Power Line Communication Interface

About the Client

Cropled AG is a swiss startup, that is revolutionizing indoor farming. Their main product "aurora" is an LED plant lighting solution, that is interconnected via IoT standards, and connected to the cloud. They have won multiple awards with their idea including the Zünder Award und Venture Kick.

The Challenge

The client was under great time pressure and was looking for a solution to connect a large number of lamps with one another, without relying solely on wireless technologies. After some set backs, cropled reached out to us for the development of a solution, that connects the devices over their power supply.

Delivered Value

Thanks to a highly focused start phase and requirements analysis we managed to deliver exactly what the client wanted and on time. Our custom communication interface provides relieve for the existing, wireless communication standards, so that cropled AG now has a highly scalable technology in their portfolio, that sets them apart from the competition.

The Product

Requirements analysis, conception, design, implementation and test of a Power-Line-Communication-Interface (PLC), that enables the communication among multiple ESP32 microcontrollers over their preexisting power cabling — FreeRTOS and C++20 based — Hardware debugging and in-the-field-adjustment — Custom device driver for the PLC transceiver — Customer-specific distributed consensus algorithm based on Raft — Communication interface for directed, full-duplex communication based on UART including the definition and implementation of a custom data packet structure — PLC based firmware duplication to enable OTA-style device firmware upgrades

Technologies

Embedded C++20
ESP32
FreeRTOS
Consensus Algorithms
Device Firmware Upgrades
UART
lwip
TCP/IP
Sockets
Multithreading
Multicore

What the Client Says

"Moritz is very professional and efficient. We were really impressed with his ability, to quickly and reliably solve complex problems. We highly recommend him and are looking forward to our future collaboration."

Michael

Chief Information Officer @ cropled AG

"Thanks to Moritz we have a functional product today, that distinguishes us from the competition. He fully convinced us with his enthusiasm, his extraordinary independence and reliability."

Samuel

Tech Lead @ cropled AG