Augmented Reality Supported Real-Time Data Processing Using Internet of Things Sensor Technology

Internet of things (IoT) devices increasingly permeate everyday life and provide vital and convenient information. Augmented reality (AR) enables the embedding of this information in the environment using visualizations that can contextualize data for various applications such as Smart Home. Current applications providing a visual representation of the information are often limited to graphs or bar charts, neglecting the variety of possible coherence between the subject and the visualization. We present a setup for real-time AR-based visualizations of data collected by IoT devices. Three distinct battery-powered IoT microcontroller systems were designed and programmed. Each is outfitted with numerous sensors, i.e. for humidity or temperature, to interact with the developed AR application through a network connection. The AR application was developed using Unity3D and the Vuforia AR SDK for Android-based mobile devices with the goal of providing processed and visualized information that is comprehensible for the respective context. Inspired by weather applications for mobile devices, the visualization contains animated dioramas, with changing attributes based on the input data from the IoT microcontroller. This work contains the configuration of the IoT microcontroller hardware, the network interface used, the development process of the AR application, and its usage, complemented by possible future extensions described in an outlook.