Embedded Solutions for Intelligent Weighing Systems

About the Client

The client is a Switzerland-based company and a member of the Swiss Weighing Association. It is a market leader in digital weighing solutions for retail, warehouse, dispensing, and storage systems, as well as for waste disposal and vehicle-related load measurement applications. The company operates in a segment where automation, real-time stock visibility, sensor-driven control and hardware-software integration are increasingly important.

Objective

The objective of the cooperation was to support the client’s team in developing a set of digital weight applications and help create a more universal software core that could be reused across multiple product lines.

Solution

The first introduction with the Client happened at Hannover Messe conference which Altabel Group attended in 2022.

By that time the client had a couple of almost fully implemented digital weight applications. However, they wanted to develop a universal state machine for them based on C/C++, which would be able to change its states depending on internal and external events. The internal events mean the events from the functioning of the state machine, the external ones - the events from peripheral equipment (sensors, cameras, detectors, etc).

Based on the requirements, Altabel Group preselected and, as soon as the customer interviewed and approved, assigned a Solution Architect / software and firmware  engineer, with 15+ years of experience in C / C ++. The allocated specialist was also a research associate at the Scientific Research Institute of Applied Physical Problems, so he was a great asset for the project.

The contract was signed under the Time-and-Material model of cooperation with the focus on full-time long-term collaboration. Altabel specialist was mainly involved in the following projects:

• The application which allows to determine the stock levels of all containers using scales and sends them to a cloud server. The system collects the stocks of the store fully automatically and informs about each individual material withdrawal with time, number of articles and consumers. Its modular design also allows the system to be used in mobile containers or as a "cashier-less" store;
• The solution for a cupboard suitable for distributed and consignment stocks, which determines removal or return of material with the help of smart weightening. The system collects the stock levels completely automatically and informs about each individual material withdrawal with time, number of articles and consumers.

 

While working on the project, Altabel Team has resolved the challenge that has been actually one of the main pains of the client - to create a universal core for several projects. With an inaccurate approach, the state machine could turn out to be quite complex, overloaded and unstable. It was also necessary to take into account and create many different structures.

However, the stable core was successfully developed, and now it can be configured by adding or removing various kinds of the functionality. In terms of configuration, the kernel performed internal functionality (state transitions relative to internal events) and external hardware processing (state transitions relative to events from external hardware).

 

Result

The client was satisfied with the result, as well as with the approach and communication of the dev team, so they prolonged the cooperation and assigned the specialist to the development of another solution - POC/solution for weighing a vehicle while driving which increases road safety and lifetime of road infrastructure.