Tag Archives: Show and Tell

Stirring Magic into Code: Brewing Elixirs with IoT and D365FO

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Greetings, fellow wizards of innovation and technology! 🧙‍♂️✨ Today, we’re excited to unveil the mystical workings of our project, aptly named the “Potion Production Platform.” It’s a spellbinding fusion of IoT, Microsoft Power Platform, and Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (D365FO) that brings real-world potion brewing into the digital realm.

With the Early Delivery Badge deadline looming over us like a Dementor, we’ve worked our wands (and keyboards) tirelessly to conjure an end-to-end solution. Grab your butterbeer and prepare to be enchanted!

🧪 The Magic Behind the Brew

Our solution centers on a Raspberry Pi-powered IoT setup that combines sensors, Python code, and cloud-based automation to brew potions (or, in the Muggle world, trigger production processes). Here’s how the magic unfolds:

  1. Ingredients Added to the Cauldron
    We use a liquid-level sensor attached to a Raspberry Pi to measure ingredient levels as they are poured into the cauldron. Data flows seamlessly via a REST POST to a custom SensorDataTable in D365FO.
  2. Voice Commands to Cast Spells
    A microphone captures spell-like commands (e.g., “Start production!”). These are processed through Azure Speech Services, triggering specific workflows in Power Automate. Want to brew a Pepperup Potion? Just say it!
  3. Potion Brewing Status and Progress
    The elixir’s brewing progress is visualized using Power BI dashboards, displaying real-time updates like ingredient levels, potion type, and time to completion. For those who prefer a hands-on approach, Power Apps provides a UI for manual overrides.
  4. Workflows & Notifications
    Our Power Automate workflows orchestrate the magical flow, linking sensor data and voice commands to create production orders, log material consumption, and notify wizards (and Muggle stakeholders) via email or Teams.

🖼️ Architecture Overview

The following diagram illustrates our architecture (#ShowAndTell)

  • Raspberry Pi + Python Script: Reads sensor data and sends REST POST requests.
  • D365FO + OData Service: Receives data, updates the SensorDataTable, and triggers production orders.
  • Power Platform Tools:
    • Power Automate triggers workflows.
    • Power BI visualizes data.
    • Power Apps provides manual interaction points.

🎩 Why This Deserves the Early Delivery Badge

We’ve delivered a working prototype that spans the entire solution lifecycle: from sensor to cloud to user interface. Here’s why it qualifies:

  1. End-to-End Functionality
    The system captures real-time sensor data, processes it, and triggers automated workflows in D365FO.
  2. Detailed Solution Architecture
    We’ve mapped out every connection, from IoT sensors to Power BI dashboards, ensuring clarity for future iterations.
  3. Practical Magic
    While whimsical in theme, this solution has real-world applications in inventory management, production automation, and business intelligence.

🧙‍♀️ What’s Next on Our Quest?

We’re not resting on our laurels (or broomsticks). Here’s what lies ahead:

  • Enhanced Voice Commands: Adding more spell-like triggers for potion types and batch sizes.
  • Advanced Visualizations: Building immersive dashboards in Power BI with magical themes.
  • AI Integration: Incorporating predictive insights for potion demand and ingredient forecasting.

With our potion brewing well underway, we hope to not only claim the Early Delivery Badge but also inspire our fellow wizards to explore the possibilities of combining IoT, automation, and the Microsoft ecosystem.

Until next time, may your solutions be as magical as your imaginations! ✨⚡

Unleashing the Magic of Cloud Development: The Sorting Hat for Modern Developers

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In the magical world of Harry Potter, one of the most iconic and memorable objects is the Sorting Hat.This enchanted headwear, which resides in the Hogwarts castle, possesses the power to determine which of the four houses—Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin—a student will belong to. But the Sorting Hat isn’t just a simple hat; it’s a symbol of self-discovery, values, and the importance of finding a place where we truly belong.

The Sorting Hat isn’t simply choosing based on appearances or superficial traits. It looks for the qualities that define the essence of the students: their bravery, their loyalty, their intelligence, or their ambition. It seeks to understand their values, strengths, and desires, guiding them to the house where they will best thrive.

