Always something to connect

Can a meadow 'talk'? Or a coffee machine? If you ask Arjen van der Knijff (KPN), yes. Connecting devices is his challenge. As a technical consultant at KPN Internet of Things, he looks every day for what is possible and, above all, what is needed to get it working.

Making devices ‘talk to each other’ is how Arjen likes to describe his work. "My goal is always to improve products or related services. For example, because a farmer knows with the help of sensor technology which part of his land to water and which part not. Or because a supplier of a coffee machine sees how often it has to refill coffee beans and whether the machine still works properly. And maybe even, quite interesting from a marketing point of view, whether users of that machine like to drink latte macchiatos or more espressos."

From hardware to dashboard
As a member of KPN IOT's Customer Solutions Team, Arjen looks at data-related issues together with customers. "Our goal is to map out where their 'bottleneck' is and how we could solve it. That could be anything, but in any case it involves different disciplines." This already starts with the hardware, for example for reading out via a serial connection or based on an analog measurement. “Or maybe you could use an additional sensor here. Then you have to think about data carriers, perhaps LoRA, LTE-M or 4G or 5G-based solutions. After the hardware and communication, the data also ends up somewhere where something has to be done with it; you may need to decode or enrich data so that it is of use to the user. And then another application or other solution is needed, for example a simple dashboard or a link to a business information system."

Arjen's role is to test what is needed to get such chains working and to make a design. "Sometimes a proof of concept follows so that we can see that we can, for example, really have that one heat pump tell something from a distance." And once it has been sorted out and proven that it is possible, there is still the challenge of making a sound business case. "I don't do that alone, as a technical consultant I work closely with a business consultant and a project manager. The business consultant looks after the business case and the project manager ensures that we receive the necessary guidance in a project, for example by keeping in touch with our customer, application parties and hardware suppliers."

The world of bicycle insurance has changed
Every project is different and that makes the work challenging, says Arjen. "You have to empathize with the customer's domain every time. And there are difficult considerations throughout the chain. Every choice you make somewhere, ensures that you can do more or less in another place." An example is an insurer that was looking for a solution to properly trace stolen bicycles. An important requirement was that the solution offered had to continue to work over the entire lifespan of a bicycle insurance policy, in this case five years. "A LoRA device can operate on a battery for a very long time. These types of resource constrained devices sleep almost constantly, wake up, send small messages of a few hexadecimals at the most and then go back to sleep. Until the theft mode is activated remotely. After which proactive and high-frequency location updates will be sent."

Not only did the lifespan of the solution have to be long, the attachment of the device also had to be good. "The solution had to be weatherproof. We also had to deal with a certain form factor so that it could fit well on a bicycle. That all involves trade-offs in the hardware and it goes beyond connectivity." Because a completely new service had to be built here, from front to back, it was an exciting project. "Together with the customer, we started thinking about how the service should work and how someone could find a bicycle with an app that had to be able to talk to our platform. Using RF and Bluetooth, it also had to be possible to distance to locate a bicycle." Apart from all the technical challenges, the business case also had to be right. In this case, it was that a bicycle owner would rather find his bicycle again than receive a new one from the insurer, which makes a difference in benefits. "You have to make that sum. The insurance may not cost more than a certain amount and then a case arises at the intersection of business and technology. That makes the work very challenging."

Integration issues
The combination of technology and business appeals to Arjen in his work at KPN, where he has been working for about five years now. "I did business informatics and studied business administration at the RUG, but with IT as a specialism. I can program, but I prefer not to do it all day. I like integration issues." He gives an example of a customer who wants to be able to read energy systems in homes. "The question is how you are going to do that, because there are already existing supplier-specific solutions for some devices, but not at all for others. The challenge is to get an entire chain working: from reading data, for example with a modbus, to creating a dashboard with Power BI, for example."

Arjen's favorite part? "Creating and delivering the dashboard is the reward in a project, that's great. But what I like most is connecting devices and getting data. That's where it starts, where you let devices talk to each other. That is also where my role lies. Ultimately, I am not the one who brings it into production, I am there to scope whether it is possible and how we do it, with a design and often also with a proof of concept. get to work and the final solution meets all requirements."

Alternating work
The technical consultant notices that people are sometimes surprised when he explains in which markets and fields KPN is active. "When I tell people at birthday parties that I work at KPN, I often hear: 'Oh, can you take a look at my router then?' I can laugh about that, people know us as a telecom company. We have traditionally been the largest connector in the Netherlands and that is essentially what we are doing now, in my case it is about IOT." Arjen finds motivation in his work in the new products or better services that are created by connecting devices. "I just really like that and we also have a group of young, enthusiastic and studious people in our department with whom it is very nice to work together. It is also nice to be somewhere else as a technical consultant. Whether that is in the energy sector , financial services or in healthcare, where we also do many projects: in the end, the sector doesn't even matter much, because there is always something to connect."

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