Ask HN: Any interest in a generic control room platform
I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in a somewhat generic, API-driven, map-based control room platform.
To help illustrate it with a contrived example (putting aside bonds and privacy), let's assume you run a tool rental business (e.g. jackhammers and the like). Because of theft issues, you've decided to install discreet GPS tracking devices on your more valuable equipment.
You might want to be notified when the device is taken outside a specific geofence (i.e. 100km+ outside the city bounds), as well as view the location of your tools on a map.
Let's assume your IT team creates a bespoke service that receives the GPS data from each tool once or twice a day.
This service then pushes the location and potentially other information of each tool to the control room platform using an API (each tool would be asset in the platform), and they'd be visible on the map.
Additionally, the service also checks to see if a tool is outside the geofence. If so, it raises a warning event in the control room platform (each event might have a corresponding event type / schema predefined) linked to the tool / asset.
If the tool is brought back within the bounds of the geofence. In this case, another event (i.e. Tool Back Within Bounds) might be fired, and that event might clear the previous warning event.
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My assumption is that a useable, API-driven feature-rich (think events, event types, assets, asset types, filtering, etc) control room platform would be useful for a number of different use cases across multiple industries (e.g. IoT, asset tracking, emergency services, logistics).
Looking for any feedback and whether anyone here thinks they'd get business value from such a platform.