IoT Subscriber launched at the edgeFLEX final review, Brussels.

The Smart Grid team in Walton Institute, SETU, has launched the IoT Subscriber as an open-source utility following a successful final review of edgeFLEX in Brussels last month, a Horizon 2020 funded project that aimed to facilitate the evolution of the current Virtual Power Plant in the smart grid sector.

This utility, making use of Docker containers and written in Python, captures field telemetry published to an MQTT broker and routes it to a timeseries database, performing any necessary transformation of the data and routing it as needed in a manner that supports any given database schema. Proper management and storage of data is essential to any project that involves reading data from devices in the field, and therefore this utility was deemed to be of potential use to developers within the Walton Institute and at large.

This utility was developed and published under an open-source license with the aid of an open-sourcing handbook also developed within the team. This handbook aims to provide all the relevant information needed to start an open-source project in a way that is easily maintained over time. Together, these two projects aim to bring open-sourcing to prominence within the Walton Institute to advance the role of developers as researchers through publishing software, and to increase our contribution to research in general.

The GitHub page for the IoT Subscriber can be found here. Pictured: David Ryan, work package leader, presenting at the edgeFLEX final review meeting in Brussels, April 2023