Concept of the IT solution “Smart Blitzmerker: Bring your own Device - Get your own Data ( BYOD - GYOD )” for the competition “Think BIG! DATA Contest” ( bigdatacontest.hu/ )

1. Idea title
Smart Blitzmerker: Bring your own Device - Get your own Data ( BYOD - GYOD )
Teaser
A smart device collects data from analog meters by taking a photo of the numeric display
and pushes it as digital data to the Cloud
Please describe your idea in detail
1. Which problem solved: Our complete solution ( from sensor to cloud ) helps local
companies and local institutions to collect energy data, which is the mandatory
prerequisite to build an energy management system. Energy management systems may
help to implement "power load management" ( German: "Lastmanagement" ) , the only
known working business model to make use of smart meters
2. Technology:
Two alternative smart devices will be developed:
2.1 SmartDevice: Embedded microcontroller board, on-board imageing module ( = camera
), image recognition, wireless data transfer or data transfer by fieldbus to a local facility
server and/ or to the Cloud. The SmartDevice is used to be glued or assembled
permanently to the meter, usually. So it must be "cheap" to be rolled-out in big
numbers.
2.2 SmartPhone: Standard smartphone with camera and wireless or mobile Internet
access, maybe operated by a selfie stick. The SmartPhone is just put temporarily in front
of a meter for reading the data. There is the option to implement some extra wireless
hardware for both devices, so that the data is transfered wireless by a 863 Mhz long-range
wirless network for 5-10 km to a next datastation ( as aternative to transfer data by local
Wifi or Bluetooth wireless networks, or cable ).
3.
3.1 SmartDevice: Traditional smart metering solutions require to replace the analog meter
by a new smart meter, this is very expensive. Our solution is just a small cheap device
which is put in front of the analog data display, to read the data by making a photo.
Traditional solutions which read the analog data by making a photo are too bulky, weighty
and energy-intensive, as they usually implement the full image processing on the smart
device. You need a full Linux computer ( a la Raspberry ) for that. With our solution, the
hardware application might be a bare metal embedded board just with a realtime operating
system, which has a reduced energy consumption as it can be put to sleep if needed.
3.2 SmartPhone: The use of the smartphone for "everything", and to urge the human users
to buy and operate it at own costs, is indeed not new. But it is a successfull business
model.
4. USP:
4.1 Our smart device SmartDevice will need much less energy than traditional smart-
metering solutions which read analog data by making a photo. It will be much cheaper
than these competitors, and all such solutions including our competitors are much much
cheaper than to exchange the analog meter by a digital meter.
4.2 "Our" SmartPhone doesn´t cost anything, as it is expected to be supplied by the
human operator and human staff. It is just running "our" SmartBlitzmerker App, when
needed. Principle "Bring your own Device".
5. We want to put all software and hardware developed as OpenSource freely available, to
convince partners to trust us and order the paid consulting services and maybe even paid

2. development and implementation services
Business model & Market potential
1. Businss model: Getting consulting contracts by institutions which want to implement the
meter data collection as part of their energy management / energy saving politics.
2. Target group:
2.1 Local decision makers and authorities ( local government, local city council, companies
with facilities and plants ) especially also in low-developed ( "Third World", "poor" )
countries, also in the EU ( e.g. Hungary )
2.2. Local colleges especially also in low-developed countries
2.3. Local software and application developers, especially those of the "maker" scene
( which can design, build and operate both electronics, mecancial hardware and software,
which may be motivated to do local implementations for small business or their own
business or even just their own fun.
3. Target market: Cost-sensitive ocal institutions and cost-sensitive local companies, which
have a need to do energy management and energy saving but need a cheap but also
efficient solution. E.g. Hungaria and other "poor" European countries.
4. Market attractivity: Energy saving is a bargain not just for rich companies in rich
countries, but for anybody in the world: Especially poor countries lack of money to import
energy or produce its own energy. The more expensive energy will be, the more energy
management will count. The base for energy management is collecting energy (metering)
data.
5. Go-to-market-strategy: The software and hardware shall be created as OpenSource, to
attract local colleges especially in low developed countries to invest time ( by bachelor
thesis, coursework, practical project work and laboratory tasks ) to contribute to the
application development. If the same colleges now can proudly present a working
implementation, they can influence local institutions to decide for implementation. The
implementation would be accompanied by the project leaders ( Rolf Hemmerling, local
lecturer of the local college ) and many local contributors ( students, other OpenSource
software developers and IT experts ), according to the principle "Think global, act local".
6. Competitors: Technically, there are quite a number of existing both commercial and non-
commercial implementations of the smart device ( see
http://www.hemmerling.com/doku.php/en/metering.html ), BUT most of them do not supply
the complete signal chain from analog data to the cloud, OR just academic work or hobby
work and not commercially available OR are too expensive, OR have a too expensive
design ( a computer running with an operating system like Linux all the time, which has
high power consumption ). Or solution must be - according to Michael Porter's ideas - a
leader in costs. I.e. the software and application development must be cheap or almost at
no costs, the smart device must be very unexpensive, have light weight and little costs.
Same for the Cloud services - must be cheap to operate ( so the Cloud provider must be
cheap ), easy to operate and maintain ( so the software must be both simple to create and
to operate ). Our solution should run with a battery for 1 year.
Which of the following terms describes the status of your idea best?
Design stage, prototype development started already
Status of idea

3. There is a website page
http://www.hemmerling.com/doku.php/en/smartblitzmerker.html
, at which all already claimed resources like a GitHub account, are collected.
1) A company is not yet founded for the project, but I - Rolf Hemmerling - have time to
develop the software and the application ( as I am unemployed Dipl.-Ing.(FH) in
Information Technology ). The application shall server as work sample, to be presented at
job applications
2) I - Rolf Hemmerling - have a possible partner at a college in India, Ranjan Ganguli.
3) The project did not yet win any award. Rolf Hemmerling was member of the winner
team of the "Campus Challenge Federal State Finale 'Lower Saxony'" of the case study
competition “Accenture Campus Challenge 2008” by Accenture GmbH.
4) The project didn´t get any funding. The only funding is that I - Rolf Hemmerling -
reserved spare time for the future, as long as I don´t have a paid job as IT expert.
Team
1. Rolf Hemmerling, Dipl.-Ing(FH) in Information Technology (
http://www.xing.com/profile/Rolf_Hemmerling,
http://www.hemmerling.com/ ), currently self-employed and looking for contracts & jobs
2. Ranjan Ganguli, Senior Lecturer at Dr. zakir hussain institute, Deoghar (
http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=184575196 )