Product Design of a Home Security, Monitoring and Automation System for a Start-up company

Executive Summary

Our customer is a start-up company who is developing a system which when installed at home will help customers monitor their various devices at home which include Home Security, Cameras, Lighting, Thermostats, etc remotely through their PC, PDA or Smart Phone.

ennovate was engaged:

• To develop a touch screen GUI that is intuitive and at the same time provides richer look and feel
• Testing and Sustenance & Maintenance of the product

ennovate team completed project on time and also during the course guided the customer from their own selection of technology to the best suited technology for developing this project.

The Customer

• Customer is a start-up company specializing Home Security, Monitoring and Automation System. This System helps customers monitor their various devices at home which include Home Security, Cameras, Lighting, Thermostats, etc remotely through their PC, PDA or Smart Phone
• There are mainly 4 parts in Home Security System:
  • GTS device:  It is installed at customer's site. User can activate or deactivate the home security system through GTS. Apart from security & monitoring features, the thin light weight touch screen device also contains widgets like temperature and lighting control, weather, news, sports, photos, traffic etc.
  • Subscriber Portal: It provides monitoring services to the users. The widget based portal GUI, similar to iGoogle, provides fast and easy access to control and monitor the GTS device remotely
  • Mobile Portal: It is similar to subscriber portal provides handy access to the users via mobile and hand-held devices
  • Management Portal: Through this portal, service provider can manage device for remote updates of the firmware/software on desired intervals and provide technical support to its users

The Challenge

• Availability of system at eInfochips offshore design center
• Product knowledge since no Documentation
• Implementation of rich GUI under agile scrum model

The Solution

• ennovate’s amplified off-shoring model solved the challenge of access to system by deploying 2 onsite engineers at customer site who studied the product architecture and understood the requirements. Project team through on-site and off-shore model integrated hardware & software, also redefined usage of the customer's software and increasingly enhance security, networking, remote access and full automation of the application layer software
• Since there was no documentation, ennovate team dived into the code to find out the business rules. This helped team to understand the overall product and helped team to implement the same in the new enhanced product. Team had to learn new technologies & language which were not part of Java Umbrella
• Under Agile scrum model, ennovate’s team successfully designed and developed rich GUI for the touch screen device and web portal. It involved development in application layer for communication between touch screen device and portal
• Sustenance
  ennovate handled all sustenance activities like Bug Detection and Bug Fixing. So far we have enabled 4 successful releases and currently we are involved in adding further features to the product. ennovate fixed over 600 bugs with new module development
• Testing
  ennovate’s onsite Champion handled testing of modules by Manual Testing of the said products and enabling bug free delivery

The Technology

• Server Side: Java, Struts 2.0, JRuby on Rails, Struts, Spring, Hibernate, Acegi
• Presentation Layer Side: JavaScript Frameworks like YUI & ExtJS, JUnit, CSS, HTML
• Development Tools: Eclipse, Firebug
• Unit Testing Tools: JUnit

Customer Testimonial

"I wanted to let you and your team know that we are very pleased with our relationship with ennovate. I will admit that I was skeptical that outsourcing could work so well. This is my 3rd go at outsourcing and the previous 2 were not successful. So far, I am now a believer. Our first project, I believe was a big success. The project was delivered on time and with high quality. I realize that your team worked extra hours to make our deadlines. The extra work was appreciated. Keep up the good work! "

- Director of Software Technology