A hands-on dive into peaq control and the peaq eot demo app

In a nutshell: With the peaq control and the peaq demo app, anyone can create a fleet of simulated demo machines and have them sell their services through dApps on the peaq network. In other words, anyone can get a taste of the Economy of Things on peaq without having to purchase actual machines. To learn how, read this blog as we go through the process step by step. If you’d prefer to get an overview of peaq control first, check out this blog, here. 

If you’ve been following peaq for a while, you probably have a solid idea of what the Economy of Things is (here’s a handy refresher, just in case). You’ve seen the use cases, maybe even suggested a few (if now, why not come up with one after reading this piece? Just sayin’), and you’re already planning to sell the data from your peaq-powered smart toaster on the Gaia-X marketplace. Good stuff! Today, we’re bringing you something even cooler. 

We’re going for a hands-on dive into the Economy of Things. Strap in!

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What’s the buzz?

To leave the trap of the collective illusion controlled by villainous machines, a certain Mr. Andersen had to take in a shiny red pill. Today's exercise in shoving it to Big Brother will be a lot less dramatic, though. Let’s just settle down before a computer with a comfy mug of coffee and fire up two applications — peaq control, now in public beta, and peaq demo app. 

Before you do, though, please make sure you have a Polkadot wallet. If you don’t have one lying around, no worries, head here and set one up in a few clicks.

Done? Nice! See, even the coffee is still hot.

Now, a quick explainer on the two applications that we will be using. peaq control is a decentralized application working as a machine owner’s gateway into the Economy of Things on peaq. It’s the command and control center where users can manage their connected machines on the network. Here, they can add a new machine, create its unique peaq ID, link it with the dApps within the ecosystem, and earn from the machines’ activities. 

Don’t have a Tesla in the garage ready to go full Web3? That’s where the peaq demo app comes in. There, you can generate electric vehicles, drones, and charging stations. They will all be virtual, of course, but oh well, details, details. What’s important is that you can still add these machines on peaq control and get a sense of what the real Economy of Things will be all about — how it will run, how you as a machine owner can participate, and how much you will be earning.

Prefer watching over reading?

Here’s an introduction to peaq control:

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And here’s a tutorial on how to get started with peaq control and the peaq eot demo:

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The first launch

So let’s get Economy of Things-ing! Open peaq control and log in with your wallet. If it’s your first time logging in (you log in with the same wallet, by the way), it will prompt you to create your organization. Organizations will work as administrative units within the EoT, and their owners can add other users and assign them various roles based on their needs and permissions. 

Now, let’s set up your device fleet. See the blue “Add machine” button on the home page? Click there and open peaq eot demo in a separate tab, logging in with the same wallet you used for peaq control. 

On the demo app’s home screen, you can see two buttons — “Get New Machines” and “Use Your Machines.” The latter will come into play a bit later, so for now, let’s click on “Get New Machines” and generate your first demo machine.

Once you click on the button, the app will offer you to choose the type of the machine you’re generating. In this release, you can choose between an Electric Vehicle, a Charging Station, and a Drone. 

Let’s make it a Charging Station for now. Click on “Get Machine” in the respective section, and congratulations! You now have a brand-new charging station. A virtual one, true, but don’t we all have to begin somewhere. Before you can use it, though, you have to connect it with the peaq network.

Copy the serial number that the demo app has generated for you and head back to peaq control. When we clicked on “Add machine”, it offered us a choice between a demo machine and a Raspberry Pi mini-computer. Soon, there will be more features and initiatives around the latter, but for now, let’s choose the demo machine option.

Select the machine type — “EV Charger”, in our case — paste the serial number generated in the peaq demo app into the appropriate field, pick a name for your machine, and select the model from the dropdown menu. Click “Continue” after that, and voila! Your charging station now has its own unique peaq ID, its sovereign identifier, on Agung, peaq’s testnet.

Now, we need to make sure that users relying on the charging dApp on peaq can discover your charging station and leverage its services. For that, click on “My Machines” in the menu on the left, which will take you to the respective page, and find this machine in the “Machines” list on the right. 

Click “Connect to dApp” under its name and select the dApp you want to link it with by clicking on the respective “Connect Machine” button. 

Finally, click on the machine in the list and open it up for users with the “Available” slider. Congrats! Now we’re all good to go, the demo machine is up and running, as well as synced with a dApp. All that’s left is give it some use.

And for that, we head back into the demo app. This time, though, click on “Use Your Machines”. The app will display the list of your machines, helpfully broken down into the supported categories. 

Find the charging station we just added and generate a charging session on its behalf. This will create a transaction on Agung, updating the machine’s earnings, which you can always check through peaq control. 

Note: The demo machines only earn $AGUNG, a token that we’re using purely for demonstrative purposes — but this will change, #soon.

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Your command and control center

Now that we’ve done our first virtual charging session, let’s take a closer look around peaq control. 

We’ve already seen its home page, where we added your charging station, but note there’s more useful stuff there. Its top dashboard displays a real-time overview of your machines’ earnings, and the list at its bottom breaks down more stats on your specific machines, including their online status and utilization. With these metrics, you can get a quick sense of the overall health of your machine fleet and check the returns it delivers.

On the “My Machines” page, where we connected the station with the dApp and made it available to users, you can also review the utilization of your machines, check if they are online, and manage your fleet. This page enables you to identify trends and patterns in your machine usage and scout out potential problems.

The “dApp Store” page should sound pretty familiar to anyone who happens to own a smartphone. It is the place to discover the dApps on the ecosystem, and connect your machines with them to make them discoverable for other users.

The “Organization” page enables you to set up role-based access rules for your machines. Here you can add other users to your organization and assign them roles, such as administrator or user, which will determine their rights when accessing your machines with their wallet. 

Last but not least, the “Earnings” page provides you with a detailed breakdown of your machines’ financial performance in real-time. Here, you can review the earnings brought in by each specific machine in your fleet and all machines in total.

And there we go, here is your dive into the Economy of Things, which is now not just a concept to get excited about but something living and interactive. 

Even now, with the demo machines, it’s more than just a bunch of cool dashboards and clickable buttons — and trust us, you’ll be able to link up your first physical machine with it way sooner than you think. 

Stay tuned, more exciting stuff is already on the way! And please let us know what you think of peaq control so far, any feedback is appreciated. You can leave feedback via Discord, here, or via this form. 

If this guide wasn’t granular enough for you, you can head over to the peaq control step-by-step guide in peaq’s documentation, here. 

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Want to dive in even deeper?

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