Merch Cart with mangOH Yellow

Merch Cart with mangOH Yellow

This project is designed to use the mangOH Yellow development kit to track a Merchandise Cart in an outdoor event venue, as well as track the cart’s inventory level. It recreates the LTE for IoT Merch Cart project with the new mangOH Yellow development kit. The setup shows how IoT devices can be used to capture key insights and provide the ability to re-deploy services and assets.

The main objective of this project is to introduce you to the mangOH Yellow development ecosystem. The development board comes with bundled cloud and connectivity services which include 100 MB of data with Sierra Wireless Smart SIM, device and SIM management provided through AirVantage, and a 3-month subscription to the Octave platform from Sierra Wireless.

The desired outcome is to help jumpstart your IoT device development by utilizing the robust connectivity APIs that let you access cloud and network services.

mangOH is a family of open source hardware platforms having reference design for the CF3 form factor modules, including Sierra Wireless WP Series & HL Series. The WP Series of modules take advantage of the ARM Cortex A7 in the Qualcomm® MDM920X modems to run the open source Legato Linux platform dedicated for customer applications.

Development Kit

Hardware

  • Includes a cellular modem for wirelessly connecting IoT applications over a mobile network
  • Powerful ARM-based application processor with GNSS receiver
  • Built-in sensors including Accelerometer, and Gyroscope
  • Can be powered by a battery for low-power wireless applications

Software

  • Pre-integrated with the open source Legato Linux platform for application-level development
  • Robust connectivity APIs lets you access cloud and network services such as voice calls, SMS, data, radio controls
  • Maintained Linux distribution based on the long-term supported Linux kernel (LTSI) hosted by the Linux Foundation
  • mangOH Yellow board with soldered-down WP7702 CF3 module (The module ships with pre-built software already installed!)
  • (2) micro-USB cables
  • Ultra-Wide Band antenna (taoglas FXUB63)
  • Breakout board (IoT expansion card format)
  • (2) M2 screws for IoT card installation
Box Contents

Register yourself on the mangOH website and register your mangOH device on the website by going to the device registration tab. You can take a look at the user guide, hardware documentation and the Getting Started guide, available on the same website.

  1. Download drivers:

    Go to source.sierrawireless.com—the technical portal for Sierra Wireless products where the driver file is hosted. If you already have a Source account, log in. Otherwise, register for a Source account, which is required to download files.

  2. Log in to your account, click on the SEARCH tab and enter WP7702.

    Expand the Firmware and Drivers section

    Downloading Drivers for the mangOH Yellow Development Kit
  3. Look for “drivers for WP77xx series modules” and download the GenericDriverSetup.exe file
  4. Run the downloaded file (GenericDriverSetup.exe) and follow the prompts to install the drivers

mangOH Yellow is (almost) ready to go right out of the box—all it needs is a power source

  1. Before powering on, make sure the dip switches are set correctly
  2. Remove the protective film from the dip switch block

    Finding the dip switches and removing the protective film
  3. Make sure all the dip switches are OFF (factory default mode) Make sure the power select jumper is on the pins closest to the edge of the board. (This selects the USB micro-B connector as the power supply.) Refer to section 3.1.1 on page 13 in the mangOH Yellow user guide to see the different types of powering modes.

  4. Power up board using the micro USB on the port that is named as USB and turn on

    Power on the mangOH Yellow board
  5. Go to the device manager to see that mangOH Yellow is recognized.

    COMM port settings

    As soon as the board is powered, the power LED turns green and the CF3 module boots. The booting process can be viewed by connecting a micro USB to the COMM port on the board and accessing it through a terminal emulator (like PuTTY on Windows/ minicom on Linux).

  6. We have used PuTTY. Accessing CF3’s console using minicom can be found in the mangOH Yellow users guide

    Serial port to access CF3’s console
  7. Open PuTTY and set the fields as shown here:

    Serial line = COM18 (the USB Serial Port number as seen in Device Manager)

    Speed = 115200

    Connection Type = Serial and click open

    Putty configuration
  8. Boot process can be seen as soon as you open the terminal after powering the device.

    Booting mangOH Yellow
  9. If the LEDs on the mangOH blink in sequence, it means that the booting has completed, you are now ready to use the device. The booting process completes in less than 5 seconds.

