Mobile app for collecting equipment data developed at the Junction hackathon
21.1.2025 – Matias and Lauri Huhta won Granlund and KONE's joint challenge in this autumn's Junction hackathon looking for an idea to collect building equipment data with a user-friendly mobile application.
Building carbon footprint management requires more digital data
Over 250 teams participated in the Junction hackathon in the autumn. 26 of the teams focused on solving the joint challenge set up by Granlund and KONE. The goal was to find user-friendly mobile solutions for equipment inventories, i.e. for collecting building equipment data.
“Collecting equipment location and condition data requires manual work on site, so automating the data collection would make both property maintenance and extensive repair planning more efficient,” says Tauno Hyvärinen, Head of Software Development at Granlund.
Behind the challenge were two projects funded by Business Finland, NSDC (Nordic Superblocks as Decarbonization Catalysts) and Untangling People Flow, in which KONE and Granlund are involved in developing digital solutions for the industry. The hackathon wanted to present such a problem that solutions to it would genuinely benefit the real estate industry.
“If we were able to better utilise maintenance data, we could build services that add value for our customers and reduce the carbon footprint,” says Jere Vuorenala, Senior Co-innovation Expert, KONE.
Hackathons like Junction provide a great way to ascertain in a few days whether it makes sense to include an idea in your own product development.
Jere Vuorenala, Senior Co-innovation Expert, KONE
Hackathons promote internal development work
According to Vuorenala, hackathons like Junction provide a great way to ascertain in a few days whether it makes sense to include an idea in your own product development. “Cost-effectively and with very little effort, we can increase our understanding of whether something is feasible or not.”
Granlund’s innovation and development activities also include close cooperation with students, start-ups and freelance software developers. “It was a nice surprise that there were young entrepreneurs participating in the hackathon in addition to students,” says Hyvärinen.
The winners of Granlund and KONE’s challenge were twin brothers Lauri and Matias Huhta, who already work in the software industry. Matias runs his software consultancy firm Simplr, while data engineer Lauri has a company called Data Nuggets. “The brothers’ demo worked best and was developed furthest,” says Hyvärinen.
Vuorenala was also impressed by the maturity of the brothers’ idea. “What we got was a technically advanced solution that focused on the core problem rather than extraneous issues.”
It was fun to start prototyping a new kind of solution for an industry where everything isn’t digitised yet. At the same time, we got to connect the world of software with the real world using code.
Lauri Huhta, Data Engineer, Data Nuggets
Mobile app digitises the text on the equipment plate
The challenge required a genuinely functional mobile app. The Huhta brothers’ solution enables the user to use their phone to take a picture of the equipment plate of a piece of equipment in a property. The code transfers the textual data from the image to the building’s 3D model.
The brothers’ mutual division of labour was efficient: Matias built the software for taking pictures of equipment plates, and Lauri took care of the image recognition of the plate text.
“Many teams linked AI to their solution, but we wanted to stand out and let the person have control,” says Matias Huhta. At all times, the user can see what is happening in the program, and the same data always returns the same results.
The hackathon was the Huhta brothers’ first encounter with the real estate and construction industry. “It was fun to start prototyping a new kind of solution for an industry where everything isn’t digitised yet. At the same time, we got to connect the world of software with the real world using code,” says Lauri.
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Heikki Ihasalo
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