Improving Building Sustainability with MongoDB Atlas and Bosch

Every year developers from more than 45 countries head to Berlin to participate in the Bosch Connected Experience (BCX) hackathon — one of Europe’s largest AI and Internet of Things (AIoT) hackathons. This year, developers were tasked with creating solutions to tackle a mix of important problems, from improving sustainability in commercial building operations and facility management to accelerating innovation of automotive-grade, in-car software stacks using a variety of hardware and software solutions made available through Bosch, Eclipse, and their ecosystem partners.

MongoDB also took part in this event and even helped one of the winning teams build their solution on top of MongoDB Atlas. I had the pleasure of connecting with a participant from that winning team, Jonas Bruns, to learn about his experience building an application for the first time with MongoDB Atlas.

Ashley George: Tell us a little bit about your background and why you decided to join this year's BCX hackathon?

Jonas Bruns: I am Jonas, an electrical engineering student from Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen Nürnberg. Before I started my master’s program, I worked in the automotive industry in the Stuttgart area.

I was familiar with the BCX hackathon from my time in Stuttgart and, together with two friends from my studies, decided to set off to Berlin this year to take part in this event. The BCX hackathon is great because there are lots of partners on site to help support the participants and provide knowledge on both the software and hardware solutions available to them — allowing teams to turn their ideas into a working prototype within the short time available. We like being confronted with new problems and felt this was an important challenge to take on, so participation this year was a must for us.

AG: Why did you decide to use MongoDB Atlas for your project?

JB: We started with just the idea of using augmented reality (AR) to improve the user experience (UX) of smart devices. To achieve this goal, we needed not only a smartphone app but also a backend in which all of our important data is stored. Due to both limited time and the fact that no one on our team had worked with databases before, we had to find a solution that would grow with our requirements and allow us to get started as easily as possible. Ideally, the solution would also be fully managed as well to eliminate us having to take care of security on our own.

After reviewing our options, we quickly decided on using MongoDB Atlas.

AG: What was it like working with MongoDB Atlas, especially having not worked with a database solution before?

JB: The setup was super easy and went pretty fast. Within just a short time, we were able to upload our first set of data to Atlas using MongoDB Compass.

As we started to dive in and explore Atlas a bit more we discovered the trigger functionality (Atlas Triggers), which we were able to use to simplify our infrastructure. Originally, we planned to use a server connected to the database, which would react to changed database entries. This would then send a request to control the desired periphery. The possibility to configure triggers directly in the database made a server superfluous and saved us a lot of time.

We configured the trigger so that it executes a JavaScript function when a change is made to the database. This evaluates data from the database and executes corresponding requests, which directly control the periphery.

Initially, we had hit a minor roadblock in determining how to handle the authentication needs (creating security tokens), which the periphery needs and expects during a request. To solve for this, we stored the security tokens on an AWS server which listens to an HTTP request. From Atlas, we then just have to call the URL and the AWS instance does the authentication and control of the lights. After we solved this problem, we were thrilled with how little configuration was needed and how intuitive Atlas is.

The next steps, like connecting Atlas to the app, were easy. We achieved this by sending data from Flutter to Atlas over HTTPs with the Atlas Data API.

AG: How did Atlas enable you to build your winning application?

JB: By the end of the challenge, we had developed our idea into a fully functional prototype using Google ARcore, Flutter, MongoDB Atlas, and the Bosch Smart Home Hardware (Figure 1).

We built a smartphone application that uses AR to switch on and off a connected light in a smart building. The position and state of the light (on or off) are stored in the database. If the state of the light should change, the app manipulates the corresponding value in the database. The change triggers a function that then sets the light to the desired state (on or off).

The fact that we were able to achieve this within a short time without sufficient prior knowledge is mainly due to the ease and intuitive nature of Atlas. The simple handling allowed us to quickly learn and use the available features to build the functionality our app needed.

AG: What additional features within Atlas did you find the most valuable in building your application?

JB: We created different users to easily control the access rights of the app and the smart devices. By eliminating the need for another server to communicate with the smart devices and using the trigger function of Atlas, we were able to save a lot of time on the prototype. In addition, the provided preconfigured code examples in various languages facilitated easy integration to our frontend and helped us avoid errors. Anyone who is interested can find the results of our work in the GitHub repo.

AG: Do you see yourself using Atlas more in the future?

JB: We will definitely continue to use Atlas in the future. The instance from the hackathon is still online, and we want to get to know the other functionalities that we haven't used yet. Given how intuitive Atlas was in this project, I am also sure that we will continue to use it for future projects as well.

Through this project, Jonas and team were able to build a functional prototype that can help commercial building owners have more control over their buildings and take the steps to help reduce CO₂ emissions.