Our algorithm will use following characteristics to make sure that students are being correctly sorted:

  • Gryffindor values courage, bravery, and chivalry. It’s for those who are unafraid to stand up for what’s right.
  • Hufflepuff represents hard work, loyalty, and fairness. It’s for those who approach life with kindness and integrity.
  • Ravenclaw values wisdom, knowledge, and curiosity. It’s for those who are intellectually driven and seek truth.
  • Slytherin prizes ambition, cunning, and resourcefulness. It’s for those who have the will to succeed, no matter the challenges.

Now, let’s have a look how the process will go and visualize it a little bit.

We will have two front ends: physical hat and the quiz for sorting. Students can choose how they would like to be sorted.

Now, dive a bit into backend infrastructure:

You are maybe wondering what business value can we bring with our sorting hat?
Well, it can be used in various situations:
Educational Institutions: If the software is designed to assist in sorting or categorizing students (e.g., for projects, teams, or academic tracks)
Human Resources: In a business context, a Sorting Hat software could help HR departments with team-building, role assignments, or even personality-based job placements
Customer Segmentation: In a business setting, the Sorting Hat software could be used for customer segmentation, allowing companies to categorize customers based on behaviors, demographics, or preferences. This helps in delivering personalized marketing strategies
Predictive Analytics: By using machine learning or AI, the software could predict future behaviors or preferences, enhancing the business decision-making process

Even the most enchanted hats can make a wrong call… 

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Imagine starting your magical journey at Hogwarts, ready to embrace the house meant to reflect your truest self, only to realize the Sorting Hat’s decision feels… off. What if the house chosen for you doesn’t align with your abilities, aspirations, or identity? For students caught in such a magical mismatch, The Magic Quill Platform offers a fresh start—a way to chart a new path and find the place where they truly belong…. You feel the pain, right? When presenting our concept during the team intro in the morning, we saw some nods and signs of appreciation, so we guess you do.

New Path for Magical Education 

We are the team behind Magic Quill, a revolutionary platform designed to help students find their perfect fit when the Sorting Hat’s decision falls short. While the traditional magical hat may guide most students successfully, it can also make errors. For those who feel misplaced, Magic Quill offers a lifeline—a way to discover where they truly belong. 

How It Works 

Our platform leverages insights from multiple sources to create a comprehensive profile of each student: 

  1. Historical Data: Analyzing school records, academic performance, and teacher feedback. 
  1. Social Dynamics: Incorporating peer interactions and behavioral patterns. 
  1. Interactive Interviews: Conducting video-based sessions that delve into a student’s aspirations and challenges, enhanced by emotional analysis and physical metrics. 

Using this data, Magic Quill identifies schools and programs better aligned with the student’s potential, allowing them to thrive in a supportive environment. 

The Application Journey 

When students realize they need a change, they can submit a request through the LogiQuill social portal. The process is straightforward yet thorough: 

  1. Request Submission: Students initiate the process, sharing their reasons and challenges. 
  1. Data Retrieval: The platform gathers relevant historical information from the current school. 
  1. Interactive Interview: Students participate in a personalized session with advanced emotional analysis and wearable devices capturing physical metrics like heart rate and stress levels. 
  1. Decision Making: With all data in hand, admins suggest tailored educational paths and initiate transfers. 

Emotional Analysis & Metrics 

The emotional analysis technology integrated into our platform uses tools like… (we have to test and figure out during these days… :D) This system should processes video, audio, and text inputs to recognize emotions, helping us understand students’ mental states during review sessions. Additionally, wearable device (pulse oximeter) proves valuable insights into stress levels via pulse variations.

By combining these emotional and physical indicators, Magic Quill ensures every recommendation aligns with the student’s well-being and potential. 

A Seamless User Experience 

From the moment a student submits their application to the day they walk into their new school, every step is designed with care and precision: 

  • Application Tracking: Students can monitor their review request status, from submission to final approval. 
  • Data-Driven Insights: Real-time analysis provides meaningful, actionable suggestions for each student. 
  • Interactive Platform: Features like emotional analysis and wearable integrations create a dynamic, tailored experience. 

System sketch. “Our portal isn’t just any ordinary app—it’s platformus totalus!“

Students who realize they need to decide to change schools can submit a request for review from the LogiQuill  social portal. After the submission, the administrator starts reviewing the request and instantiates the request process for the historical data related to the student from the school.  

The Bigger Picture 

Magic Quill doesn’t just help students find a new school; it helps them reclaim their confidence, rediscover their strengths, and unlock their potential. By bridging the gap between misaligned expectations and true opportunities, the platform creates a path where every student can thrive. 

