Monitoring artwork quality by collecting and interpreting sensor data
Our client -CHARP- is a KU Leuven spin-off that is building an innovative product to monitor environmental parameters around artwork with the aim of protecting the artwork proactively. We assisted them at a key moment in their product development lifecycle when they decided to strengthen the foundations of the initial minimum viable product, transitioning into a cloud-native architecture and refining the overall user experience. In this case study you’ll read more about the setup of this cooperation and our approach.
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Challenge
The CHARP team contacted us with a request to assist them in making their product ready to scale, from the cloud architecture all the way to the user experience. The CHARP technology is business critical for their clients, so they have high expectations regarding uptime and reliability of the sensor data collection.
Solution
We made an assessment of the existing cloud infrastructure and implemented a renewed architecture to make use of cloud-native components on Google Cloud Platform to process the continuous stream of sensor data in a more efficient way. Additionally, we performed a UX audit and streamlined the user experience.
Approach
We set up a true co-creation model between our team and CHARP's, with a key engineer from their side as a liaison with a dedicated team from our end. Once the new design- and technical approach were agreed, we set up a joint delivery model with a hyper-efficient operating model and short release cycles.
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Implementing a cloud-native target architecture
We transitioned the infrastructure from the Digital Ocean setup with self-managed Kubernetes clusters towards managed services on Google Cloud Platform, leveraging many of GCP’s autoscaling benefits.
Event-driven processing of sensor data
We opted for Pub/Sub for reliable and real-time data queueing, transitioning from what was previously a Kafka queue which created great overhead and significant costs. The Pub/Sub que also serves back-up purposes and handles the distribution to multiple subscribers.
Leveraging cloud-native components for auto scalability
We set up multiple Cloud functions to process, format and push measurements into a managed InfluxDB for real-time analytics, which was a significant optimisation compared to the prior implementation where servers were waiting for events 24/7, triggering permanent costs even when nothing was happening.
Setting up monitoring instruments to assure quality
As we were transitioning from an old towards an entirely new architecture, we needed to assure a frictionless and error prone transitioning. We set up a structural logging system for all device types to keep track of the rate of measurements per device, potential drops and the appropriate alerts if something goes wrong.
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From conceptualisation towards production in under 6 months
When implementing a new target architecture for a product like CHARP, it’s crucial to create momentum and deliver within the indicated time spans.
Setting up an effective operating model
With our steep ambitions and timeline, it was crucial to define a flexible operating model with fluent communication lines, one source of truth in the documentation and swift decision making. We set up joint operating routines in a 2-weel sprint-based rhythm.
Moving fast while not breaking anything
We gathered the right people from CHARP and from our side into a dedicated product team, and gave them a clear mandate to drive change throughout the codebase and infrastructure. Through extensive automated test coverage and monitoring instruments, we built in the necessary quality and continuity assurances.
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As we speak, the CHARP technology is being used in well-know museums worldwide. We’re immensely proud to have made a significant contribution to the technical setup and overall user experience at a key moment in the product development process, laying a foundation to build further on for many more years.
We wish the CHARP team the best of luck in their further growth journey and we’ll be happy to keep supporting you in any way we can!
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