Delivering Embedded Intelligence and Software Quality

In collaboration with our client, we played a key role in the development of EnergyBASE – an advanced platform for smart home energy management. Our expertise lay in embedded software engineering, architectural design, and ensuring overall system reliability through rigorous test-driven development. Additionally, we delivered the optimized Java runtime environment required to run critical components on the embedded device.

EnergyBASE is built on a Linux-based ARM platform and is designed to monitor and control a wide range of household energy devices in real time. These include photovoltaic inverters for solar energy generation, battery storage systems to optimize consumption and reduce grid dependency, and wallboxes for electric vehicle charging. The platform also manages heat pumps, heating rods, and smart power sockets, while continuously tracking the household’s connection to the public grid to balance import and export behavior.

Our team was responsible for major parts of the system’s communication and integration logic. Together with the client’s engineers, we co-designed a modular and scalable software architecture that ensures maintainability and fault tolerance. A particular focus was placed on integrating energy devices via Modbus – both serial and TCP – allowing the system to reliably read energy values and issue control commands.

To enable cloud connectivity, we developed a lightweight communication stack based on MQTT, using Protocol Buffers for efficient, structured data exchange. This allowed telemetry and control data to be transmitted securely and with minimal bandwidth usage – a critical factor for embedded IoT environments.

One of the core components we developed was the Translator, a Python-based middleware responsible for bridging the embedded system with various cloud backends such as HiveMQ, EMQX, or Mosquitto. This component handles device discovery, translates backend-specific MQTT messages into platform-understandable actions, and ensures consistent reporting of energy metrics. It was designed to be backend-agnostic, making the entire solution adaptable to different customer deployments with minimal effort.

Reliability was a top priority throughout the development process. We followed a strict test-driven approach, backed by comprehensive simulations for each supported energy device. These simulations allowed us to run automated nightly tests that validated system behavior under a wide range of conditions – from fluctuating PV production and battery state-of-charge changes to grid instability and cloud-issued control commands. An internal REST API was also implemented to support scenario-based testing and debugging during development and deployment.

In addition to core development work, we provided the necessary Java runtime environment, tailored for the embedded target platform. This ensured that all Java-based components of the system would run efficiently and stably, even under constrained hardware conditions.

Through our contributions, our client was able to bring EnergyBASE to market as a robust, extensible, and high-performance platform for managing distributed household energy systems. From architectural design and embedded integration to cloud communication and automated testing, we delivered the technical foundation needed to support the next generation of smart energy solutions.