In the magical world, as in life, finding the right place can make all the difference. For students who feel lost, Magic Quill is here to help them find their way. 

Show And Tell

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Imagine coming home from work and all you want to do is play a game to relax. Only problem is that new games are expensive and you can’t afford to buy all of the games that come out. You have opened your Steam Account and are looking at the list of games you have beaten many times before.

Out of the blue you see a new game that is free and promises a dynamic experience you have never seen before

Donkey Kong’s Amazing Adventures

The idea of the game is to dynamically change based on the users input. The first thing a user is presented with would be the chat dialog to define inputs

The user input is then translated to predefined Promts in Power Automate.

All data is stored in Dataverse for statistical purposes and is used when the application loads. When opening the game, the game configuration is loaded, and your custom experience is ready to be played.

An example of a configuration where Scott is the main character and the theme was similar to Mario’s Rainbow Road. The board setup is dynamically written from AI based on the user input (Easy , Medium , Hard).

After completing the game you will be presented with a list of high scores to further the competitive spirit gaming.

More to come, so stay tuned for lots of feature updates!!!

SMBPlumbing – Plumbing as a service (PlaaS)!

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Backstory: After a life of dangers, princesses and adventures Mario and Luigi returns to their family business: Super Mario Bros Pluming.

Unfortunately, the marked has changed. Simple brick and mortar businesses are no longer cutting it. What we need is something new, what we need is a service, a service with multiple revenue streams… A service with recurring revenue…  What we need is Plumbing as a service (PlaaS)! Its here the Evidi Power Platform Plumbers comes to the rescue!

The plan:

The basic plan is us the Power Platform to offer a subscription service for home and castle owners in need of pluming services. For the low cost of 600 a moth you get access the wealth of services:

Community: “PlumberGuiden”
This is a vibrant community with real human members where the customer can ask and receive answers to basic, and complex, pluming issues.

Plumber ExpertGPT
Offers an instant, AI-driven advice on diagnosing and fixing common plumbing issues, providing step-by-step guidance with an authentic Italian twist.

Asset management
Allows the customer to register properties with vital information like addresses, number of dungeons and lava pits.

Customer upskilling
This is the pinnacle of the solution and allows the customer to level up their pluming skill. Not only will this give them the tools to solve their own plumbing problems. Successful completion will result in expert certification (PL-600) and allows the customer to transform into a Contractor.

Service Request
For complex issues that the customer cannot handle them self (even after consulting PlumberGuiden and Plumber ExpertGPT) they can submit a service request.

The service request will then be routed to the best fit Contractor.

After completion we collect rating and reviews on the Contractor (helping us route service request event better in the future) and generate a invoice to the customer and doing a revenue split between SMBPluming and the Contractor.

For this we claim the badges: Early Delivery, Show And Tell


Boouvet Early delivery

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In the colorful and adventurous Mushroom Kingdom, Princess Peach has been trapped for years in the classic cycle of being kidnapped by the malicious turtle Bowser, only to be rescued by the courageous plumber Mario. However, now, in the exciting year 2024, Princess Peach is starting to feel a bit impatient with being the “damsel in distress.” Instead of waiting for Mario to show up, she has taken destiny into her own hands by embracing the latest technology. Welcome to Mushroom Kingdom 2.0, where Peach has adopted EMPACHMENT – a revolutionary app that provides her with everything a modern princess needs to become independent and break free from the role of Bowser’s eternal captive.

To achieve complete independence in the Mushroom Kingdom, she must learn these skills:

  1. Categorizing what’s good/bad in everything she encounters in the Mushroom Kingdom. Here, we will build a training module based on a database of all Super Mario characters, and an Out of The Box Swipe component that Peach can use to guess. She earns points, and data is stored in Dataverse so she can later review her progress in a Power BI Dashboard.
  2. Resource Management: Peach can check her progress in a Power BI Dashboard.
  3. Problem Solving: Answering general questions from the Mario world and must respond correctly. We use a Chatbot against MarioWiki to both generate and find answers to Mario-related questions.
  4. Exploration: Using navigation and control of what happens with taps and touches on images of Super Mario landscapes, Peach can practice how to navigate through the worlds and choose the right solution to progress. We provide her the opportunity to train in both land, water, castles, etc.
  5. Jumping Skills: JumpSkill is crucial in Mario, using mixed reality components in Power Apps to answer if the distance is safe or not.