Now that your mangOH is powered on and running, connect to it to quickly test some of its features and run the first program

  1. From your computer’s command prompt, test the USB connection using the command:

    ping 192.168.2.2 (the CF3 module has a default IP address of 192.168.2.2)

    Successful ping to the connected board
  2. Connect to the mangOH Yellow using your terminal emulator by typing in
    ssh [email protected]
  3. The following message appears if you are using your CF3 module for the first time (modules are shipped without a password). For now, type 3 and press Enter
  4. For the reminder, type Y and press Enter to be reminded the next time you connect. (During this tutorial, do this each time you open an SSH connection to the mangOH Yellow)
  5. Type hello and hit enter to run the welcome application

    Selecting options for first time use
  6. Choose any menu selection to test the mangOH Yellow features:

    1. DISABLE out-of-box experience— The out-of-box experience refers to the “Vegas Mode”, where the buzzer sounds and LEDs flash faster upon pressing the user button on the board. It is enabled by default. Make sure to disable it when you want to work with Octave. (The option changes to ENABLE out-of-box experience so you can turn Vegas mode back on again if you want to.)
    2. LEDs—Follow the menu options to turn off and on the generic (green) LED and the tri-color LED, or to disable/enable Vegas mode.
    3. Buzzer—Follow the menu options to set the period (length of time between beeps), the duty cycle percentage (beep length), and to test (activate/deactivate) the buzzer.
    4. Octave—Display the information you will need to register your device on Sierra Wireless’ Octave IoT service and follow the options to disable or enable the out-of-box experience. (Note that this disable/ enable is the same as the main menu option.)
    Information needed for Octave account

Now that your mangOH Yellow is working, it’s time to send its sensor data to the cloud. MangOH Yellow kit comes with a 3-month trial subscription to Sierra Wireless’ cloud-based Octave IoT platform, which can collect data from mangOH Yellow, process it, and act on the data both in the cloud (on Octave) and ’at the edge’ (on mangOH).

Claim Your Trial Octave Account

Octave account is pre-configured with some basic options to experiment with collecting, processing, and taking actions based on mangOH Yellow’s sensor and other data. To create a trial Octave account:

  1. Go to (https://www.sierrawireless.com/octave/apply/) and fill in the details. An employee of sales dept. of Sierra Wireless will contact you to create an account on Octave.
  2. Log in to your account and register your device using the information you collected from the welcome application - hello.
  3. This is how the screen would look, with your device details populated:
  4. Device details screen in Octave

Example - Streaming an onboard sensor value to Octave

All the sensors on the board can be accessed by their respective resources and new resources can be created when interfacing external sensors. Creating an observation for a resource helps in keeping track of the resource parameter values. Any change in these values generates an event. Many such events form a stream of data that would be sent to cloud.

In the following steps let us see how to stream light sensor data to Octave.

  1. In the resources tab, search for light.

    Parameters related to light resource will be displayed.

    For /light/enable, set configured value=true

    For /light/period, set configured value=5 and click on Apply to save the changes.

    Setting parameters in the Octave Resources tab
  2. After a few seconds you'll see that the "Last Reported Value" for the light sensor in the cloud has updated. You see this update on the Resources screen because the device is in Developer Mode. Remember, in Developer Mode the device periodically updates all of its last-known values for every Resources, regardless if it is set to be Observed or not.

    Last reported value for the Light Sensor
  3. In order to send data to the cloud when not in Developer Mode, we'll need to create an Observation.

  4. To create an observation for the light resource:

    a) Go to the Observations tab under Device. Click on Add Observation.

    b) Select the resource for which an observation is being created, enter the observation name, select cloud Stream (as we want to stream data instantly to the cloud), enter description for the observation, and click save.

    Creating an Observation for the light resource

    c) You can see that an observation is created and is listed on the Observations page.

  5. The streamed data can be viewed by going on the Recent events section in the Details tab.

    Viewing the Streamed Data

    Streamed data can also be viewed by going to the Streams tab and selecting the observation we created.

    Viewing the Streamed Data

    More information on each event in the stream can be viewed by clicking on the arrow beside the creationDate.

    Streams can be processed on Octave platform by Cloud Actions. A Cloud action is a script written in Javascript language and is executed on Events entering a Stream in the cloud. The Cloud Action takes an Event as input and can produce zero or more events in any pre-defined stream while also accessing data from other Streams and executing REST requests.

    A Cloud Action can be designed to take the events coming from external sensors, add the device name and timestamp, and forward the event via a WebHook to a REST endpoint running on Amazon Web Services. As seen in the Merch Cart demo, we have the web app running on an AWS instance.

    • Place bottles on top of sensors to simulate smart shelf.

      Demo 1
    • Place bottles on top of sensors to simulate smart shelf.

      Demo 2
    • Remove a second bottle, the inventory drops by 1, and a Sales Opportunity appears.

      Demo 3
    • Screen displays festival map with prompt to move a cart to Center Stage.

      Demo 4
    • Drag and drop one of the beer carts to center stage.

      Demo 5
    • Success (or failure) notification appears.

      Demo 6
    • Tap on Dashboard button (bottom left) to see metrics from AWS IoT for inventory levels. Merch cart sales chart is static data.

      Demo 7
    • Tap Restock (bottom right) to reset inventory level to 60 bottles

    • Remember to place beer bottles on sensor pads on sensor shelf mat in order to re-trigger when removed for next iteration

      Qualcomm MDM920X is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, and/or its subsidiaries.
NameTitle/Company
Ramya PolisettiEngineer, Qualcomm Technologies Inc.
Rajan MistryStaff Engineer, Qualcomm Technologies Inc.

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