Sailing the Seas for Data and Wine Fermentation – Daniele Angeli, Molo17 and Mike Tango Bravo, Costaflores

This is Textron TV. Welcome to techstrong TV. I'm Bonnie Schneider.

Well, imagine embarking on a sailing Journey from the grand Canary Islands to St. Lucia with the team of experts including a winemaker and a three-star Michelin Chef sounds like luxurious Expedition, but this dream Voyage I'm describing actually occurred for the purpose of data collection joining me now is Daniele Angeli founder CEO of molo 17 who sets sail across the Atlantic to monitor wine fermentation using the internet of things technology and couch-based capella and Mike Mike Tango Bravo the owner of Costa Flores a boutique organic Winery in Mendoza, Argentina, Daniela brings a wealth of experience in data optimization, and we'll share more about this ambitious journey and how molo 17 utilized their expertise to customize create custom Solutions. Welcome, Daniela and Mike, Welcome.

Thank you. Wonderful, Daniel. Let's start with you.

Can you share us a little bit about your background and the inspiration behind this unique sailing journey and how the idea came about. Yeah, sure. Sure, I of course in love with the it and the technology since I was really teenaged so this lovely technology brought me to found the model 17 actually 10 years ago and since the beginning of my journey with the company, we were focused on the real-time capabilities of the databases.

So for us real time, it's Paramount and the user experience overall that we can provide using these kind of Technologies is really a key component of our offering. That's great. Yeah, the solution initially was being used last year during the world's biggest Regatta that is set to take place each year and that that year was the 54th in the growth of yesterday, which is in the northeast of Italy where or all these Skippers from all over the world actually challenging challenge themselves during these week of events for for Sailors lovers.

So we were being asked by Italian Coast Guard to deliver such kind of application to provide, you know, safe safe services and security services for those who were challenging there in the goal for 3, Esther. And Mike, what was your role and how did you get involved in this? Well, basically I'm I have a boutique Winery called Costa Flores.

I've been making wine for about 20 years in Argentina. My background is in it, but the last years I've been focused on blockchain and iot and integration with data from Winery. So I have a lot of sensors and things like that out in in the vineyard collecting information and kind of a harsh environment.

And that's a planning to sail from Barcelona down to the canaries and across the ocean where we're You know 23 days disconnected from anything except for a very slow satellite connection. Basically, the the this whole idea came about first of all about all the interesting things that you can collect just in sailing data and how we could incorporate that as for my love of sailing a part of this but we also decided to make wine on the journey. So we're fermenting grapes and making a sparkling wine a pet nuts from grapes that we harvested in the Pyrenees before setting fail and you know one making also generates a lot of interesting data, and since I've been working with capella for transforming How We Do Work with a distributed database and no SQL database for the blockchain aspect.

I said, how can we work with collecting data and using the the most extreme of environments which is in the middle of the ocean literally for collecting wine data and collecting both data. So that's how with Daniela we started saying. Hey can how can we adopt these AppSec that you've created using capella for doing a connection with our data?

To track and monitor wine fermentation in real time during the journey. Yeah, absolutely. So basically the goal there was to use a seamless language from The Edge to the cloud and for seamless language.

I mean Jason capella talks gizon store Jesus and objects storages and documents in the cloud, but not only there it talks throughout all the process Jesus and this means that we rest also capable to directly store information inside the mobile AppSec where data actually gets generated. So while Mike was traveling we were saving storing season documents inside his own app that he was in having in his own hands and why an internet connection was reachable we were able to stream these Jesus documents inside the capella cloud in that way. We were able to flexibly store either information coming from the Iot sensors that Mike was able to connect while performing is a journey but also the GPS coordinates or the ability to track the the both position in the middle of the ocean.

Fascinating and Mike, you know, we know something about I think everybody knows that certain climates are good for wine making and so the weather and conditions matter, but what were the particular data points that you were gathering? And why were those so important? As well when you're making wine, you're controlling things like quantity of sugar in your mouth and pH temperature and it's quite quite interesting making wine at Sea because we made a wine we call it slushed and basically we say slosh never settles right?

Because in a winery here, you have us a static tank that you're fermenting in where yeast are doing their business with the sugar from The Grapes. But at Sea, you know, we're 24 hours a day constantly, there's never a still moment. And so we wanted to see how this different environment we can monitor it.

So so basically we built a small web server with sensors like actually soldering at the and connected that to to Danielle is up right and to be able to send this Jason messaging back to the capella debate database, right? And so this is the some of the challenges of sea of making wine in itself. And but they're the information that you need to collect.

It doesn't change from what we're doing in a winery. It's just the environment is is so harsh and in particular the Uplink we needed a very resilient. Enablement for for capturing this data because you know, you can have a satellite connection on a boat but it's very unstable and we're talking about a speed which is reminiscent of the 1980s, right?

This is the 300 baud connection. I mean, it's a very slow very high latency very low throughput and so that's what we really wanted to test is. Okay.

We know we can do this on the ground in a normal environment with all kinds of tools. How can we do this in a harsh environment capturing these different data points? Journey And we talked a little bit about the technology of just maintaining a signal and getting the data.

