How independency enhances scalability of our system?
Software engineering concepts guides us to build software with higher cohesion and lower coupling. Extending that learning to this project, we tried to keep our system as independent and modularised as possible.
Key software components of our system are the Smart Inventory Management system, Smart Inventory API, Information Console Application and firmware installed on hardware components. The smart inventory API enables developers to use features and access resources in the smart inventory system. This decouples external applications that are using the smart inventory resources and at the same time improves the scalability of the CE Inventory software community.
The Information console application and the smart inventory management system are built independently, but connected through the API.
Key components of our hardware system are Smart Locker controlled by Information Console and the Ultrasonic sensor used to detect the absence of an active user in front of the console. Both the sensor and the actuator array (array of solenoid lockers) are using MQTT protocol. This makes them to be wirelessly connected to the system and the count of the lockers are increasable as required without considering the GPIO limitations.
