Science - JamesBoxx® Redefining Sensor Control

Development of an integration solution for the home automation sector with the Fraunhofer Institute.

Initial situation

The Fraunhofer Institute IMS in Duisburg requires an integrated solution for home automation that communicates wirelessly and convergently across manufacturer and product boundaries. As an experienced development partner for software-based IoT solutions, we are ready to tackle this challenge.

Our Solution - The JamesBoxx®

The JamesBoxx® enables easy, wireless, vendor-neutral, and above all user-friendly integration of various IoT components in one device, such as sensors, actuators, customer, and automation solutions. This allows applications to address e-health, building and industrial automation, as well as M2M, with all controls being carried out homogeneously through a single device.

Benefits for Fraunhofer Institute

Our approach contributes to the protection of investments in existing infrastructures while maintaining compatibility with current and future technologies. The integrated, modular, cost-effective solution reduces entry barriers for customers or the operation of proprietary industrial or home automation solutions. It can run on commercially available small computers, such as the Raspberry PI, is arbitrarily expandable, communicates wirelessly, and can be controlled and operated with a single application.

One system for all manufacturers

The system connects and combines a wide variety of technologies and use cases homogeneously with each other, eliminating the need for manufacturer-dependent or proprietary operation of similar systems. For the end customer or system integrator, it becomes irrelevant what kind of interfaces the sensors or actuators have. All components are integrated, operated and controlled with a single system.

The result

A transponder solution that

nifies 6 different and simultaneously operated sensor infrastructures (Zigbee, Z-Wave, EnOcean, BLE, M-Bus, and GSM)
Runs on any embedded systems (e.g., RPi, BBB…)
Integrates each sensor network using a so-called cube, thereby supporting wireless transponder technologies
Achieves wireless data transfer through innovative energy supply via induction, enabling reading and writing of data
Enables cubes to transmit up to 5W of energy wirelessly over a distance of 5-8 cm
Allows for deployment in antiseptic environments.