IoT Sweden visited the smart village of Veberöd
Jan Malmgren at Smart Villages is the fire soul behind a long series of creative tests with sensors in Veberöd in the eastern part of Lund Municipality. The idea behind this is to see what sensors can do for good in a village — and also benefit from the fact that a village is more easily navigable than a city and that they are often faster routes of contact to residents and businesses in the community.
- Here we can test sensors and create a whole, says Jan Malmgren. After all, we want to find ways to measure everything that can be beneficial to society, but also allow smart innovations to cross-fertilize each other so that they can be linked together to do even more good. One vision is to create systems that are replicable to cities and municipalities.
Nowadays sitting Flow project project manager Anders Trana joined IoT Sweden board of directors. When IoT Sweden had a board meeting in Lund, they also took the opportunity to take a trip to look at IoT solutions in Veberöd. Smart villages have been an important testing ground for the Flow project funded by IoT Sweden which has been project led by Future by Lund, but has also been an important player in both related projects LOSC and Smart Public Environments (AS). In Veberöd it was an opportunity to wander around the various installations.
At a small roundabout in a residential area there is a sensor from the project partner Sensative. This sensor measures noise. The sensor has been inserted into the lamppost through a 3D printed holder. It allows sensors to be set up and taken down at relatively high altitudes without using a ladder.
Along the main street is an image sensor from Axis Communications installed high on a lamppost. AI assesses the type of road users passing by — whether it is a bus, truck, car, bike/motorcycle or pedestrian — and thus provides data on the number of road users in different directions of different types of vehicles. No information about who is passing through and no pictures are passed on and therefore no personal data. The data collected can then be used by decision makers to create traffic solutions based on what the traffic situation really looks like and thus create a better traffic environment for residents. On the lamppost next to it there is a QR code so that those who wish can read more about the survey but also take note of the data created.
- We were actually notified to the Swedish Integrity Authority, but they refused the notification. It was good that the question was raised, because now we know with certainty that we are not doing wrong, says Jan Malmgren. No images are passed on from the device and, in addition, the system is designed so that the images cannot be passed on because LoRa itself is a natural limitation - there simply is not enough transmission capacity there.
Further along the main street, a combination of several radar sensors has been tested to be able to read speed and vehicle strokes on the bike lane and at the intersection in the middle of the village there is a radar sensor that measures speed. In the parking lot of the school a short distance away there are sensors that measure noise, because it happens that buses are driven in the parking lot next to the school. Jan Malmgren has a vision of connecting this to the lighting, which could be switched on when the noise is loud and thus stop the bus driving.
In Veberöd, there is also an experiment in which the robot Hugo will handle simple deliveries. Here we also test a building permit management where it will be possible to view planned constructions on site using the mobile phone. There are also a number of other successful tests done, including having a sensor that gives an alarm when the preschool gate is left open, a sensor in the cows' water hoof to warn when the water is starting to run out and a sensor that keeps track of the water level in the creek.
- This has been great to see. It is a concrete work to create a useful application in a society, and here IoT clearly benefits both people and society. Smart villages are an important inspiration and it is especially fun for us that it all started with a project from IoT Sweden,” says Catrin Ditz, program manager at IoT Sweden.
- It was very fun to show this to IoT Sweden's Board of Directors, says Jan Malmgren. I think Future by Lund and the Flow project have been accomplished a lot. I think the agile way with some flexibility in budget and in project development has been conducive to creating innovations.
Connections are made possible by the presence of a LoRa base station set up in the village. Since the signal is not quite enough all the way to the outermost parts of the village, Smart Villages amplify the signal by establishing a Mesh network. This is done by the presence of devices on poles at intervals of about 300 meters. In the middle of the village is the municipality of Lund and The power ring Make sure you have Wi-Fi and 5G to connect to. Another advantage in Veberöd is that the new lampposts that have recently been installed provide the possibility of power supply for the sensors.