WIDE

The UNLOCK FAIR Data Platform uses the WIDE (WUR IoT (Internet of Things) Data Exchange) system as its backend for live data monitoring of connected devices. This page briefly outlines the supporting elements of this backend.

UNLOCK backend

The WIDE system is internally supported by the WUR IT. It consists of several modular components responsible for data storage, processing, and visualizing. Together, they enable reliable handling of live IoT data streams within the UNLOCK infrastructure.

VerneMQ

WIDE uses VerneMQ as its MQTT broker. This is essentially the central “server” that handles the message routing received from our LEAF instances. The MQTT communication protocol is specifically designed for IoT data and supports lightweight payloads for efficient transmission.

Node-RED

Node-RED is a flow-based developer tool used to process the data streams coming in from the MQTT broker. It allows us to separate the incoming data and gather the data per device (or groups of similar devices) before ingestion into the database.

TimescaleDB

TimescaleDB is a database (PostgreSQL extension) that is specifically optimized for storing time series data. It enables efficient querying and thus analysis of continuously collected measurements.

Grafana

The data can ultimately be visualized using Grafana. There is a dedicated page on how to get started on this.