Bluetooth-based Remote Control App for Outdoor Lights

Manages multiple lights locations, stores custom settings for each user

Xamarin iOS
Xamarin Android
Google Firebase
Atlassian Jira

Solution Bluetooth-based remote control app for outdoor lights

Industry Consumer Electronics

Engagement model Fixed price

Methodology Scrum

Team

Business Analyst
Xamarin Developer

QA Engineer

Softeq helped the client develop a mobile app to be used as a remote control for managing the colorful outdoor lights string. The app connects to the string’s controller via Bluetooth and allows managing different lighting modes, color temperature, flashing effects etc.

The lights settings are accessible through a PIN entered once. This helps identify the right string when several individual pieces are hanging in proximity to each other.

Business name NDA
Location USA
Business Activity A manufacturer of smart home automation products, LED lighting and electronics

Problem

The customer manufactures and markets outdoor lights for commercial and private spaces. The lights have an RGBW capability – an LCD display technology that uses four subpixels (red, green, blue, and white).

The lights are controlled by an RF remote control. To allow users greater control and functionality compared to the RF remote capabilities, the customer wanted to create a BLE-enabled mobile application, which would link a smartphone or tablet to a lights string. The client expected the service provider to have relevant hands-on mobile app building skills.

Solution

Softeq created a mobile app to be used as a remote control for managing the colorful outdoor lights string. The app connects to the string’s controller via Bluetooth and allows managing multiple parameters:

Different lighting modes
Color temperature
Flashing effects
Timer for automatic turn-off, etc.

The lights settings are accessible through a PIN (entered once and then remembered by the app). This helps identify the right string when several individual pieces are hanging in proximity to each other. The lights support a two-way communication – phone to the string and string to the phone. This way the string communicates to the user its latest settings saved.

Application Functionality:

Manages multiple lights location, e.g. Backyard
Detects available garlands: as single strings or in groups, e.g. Backyard Group: Patio, Pergola, Porch
Allows changing PIN
Supports scheduling the light on/off
Allows selecting color combinations
Allows selecting lighting mode, e.g. Solid, Pulse, Twinkle
Supports black-out of selected bulbs
Plays back a video tutorial

Security

The solution leverages the authorization mechanism provided by the Google Firebase platform – the user must first log into his/her account to proceed to the app. The app communicates with the lights string over a PIN-secured channel using Bluetooth.

Challenge

The hardware and firmware for the lighting were developed by a contract manufacturer in China. The team had to adapt the development schedule to the hardware and firmware components availability.

The initial idea was to store the configuration of the lights and user profiles on the lighting device’s flash memory. However, the vendor could not implement this capability entirely. The device memory allows only storing either the current lighting mode or a select color and event timer, or several lighting schedules. The team suggested using the Google Firebase platform to be able to store the user data on the server. The platform also allows synchronizing the data with the device while the Internet connection is on. If the lights string is used in the Internet free zone, the user will be able to control the lights settings thanks to the offline mode availability. When the Internet is back, the changes will be synced to the Firebase server.

Results

Further plans include ensuring compatibility and manageability of other customer’s electronic products with the updated cafe lights string version.