But what about technology in terms of keeping everyone safe on board? Yeah, that's a good point. And of course it is crucial.

So basically we divided the the kind of message is the message is types in three in three levels. Basically, they were the logbook messages that mics was a Mike was able to send us telling us the the story about he's a his journey. He's daily life inside the boat and we call that the message is in the battle and that we're available through the app for everyone that was following us on Twitter LinkedIn and on Facebook that messages were the last important actually even if the story was really amazing, but that message is where the ones that we label as the ones that we can lost but those who are Not the ones that we are in any in any way enabled to lose we're actually the SOS signals and the gpa's GPS coordinates coming from Mike's devices.

So these messages were labeled as the most crucial ones and we gave the maximum priority on storing this information inside capella. Even if there were errors we were able to buffer these messages inside Mike's devices. And as soon as an intern connection was capable to be established.

Even the lowest one we were able to compress the data at maximum and send them over to Capella in order to let the messages available as soon as possible to everyone who was monitoring the saved the safely safety of the journey the Journey of Mike, but not only that we then also Implement some Contour rooms signals and others in order to know if there were You know get from a message from the GPS coordinates one other one like a day or more than 24 hours. We were capable to being alerted by the system in order to know if mics was a performing safe. That's great and Mike.

You know when you so 23 days is what we took us to sell from the canaries to St. Lucia. We left Saint Lucia or we left the canaries with some 30 plus boats in a Regatta but after six hours at Sea, you're not in you're not seeing any other boats, we didn't see a single boat across the ocean you're out of radio contact.

And so even though we were able to upload these messages as a bottle. I was just writing and throwing things out of The Ether right? I didn't have access to to Twitter to what's up or any type of AppSec and so being able to just know that okay.

There is some tracking that's going on behind this even though our main focus was collecting other types of data. That was the the most critical because there's really you completely alone in the middle of the ocean. How many people were on board?

There's three of us. So we had Skipper. The owner of the boat is old friend of mine.

We've been selling for 40 years together and Chef who's also quite an expert and and fermentation. And so basically eight I think we're the only people that crossed the ocean and gained weight on a trip. So you didn't have any storms or rough Seas or rogue waves or anything like that.

I wouldn't say rogue waves or any big storms, but we had a variety of wind conditions. We broke lots of things on the boat along the way he had every day. We had some sort of incidents, you know, we we lost the sale.

We had all kinds of things. We even had a small electrical fire on the boat. We had a, you know, just random things that happened to you at Sea.

And so yeah, lots of different conditions and quite exciting. That it does sound exercise sounds like a movie. Actually, you should see the messages.

Yeah, Daniella. Can you can you elaborate a little bit on the advantages of databases like couchbase over traditional relation relational databases in iot and some of the ways you manage to gain insights from that data? Yeah, so let's absolutely yeah.

I was just I was saying before that database is like a Pella talks directly the language that these currently the factors standard called Json that is the way the data gets represented in the database in the web in the AppSec and so on and this is one of the key components of why we chose it capella over many other databases but one of the the other key advantages is that over relational database we were capable to upscale the database when data was coming in, you know in a huge amount and then immediately when there were no needs we were able to dispose many resources and reduce cost. This is really a Paramount Feature that many customers out there need to know that compared to relation database which are only capable of obeying scaled, you know, vertically increasing the amount of I'm increasing the amount of CPU disease, of course not the only way to scale scale means all so enable you to increase the resources so add additional nodes and dispose them in order to reduce costs when they're no longer needed. So this is really crucial.

Mike my last question is now that this journey is over. Well, of course, I wonder how did the wine come out and what what are the insights that you've learned now from this exciting Journey? I have to say that the one even surprised me.

I thought you know given the conditions that it might be borderline and we would just be happy to open the fizzy bottle just for the fun of it, but it actually turned out a very nice one. So we're happy with that. So we drunk all our bottles of slush arriving in Saint Lucia.

The experience is excellent. I mean the like I mentioned earlier so I have I've been working with iot in the vineyard a lot of times and as Danielle mentioned these is usually Jason messaging to some sort of backend and our case and Costa Flores with the open Vino project. We're doing integration with data from the back and to not just to it devices but also going to blockchain and so Jason in many ways is the language for for integrating with blockchain.

And so that's why initially I reached out to you. To couchbase to to look at capella. And so this basically just proved what we we already suspected that even in a harsh environment like a Vineyard in Western Argentina.

And as we add this service to more more Winery something that we can scale up easily in a In a distributed platform. It's also shows us that we can circumvent issues that connectivity and and these other things by using this platform. So basically it's it's been a great experience doing it.

And now we're looking at okay. Well, let's take this and and do other applications and other tests and in different regions, maybe and driving across Africa or sailing adventures in the future. So is very exciting Daniele Angeli founder and CEO of molo 17 and Mike Tango Bravo the owner of Costa Flores Boutique organic Winery in Mendoza, Argentina gentlemen, it was a pleasure to have you on Tech strung TV and a fascinating Journey as well.

Thank you. Thank you for taking out. Thank you very much.

Great. All right. Well stay with us on Tech strong TV.

I'm Bonnie Schneider and we'll have more coming up.