Signal AG - SIGNA E-Paper

Reference report #5

About the customer and the project

In real time and self-sufficient: passenger information

SIGNA E-Paper is a product from SIGNAL AG that sets standards in the field of passenger information:

The captivating display offers very good legibility even in bright sunlight - and with low power consumption
A cloud-based management platform makes it easy to manage all displays

Furthermore, the most important parameters such as the charge level or temperature of a display can be queried at any time on the cloud platform.

We supported SIGNAL AG in setting up the cloud-based management platform and have been responsible for software development since the project began in 2019.

Our services

The SIGNA e-paper project was launched with the aim of creating an administration interface for the e-paper displays produced by a third-party provider. The focus of the application was on intuitive operation on both desktop and mobile devices
(responsive design) and easy expandability with new functions in the future.

The project ultimately comprised the following two main components, which the CSA employees planned and implemented:

A web platform for technical users of transportation companies to easily manage and configure the displays.
A constantly running background process that continuously queries and persists the status of the displays and immediately triggers an alarm by e-mail in the event of abnormal parameters.

Specification phase:

Requirements Engineering
Platform architecture

Realization phase:

ASP.NET Core Software Development
Build and release process according to DevOps

Transfer phase:

Continuous Deployment

Technologies:

For the SIGNA e-paper project, the future was kept in mind right from the start of development.

With the choice of ASP.NET Core, a future-proof framework was chosen, which is an integral part of the new Microsoft strategy. In addition, this cross-platform technology means that the environment can be used on a wide variety of systems (Windows, Linux) with little effort.

Both the background process and the web platform are therefore independent of a specific operating system.

The use of SQL Server as data storage guarantees optimum performance even with the expected large volumes of telemetry data.

Methodology:

By comprehensively recording the requirements at the start of the project, a prioritized product backlog with the tasks for the project team could be created together with the customer. The expectations of the various stakeholders were therefore transparent for the project team at all times.

The agile SCRUM approach proved to be the best choice for this project. With each completed sprint, the functionality of the platform was expanded bit by bit.

This visible and iterative progress not only delighted the customer, but also motivated the development team.

The carefully designed architecture of the web platform allows the infrastructure to be easily replaced if necessary by loosely coupling the components. For example, the database used can be selected according to needs and requirements or the e-mail sender used can be changed at a central location with little effort. This saves development effort and offers the greatest possible flexibility and independence in the components used.

As a service provider for various customers, SIGNAL AG had a multi-tenant SaaS (Software as a Service) solution in mind for the SIGNA e-paper platform right from the start. Thanks to the experience and know-how of the CSA employees, a solution was found that covers all requirements and still guarantees the security of the stored data and the performance of the entire solution.

A not insignificant part of the project work was the development of a continuous delivery pipeline. By using Azure DevOps, a process was created that enables a release to be deployed quickly and easily to the test or production environment at any time.

Monthly or other fixed release cycles are therefore a thing of the past. Every release to the production system is also automatically reported to the SIGNAL AG product owner for approval, which makes unintentional deployment impossible.

Conclusion:

The SIGNA E-Paper project was established as a solid basis for future developments in the field of digital signaling at SIGNAL AG.

The good cooperation between CSA Engineering AG and SIGNAL AG is also demonstrated by the constant further development of the platform for the benefit of SIGNAL AG's customers.

The uncomplicated way in which new versions of the platform are published makes the collaboration a success story on both sides.