Award-winning embeddable control console unifying CAN-bus sensors across WH Bence vehicles
WH Bence's vehicle console re-architected as one CAN-bus dashboard controlling lights, hydraulics, generators and communications on any vehicle it builds.
- console design honoured at the Small Cell Awards
- Award-winning
- console embeddable in every vehicle WH Bence manufactures
- Universal
- message-based protocol unifying third-party sensors and subsystems
- CAN bus
Context
At the request of WH Bence, Europe’s leading manufacturer of specialist vehicles, Erbis implemented an interface for machine monitoring and control.
Challenge
Our client is a mobile-space provider that manufactures vehicles and vehicle parts for motorsport teams, medical organizations and emergency services. Bence builds trailers, semi-trailers, motors, car bodies, controls and other specialist equipment.
A control system is one of the main components of any special vehicle. It lets an operator adjust the machine’s parameters and control its operation, and it integrates the connected devices, sensors and units so they can be accessed through a user interface.
Bence asked Erbis to build that interface: an embeddable console usable in any vehicle the company manufactures.
Pre-development
Because the project was a complete redesign of the current dashboard, we started by examining the existing software: we studied the technical documentation and conducted a code review, then outlined the scope of work.
- First, we had to integrate many third-party systems that are not usually connected to a single vehicle CPU.
- Second, we had to provide remote control of headlights, hydraulics, openings, antennas, electricity generators, satellite and cellular communication systems and meteorological equipment.
- Third, we had to make the control functions respond at the right speed, without delays or interruptions.
Many further tasks were captured in the product roadmap.
Solution
We appointed a team of four: a back-end developer, a front-end developer, a QA engineer and a UI/UX designer. They worked in Scrum, reporting every two weeks. The client had full visibility of progress while the team worked autonomously. Our project manager kept the client and developers aligned, prioritized tasks and managed time to meet deadlines.
During development our specialists completely re-architected the embeddable monitoring console, including the dashboard, IoT, front-end and back-end parts.
End product
We built a universal monitoring console that can be embedded in every vehicle the manufacturer produces. It integrates third-party sensors over a robust vehicle bus using the CAN (Controller Area Network) standard. All subsystems exchange data with the central command console over a message-based protocol, so each sensor is an individual node attached to the central system.
The received data is shown on a dashboard that also serves as the control panel for the vehicle’s systems. A standard dashboard shows numerical monitoring indicators and control zones grouped into functional clusters, for example a lights control zone and a devices control zone.
Architecture and tech stack
Sensors and subsystems connect as nodes on the vehicle’s CAN bus. The Java and Python back end reads and writes bus messages, and a React front end renders the monitoring indicators and control clusters on the embedded console.
- React
- Python
- JavaScript
- Java
- CAN bus
Results
The client received a convenient and reliable control system for vehicle monitoring that lets users operate machines safely in the most extreme conditions and trust that they will work without failure.
The console design was honoured at the Small Cell Awards in the Software and Services for Management, Automation and Orchestration categories for its flexibility and practicality.
According to Lindsay Cumberbatch, ICT Manager at Bence Command, it created an integrated and fully mobile small-cell network that can be deployed instantaneously on site for emergency services.
What made it work
Erbis’s takeaways from this engagement:
- Standardize on the bus, not on the device. Treating every sensor as a CAN node meant one console could serve vehicles with very different equipment.
- Review the code before redesigning the screen. Understanding the existing software first is what made a complete re-architecture safe.
- Design for the operator’s hand and eye. Grouping controls into functional clusters is why the console works in extreme conditions, not just in a demo.
- Latency is a requirement, not a nice-to-have. Control responsiveness was scoped and tested from the start because a slow control is an unsafe one.