Introduction

Our client Ario specializes in building intelligent lighting products that help people lead healthier lives. Using Bluetooth LED technology that mimics natural sunlight, Ario supports the body’s natural hormone production and helps people maintain a proper circadian rhythm that keeps them alert and productive during the day.

Business Challenge

Ario’s patented Smart Lamp product has enjoyed considerable success among residential consumers, but they wanted to market their lights as a solution for improving guest satisfaction in hotel chains. Their vision was to bring the natural sunrise and sunset experiences to hotel rooms to improve guest wellness and promote more restful sleep.

To make their product more marketable, Ario integrated it with software to unlock the full potential of the Internet of Things (IoT). Once their Bluetooth LED bulbs were connected to the cloud, they could monitor all devices remotely and provide timely software updates to enhance the user experience.

To do this, they came to S9 Digital, which built an Android tablet app, set up remote device access, and designed a scalable cloud infrastructure. Wanting to perform customer trials and bring their product to the market as soon as possible, they set a short deadline for the project, but S9 Digital quickly delivered the software that would both delight users and provides Ario with the data they needed to optimize performance.

App Development

The first step in the app development process was to transform Ario’s mockup designs into an appealing, user-friendly UI. However, S9 Digital’s app was more than just a pretty face: it was Ario’s access point to the internet. Ario wanted to eventually monitor and control tablets at a hotel and company-wide level through the cloud. So we used Facebook’s React Native framework, which allowed our developers to build the native app UI, web admin dashboard, and server connections (with Node.js) all in JavaScript.
This sped up development time considerably by simplifying integration and allowing us to reuse code. It also meant that going forward, Ario could use a lean engineering team to maintain their various code libraries.

To integrate Ario’s codebase with the S9 Digital UI, a full audit and testing of interactions were performed. The result was a smooth, responsive, and natural-feeling control to the lighting and alarm systems. One example of the synergy between hardware and software is the app’s transition into a “night mode” that resembles a traditional alarm clock. This transition happens gradually: the lights begin to dim, and the app begins to remove distractions from the user’s view in addition to reducing its own brightness. The app is synced to taps on the screen as well as an accelerometer in the device to give the user instant access to the app’s features. As a result of S9 Digital’s work, not only did the app provide an attractive and intuitive interface for users, the LED lights and alarms were working better than ever.

Remote Access

Ario’s customer trials would occur in many hotels simultaneously, so they needed the capability to immediately provide remote solutions to any problems that may arise. To accomplish this, we set them up with Hexnode, a cloud-based device manager. Hexnode allowed Ario to restrict access to the Android tablet by placing it in a kiosk mode that would limit user error. It also enabled Ario support staff to forcibly restart devices remotely to resolve issues.

An important part of the trials would be collecting data in real time to monitor bugs and track the full life of user interaction with the app. S9 Digital implemented data collection on the app and set Ario up with Papertrail, a cloud-hosted logging service, which would keep the Ario support team alert to error logs and user interaction on the device. Papertrail served as a quick intermediary solution that could easily be replaced with a full cloud database. Cloud services enable a company to incrementally scale up their data collection based on what time and funding allow.

Cloud Architecture and the Next Phase

Once a product has access to the internet and is collecting data, the possibilities are endless. Ario now provides more than just lighting experiences: it provides control and analytics for the entire hotel’s lighting system. Built alongside the tablet app was an admin dashboard website that will serve as the central hub of information on the tablets and lights. When Ario is ready to upscale their operations, data already being sent to Papertrail can easily be pointed to Ario’s Azure Cloud Platform, which provides a wealth of services for securing and analyzing data. Given remote access to their tablets and the Android store, Ario can push software updates and automatically provision new devices. Ario can integrate its customer-facing app, LED light hardware, web admin dashboard, and data collection into a unified IoT platform to meet the full needs of the evolving hotel industry.

Conclusions

S9 Digital was able to architect cloud software solutions to meet Ario’s needs for the right price, on the right timeline. Both the client and their customers were thrilled with the results, and the Ario enterprise is positioned for success as it scales up its business in the future.

Dale Dell’Ario, CTO & Co-Founder at Ario stated, “S9 Digital has worked with us for more than six months on tablet app and cloud infrastructure projects. They have been immediately productive and efficient, providing solid solutions quickly. We consider them to be a valuable development partner and recommend them highly.”

