Hochschule München (HM) is pushing the boundaries of digital transformation with HM Sense Collab, an innovative platform designed to simplify and enhance the use of sensor data collected and stored by the previously existing HM-Sense sensors across the University buildings and faculties for students, researchers and Facility Management. By providing easy, log-in based access without intermediaries, intuitive tools for analyzing, visualizing and exporting real-time data, HM Sense Collab fosters collaboration across disciplines and opens new doors for practical learning and research.
What Does HM Sense Collab Do? The platform processes and displays real-time data from sensors located across University facilities. Variables such as temperature, light intensity, humidity and CO₂ levels are displayed on user-friendly dashboards. These dashboards are tailored for specific user groups—students, researchers and administrators—to ensure ease of access and relevance.
The data can be utilized for different academic and administrative purposes. For example, a Physics student could analyze CO₂ patterns to understand indoor air quality, while a facility administrator might monitor temperature data to optimize energy usage in classrooms. Additionally, the data is exportable in formats like CSV, enabling further analysis and integration into reports or presentations.
Collaborative Innovation
The development of HM Sense Collab was a joint effort involving Bachelor and Master students from HM and IT students from Tampere University of Applied Sciences in Finland. Dr. Holger Günzel, Dr. Lars Brehm, Dr. Johannes Ebke, Hans-Jürgen Haak, Anne-Mari Stenbacks and Jere Käpyaho, alongside the Digital Transformation Lab (DT.Lab) and Co-Innovation Lab, guided this diverse team in developing the platform.
Emine Baspinar, a Bachelor student from the Business Administration program at HM, noted: “It was incredible to work with Master students and international peers from Finland. The collaboration taught me so much about teamwork and cross-cultural problem-solving.”
Real-World Impact
HM Sense Collab demonstrates its versatility by serving various educational and research goals. By providing direct access to the HM Sense sensor data, students gain hands-on experience working with real-world datasets during their classes, preparing them for careers in data analytics and other cutting-edge fields. Researchers benefit from centralized, easily accessible data for interdisciplinary studies in sustainability and energy consumption optimization, while administrators can optimize campus resource usage in terms of heating, illumination and ventilation to save costs and reduce the environmental impact.
The platform’s usability aligns with our client’s vision, Johannes Ebke, professor of Informatics at HM. As he emphasized, “HM Sense Collab makes data accessible and usable for everyone, regardless of their expertise. It’s about breaking barriers and enabling impactful insights.”
Technical Foundation
HM Sense Collab is built on a robust cloud-based infrastructure using open-source technologies like Python, HTML, CSS and JavaScript and is hosted on an AWS Beanstalk Cloud service. This ensures flexibility, scalability, rapid access and secure real-time processing of sensor data.
About the Co-Innovation Lab
This solution was designed in a project of the Co-Innovation Lab of Hochschule München guided by the lecturers Prof. Dr. Holger Günzel, Prof. Dr. Lars Brehm, Prof. Dr. Jessica Slamka, Mr. Hans-Jürgen Haak, Ms. Anne Mari Stenbacka and Mr. Jere Käpyaho. The Co-Innovation Lab offers students a virtual platform for learning how to work as a consulting team by creating temporary partnerships between companies, students, and lecturers.
For more information about the Co-Innovation Lab, contact holger.guenzel@hm.edu or lars.brehm@hm.edu.
- Project results:
- Project team: Roxana Vlasie, Ana Guisao, Vanessa López, Zain Rizvi, Farah Naouar, Valentin Schmid, Emine Baspinar, Juho Viskari, Juho Yli-Rajala, Noel Tulirinta, Matti Hakola, Heini Talio