Technology that we are using:

The power app Empechment contains several gamified power pages and a Power BI Dashboard.

Sketches of the app

The team has set up camp in the Mushroom Kingdom, surrounded by colorful mushroom fields and giant pipes. Gadgets and costumes adorn the camp, ranging from high-tech Mushroom Communicators to innovative Power-Up Mushrooms. There’s an electric excitement in the air, as if an adventure is about to unfold.

Amidst laughter and smiling mushroom characters, whispers of tales from days of old fill the air. Rumors about an NES from the Stone Age have spread like wildfire, and Mario enthusiasts from all over the Mushroom Kingdom gather to witness the nostalgic treasure. The vintage console has the honor of carrying the timeless Mario games, and nostalgia flourishes among adventurous souls.

Princess Peach, adorned in her latest EMPACHMENT gear, glides through the camp with a smile. The independent princess has found a new way to embrace the adventure while participating in the community. The team, led by Mario, has never seen her so radiant and self-assured. It seems like the Mushroom Kingdom has become a place where the adventure never ends, and even princesses take destiny into their own hands.

Koopa’s AI Challenge

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Are you a noob in using AI for work, school or other everyday tasks?

During the hackathon, we will develop a gamified training app for AI newcomers, focusing on engaging users with retro-style graphics and playful animations. The app will feature interactive tutorials on AI tools like CoPilot and image generation, incorporating a competitive game element for users to score points, while ensuring learning effectiveness remains paramount. We’ll leverage a React front-end with Azure and Dataverse back-end to manage course progression and user data.

Core objective

Our core objectives are to create an immersive and enjoyable learning platform that demystifies AI for beginners through gamification. We aim to build a comprehensive educational experience that not only teaches the fundamental concepts of AI but also provides hands-on experience with practical applications in the Microsoft suite. Our goal is to foster a competitive yet educational environment where users are incentivized to deepen their understanding of AI tools, promoting both individual learning and collaborative competition. Ultimately, we strive to produce a product that is accessible, engaging, and continuously adaptable to the evolving landscape of AI technology.

The style of the game will be a retro super mario theme, where the user will be able to move between objects aka challenges and interact with them. Each challenge the user encounter, will give point if they manage to finish it. While moving in the platform world, the user will also be prompted with basic AI knowledge, to learn and understand how to interact with it. Challenges will both be in-game interactive experiences and out-of-game tasks like using copilot within the Microsoft environment.

Solution details

  • Power page for hosting the game
  • PCF component for the actual game
  • Dataverse tables for storage – Challenges, Users, Progression
  • Model driven app for administration of data
  • Power BI reports for easy data insight

Early delivery

Until 12:00 pm on thursday, Pzl Plumbers has gotten their environment up and running, implementing tables into dataverse that will store the information about users, their points and information regarding the challenges. Power platform pipelines are also configured to our three ALM enviroments (dev, uat, prod). Devops projects has been created for code repos and task management.

They have had some minor struggles with setting up the PCF component for the game, which will be implemented within their Power Page, but its coming along and the team spirit keeps shining as always!

Replanning the plumber experience

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Reducing the complexity

Super Mario isn’t always on adventures, and most of the time he is living a normal life while making a living as a plumber. A typical workday is full of tasks with different levels of complexity, and Mario would benefit from an application that can help reduce some of these tasks. Thereby allowing him to focus on the things he does best… Saving princesses and stomping turtles

Planning a plumbing system

Our solution will be an application developed to help plumbers in planning and estimate the cost of a plumbing system. The basic idea is to upload a houseplan and use AI to recognize obstacles, items that need to be connected and other elements that will affect the final layout. The user will then be able to “draw” the pipes on the plan while avoiding obstacles and connecting required elements, while the application generates a list of components needed for the system and a cost estimate.

Using Azure and Microsoft 365 for communication and management

The user will log in using their Azure AD user profile to an web app that synchronizes with a database in Azure to make sure speed and accessibility isn’t a problem. From this web app they can upload a houseplan that is immediately analyzed using an AI service to retrieve required data. This data is the saved to the database and synchronized back into the app.

As a new commissions are saved to the database they will be synchronized to Dataverse as both a backup and for easily connectivity to the Power platform. By using this platform there will possible to develop solutions that can be used for other activities like accounting, communication, statistics, etc. This also allows an easy implementation in Teams, allowing users to handle these tasks on the go.