Undeniably, the emergence of the cloud has enabled organizations to innovate and market their products/services easily, without breaking the bank. Its innate characteristics, like scalability, connectivity, and on-demand provisioning, have made it an ideal platform to build applications and manage IoT.  S9 Digital can utilize our knowledge in cloud architecture, mobile development, and UX design to build IoT platforms and system across a multitude of industries.

Watch YOUR Vision Come to Life

The post Bringing IoT to LED Lights appeared first on .

Without cloud architecture, the Internet of Things (IoT) is just… things!

With the rising need of connectivity, cloud-enabled solutions have become integral for the development of network architecture to foster real-time IoT deployments. The cloud wave has touched each industry and sector in an attempt to make them more agile. When implemented pragmatically, cloud solutions can help businesses across all ambits to capitalize on market needs for connected devices to gain new sets of insightful data. To put it simply, IoT was born in the cloud, and cloud fosters both IoT and Big Data growth.

According to a study conducted by IDC, the global market of Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to reach approximately $1.7 trillion by 2020, with several custom-built platforms, storage options, security models, applications to cover a large percentage of revenue as the market grows.

It goes without saying that the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the rising dependence of companies on digital devices will also rise swiftly with the help of cloud-enabled services. Here, cloud computing will share an integral role in accommodating the ever-increasing data storage needs, raised by start-ups, midcaps, and giants corporate houses. It is no more a hidden truth that legacy systems cannot meet the growing data needs and connected devices. The other side of the equation is, cloud platforms are designed and developed in such a manner that they can help organizations sustain rapid growth in performance. On top of that, cloud computing is underpinned with capabilities to meet the need of real-time analytics and mobility management applications.

Let us understand the significance of cloud computing in today’s IoT-driven landscape:

Stringent Security: There are a host of businesses having concerns about the protection of IoT. They hold an astrological fear in their mind that it can impact their network security, which may also result in dropped business. By partnering with a trusted cloud security service provider, such as AWS, Azure, Or Google Cloud, they can put an end to all such concerns. Organizations can secure and segregate their information and data sets across different devices and IT architectures, connected from different geographic locations. Most providers follow a multi-layered security model to protect the network, data, and other critical business applications against unwarranted issues. These providers have up-to-the-minute technologies in place to prevent catastrophic situations.

Greater Scalability: Apart from security, it is an intricate affair for many businesses to predict how much computing and storage capacity they will need to accommodate explosive data surge, brought in by a plethora of connected devices. Here, the cloud has something to offer. The cloud computing model is extremely scalable when compared to the traditional computing models. With its on-demand resource provisioning attribute, it enables businesses to meet the growing influx of data and connected devices, promptly, without showing any performance lag. To put it simply, IT departments can easily adjust their storage capacity, whenever and wherever required. This, in turn, reduces over-provisioning of resources and saves precious time and resources. Not to forget, the computing and storage capacity can be added at any point in time from any part of the world.

Network Reliability: Today, for many forward-thinking organizations, network infrastructure management is the top priority. To manage the network architecture, it is indispensable to have reliable management solutions in place. Furthermore, IoT emphasizes the need of well-managed network architecture, which makes it quite intricate for technology leaders to manage the burgeoning data growth in real-time.

Businesses can simply balance data and devices without compromising on critical functionalities. The best way is to partner with a reliable cloud service provider, who can provide you with matchless solutions for disaster recovery and business continuity.

‘Pay-As-You-Go’ Model

In addition to these, cloud computing also offers solutions at no big cost. Typically, it works on a pay-per-use billing model. As an example, with AWS ‘pay-as-you-go’ pricing, you to easily adapt to changing business needs without overcommitting budgets and improving your responsiveness to changes.  With a pay-as-you-go model, you can adapt your business depending on need and not on forecasts, reducing the risk of over positioning or missing capacity.

Enabling Innovation

Undeniably, the emergence of the cloud has enabled organizations to innovate and market their products/services easily, without breaking the bank. It’s innate characteristics, like scalability, connectivity, and on-demand provisioning, have made it an ideal platform to build applications and manage IoT.

The post Cloud Architecture for IoT appeared first on .