White wine should never be drunk too cold, and red wine never too warm. QelviQ is your Personal Sommelier to ensure that you will always enjoy your wine at the ideal temperature.

Case 

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Knowing that bringing a product to market takes a lot of time, Xavier Verhelle from QelviQ approached us several years ago when he was looking for a partner that could provide him with the necessary support to help him achieve his wildest dreams. An oenophile(that’s a wine lover) in heart and soul, it distressed him to see that many good wines were not being enjoyed to their best advantage because they were served at the wrong temperature. This is where smart technology comes in, in the form of a smart wine cooler with access to a cloud-based wine guide containing over 300,000 wines. All a wine afficionado has to do is scan the label on the bottle via a free app, and the wine cooler automatically adjusts the temperature settings to the perfect temperature for that particular bottle of wine.

How does it work?

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The wine cooler works via Bluetooth and can connect to your smartphone. The text on the label is read by artificial intelligence, after which a match is sought in a database of 300,000 wines. Do you have a wine that does not appear in the database? Call in the advice of a real-life sommelier, who is available 24/7 to read your forwarded label and inform you of its ideal serving temperature.

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The role of Aptus 

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Hardware

• We developed IoT hardware that would allow the wine cooler to be ‘IoT enabled’ via Bluetooth. We implemented a smart pairing algorithm that allows the wine cooler to be linked to a smartphone
  

• We provided advice about several aspects of the wine cooler, including the touch controls and the feedback LEDs
  

• Aptus engineered the test benches and Python-based test tools in the DFM (design for manufacturing) process

Software

• Aptus designed all IoT-related software aspects of the wine cooler. With regard to the device itself, we engineered the Bluetooth protocol and implemented the requisite cooling algorithm

• The wine cooler is also over-the-air updatable. We implemented a fast and secure OTA system that would allow the wine cooler to be updated on the fly

• Aptus also handled the development of the Personal Sommelier app. This cross-platform app allows users to connect their smartphone to the wine cooler and set it to the right serving temperature. There is also a food-pairing element that shows you which food is the best match with the wine you selected

• We developed a smart label recognition algorithm that detects information on the labels and matches it to the correct serving temperature

• Aptus developed the cloud management platform for the management of the wine coolers, through which they can also be updated remotely. This IoT management platform makes use of Microsoft Azure technology

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