan Tabs Object Locator. To read the values, we have access to visualization tools such as the B.One Gallery and Grafana.

In this article I would like to give you a few small insights into my competition project.

My Use Case: Room Occupancy Monitoring with LoRaWAN®

For everyone who has not read the blog post about the participants in the current “IoT and Me” competition: With my idea I would like to simplify everyday life at the Ehrle Health Center.

I thought about installing the sensors in the treatment rooms to see at a glance whether there is a customer in there or whether the room is free. In addition to the current room occupancy , you can see the current temperature in the room and whether the light is turned on or off.

Where exactly do I attach the Sensors?

I attached the Sensative Strips Multi-Sensor including magnet provided for the competition to the bottom of the door with double-sided adhesive tape and I attached the Sensative Strips Presence to the side of the patient chair, also with double-sided adhesive tape. Whenever a customer sits on the chair, the sensor recognizes the customer and it is displayed that there is a customer in the room. In addition, the Sensative Strips Multi-Sensor shows that the door is closed.

The Background of my Idea

I just find it more practical if you can see at a glance whether the room is free or occupied.

E.g. in the following situation:

A customer comes in without an appointment and an employee just happens to be treating the customer. With the help of the sensors, the employee can now easily check on the computer whether another customer is currently in the treatment room and does not have to walk back to check.

My Application Tool for Visualization

For my project I use the visualization tool Grafana. With Grafana I have a good overview of the door status, presence status, room temperature and illuminance .

Short Interview with further Insights

In this blog post you have already got some small insights into me and my project. You can find out what happens next, how I got on with my project overall and how I liked this very first “IoT and Me” competition in a short interview.