Client Overview
A fortune 500 company specializing in connected home and security/safety products like smoke detectors/alarms, extinguishers, etc. making the world a safer place
Business Challenge
- Design, develop and support the production and launch of a new variant of the connected smoke detector
- Capture both iOS and Android market by implementing HomeKit as well as non-HomeKit support to control devices over BLE
- Provide wireless and wireline interconnect of safety devices in a home for alarm announcement with location information
- Eliminate external Alexa Echo device dependency and embed virtual assistant into fire safety product to control smart home appliances via voice commands
- Support multi-lingual voice services for Alexa: US English, French, Canadian and Spanish with audio quality exceeding Amazon Echo and Google Home performance
- Support to Bluetooth speaker for content streaming via mobile from services like Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, etc.
- Improve battery life
- Faster time-to-market to compete with competitors (google safety products)
- Support Fire Safety Agency testing
VOLANSYS Contribution
- End-to-end architecture design, development, and QA of a Design-to-Manufacture product
- Overall ownership of FW development, mobile application development (iOS & Android), and AWS cloud connectivity
- Firmware development
- AC and DC models support
- Android and iOS applications support
- Code isolation of HomeKit specific code
- Implemented non-HomeKit device and W-Fi provisioning mechanism
- Cloud AWS IoT API and OTA changes in-line to cloud implementations
- FW OTA for Wi-Fi and BLE modules
- Private mesh network over BLE for alarming all devices in a house in case one device detects fire smoke
- Firmware development on top of baseline SDK from semiconductor module vendor
- End-to-end secured device, firmware, cloud, mobile apps provisioning, and commissioning
- Battery optimization to increase battery life up to 5 years
- Controlled Wi-Fi and BLE radio and optimized transmitting of data when needed
- Implemented power saving by controlling radio module power
- Optimized BLE broadcasting mechanism
- Architected, developed and deployed Android and iOS mobile application using client’s AWS IoT cloud to support multiple safety devices
- Alerts and notifications
- LED color control
- Device OTA
- Battery status
- Added support of generating mesh communication key in the mobile application for secured device communication
- AWS cloud support
- MQTT based secure connection
- Device certificate management
- AWS Lambda API implementation
- CI/CD implementation – Code auto deployment
- Push notification configuration
- Upgraded DynamoDB structure for better manageability
- Developed configurable scripts for device OTA and status check
- Upgraded cloud architecture from centralized to a distributed structure to make it fault tolerant
- Developed user dashboard – Python-based web application for device search, user search, device diagnosis, log details, etc
- Alexa skills development for device status check
- Production and design team support, manufacturing test, flashing and factory serialization utility development
- Conducted end-to-end manual and automated testing (sanity and regression analysis)
- Support client’s internal Deliverable Acceptance testing
Solution Architecture
Benefits Delivered
- SLA’s dependent delivery that enabled the customer to launch product per schedule
- Enriched client’s safety device capabilities (FW, Mobile, and Cloud) that helped them upsell the product
- Delivered an edge against a competitor with faster time-to-market
- Client could capture Android market with non-HomeKit support added to control safety devices
- Provided 24/7 support to enhance customer experience and resolve issues as they got reported
- Reduced customer support issues backlog for all variants by 75-80%
- Enabled safety agency certification to comply with safety standards
- Onsite support to develop scripts for the serialization efforts