Hello Pareto Anywhere!

A getting started guide oriented towards developers familiar with the open source software model

Hello Pareto Anywhere!

The TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Discover Pareto Anywhere with a hands on, instant gratification, open source approach.

What's Pareto Anywhere?
Pareto Anywhere is open source software that makes sense of who/what is where/how, in any physical space, in real time.
Why 'Anywhere'?
Pareto Anywhere is written in JavaScript and is highly modular, facilitatating edge, local and/or cloud deployments, and running both server-side and client-side.
Why should I read this?
Because it's the fastest path to familiarisation for developers that we know: read less, do more.

Hello impatient developer!

This tutorial is organised by fastest-path-to-instant-gratification in four parts as follows:

Part 1 of 4
Pareto Anywhere Web App
Runs on mobile, if you have a compatible mobile.
Part 2 of 4
Pareto Anywhere on a Pi
Dust off that Raspberry Pi 3...
Part 3 of 4
Pareto Anywhere & Elastic Stack
Open source and there's a free trial too!
Part 4 of 4
Pareto Anywhere for Anything
Justification to kit up for whatever matters to you.

Pareto Anywhere Web App   Part 1 of 4

Run Pareto Anywhere as a web application on mobile devices that support Web Bluetooth Scanning.

Web Bluetooth Scanning?
Yes, this is an experimental feature introduced in Chrome (v79) in late 2019 which allows scanning for nearby BLE devices in client-side JavaScript.
What's supported?
At the time of writing, only Chrome browser on Android, which also requires setting an experimental flag.

Browse it!

As simple as clicking on a link

All going well you'll find a way to experience the web app on a compatible device/browser. If not, here's a video playlist of Pareto Anywhere (Web Edition) in action. Either way, it should now be clear that real-time-proximity-driven web apps remain experimental and largely unsupported (much to our chagrin). That's why from here on in we'll be running server-side.

Under the hood

Meet the beacorcut stack

Pareto Anywhere (Web Edition) offers an introduction to the client-side modules which handle the stream of radio decodings (beaver), and fetch (cormorant) and render (cuttlefish) digital twins from the Web.

  • beaver | code
    Client-side library to collect a real-time stream of events from reelyActive APIs (or Web Bluetooth Scanning).
  • cormorant | code
    Client-side library to fetch associations from chickadee and to fetch JSON from a URL.
  • cuttlefish | code
    Client-side library to render human-friendly HTML from machine-friendly JSON-LD.

Pareto Anywhere on a Pi   Part 2 of 4

Run Pareto Anywhere on a Pi 3 (or 4) and access way more web apps and features.

Why a Pi?
The venerable Raspberry Pi 3 includes an on-board BLE radio, which makes it perhaps the most accessible platform to run Pareto Anywhere standalone.
If I don't have a Pi?
Dust off an old laptop which supports Bluetooth 4.x and install Linux: that'll do.

Deploy it!

Step-by-step guides to run on a Pi and/or laptop

If you already have Node.js installed on either, perhaps this will be easier than you might expect.

  Pareto Anywhere will run on any computer, however access to the BLE radio is subject to OS constraints (sound familiar?). Check the bluetooth-hci-socket package documentation if you plan to run standalone on anything other than Linux.

All going well you've now deployed Pareto Anywhere on a computer with access to the real-time stream of ambient Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertising packets in your space. Take a moment to explore all the web apps: we'll be adding more documentation on these soon.

Under the hood

Meet the rest of the stack

The beacorcut stack presented above is used in the web apps included in the version of Pareto Anywhere running on your Pi and/or laptop. Now add to that the following server-side modules:

  • barnowl
    Technology-agnostic middleware for RFID, RTLS and M2M.
  • barnacles
    Efficient data aggregator/distributor for RFID, RTLS and M2M.
  • chickadee
    Contextual associations store and API for the IoT.
  • json-silo
    Contextual data silo for digital twins.

Pareto Anywhere & Elastic Stack   Part 3 of 4

Take the Pi or laptop deployment to the next level with a powerful analytics suite.

Why Elastic?
Many reasons: the stack is open source, feature-rich, and there's an incredibly convenient hosted Elasticsearch service. Oh and they also honoured us with an award.
Runs on the Pi?
No. But Elasticsearch and Kibana will run on a recent laptop, and the Elasticsearch service has a free trial period.

Integrate it!

Forward data to the Elastic Stack for visualisation and analysis

If you followed the laptop tutorial above you may already have an Elasticsearch instance collecting data.

Kibana + On + On

You know, for physical search

Our Kibana integration overview includes links to all our tutorials to create visualisations, dashboards, alerts, filters and more. For many applications, access to dashboards in Kibana may be the sole interface required for end users.

Pareto Anywhere for Anything   Part 4 of 4

Kit up and apply Pareto Anywhere to whatever matters for you (or your team/employer/client).

Do I have to buy stuff?
Most likely. Hopefully you made it to this step investing just your time. Good chance you'll need at least some hardware to scale up beyond a prototype or demo.
How does reelyActive make money?
Thank you for asking! We use an open source subscription model supplemented with sales of hardware and services.

Outfit it!

Install the right infrastructure and/or radio-identifiable devices for the target space and application

reelyActive and other vendors offer purpose-built BLE gateways suited to production deployments, and there are countless vendors offering both traditional beacons and sensor beacons.

  • RA-R436 Reelceiver
    Wired, daisy-chainable BLE transceivers combining effortless reliability and plug-and-play simplicity.
  • Owl-in-One | Configuration Guide
    Wireless BLE transceiver based on open hardware/software Node.js platform with WiFi/Ethernet connectivity.
  • Showcase Kit
    Three Owl-in-Ones, a Raspberry Pi and a few of our favourite devices configured to work out-of-the-box.

Innovate

Embrace the ambient data in your space

Where to next?

Continue exploring our open architecture and all its applications.