asvin platform provides secure Over The Air (OTA) Updates to edge devices.

Location Based Services (LBS):

At asvin, we have been working on a new feature to enable secure OTA updates based on geolocation of edge devices. We will build a prototype with location based services to support additional functionality on our platform. This feature enables us to ensure that devices get the rolled-out updates only in certain defined geographical locations. Users can define “Geo Fences” that will represent a real world location or area, in which the device can get OTA updates.

A Geo-fence can be set up by providing the coordinates of the area and the required radius on the asvin platform. The asvin platform will then filter out the requests and updates based on the geolocation logic.

In the future releases users can also draw polygon Geofences on interactive maps as shown below. The shape of the geofence can be either a circle or a polygon depending on the use case.

We consider the following use case as an example for LBS:

A refrigerated truck is carrying dairy products from the distribution center to various supermarket chains. Maintaining temperature of dairy products during transit is very essential to ensure safety and long shelf life of the products, hence this truck is fitted with a sensor to measure and store temperature. This truck also carries various other food products with various temperature threshold requirements. These temperature profiles need to be updated regularly via software updates. This sensor unit is connected to the internet using LTE network and is onboarded on asvin’s Beehive platform to enable OTA updates.

We create a geofence surrounding the distribution center where the truck is often parked for long periods, during onloading and offloading of products. When this truck leaves the distribution center no updates will be applied to the temperature sensor unit. Thus the geofence mechanism will ensure that the software updates are applied only when the sensor unit is within the permitted location in this case: the distribution center.

The above GIF illustrates the truck moving inside and outside the geofence.

 

Demo code for circular geofence