Case Study
A Lean Cloud Deployment for Smart Home Devices
Efficient IoT solution optimizes interactions between smart thermostats, mobile devices, and cloud services while reducing the cost of network communications by 80% to 90%.
Recent rapid growth in the residential and commercial IoT space introduced unexpected technical challenges; many companies have found that integrating edge computing with the cloud comes with a higher price tag than originally anticipated.
RELEVANT BACKGROUND
IoT solutions call for devices to communicate with one another, sometimes locally and sometimes in remote locations.
One common way to manage this communication is to use the cloud as a sort of central switchboard, with periodic data transfers from devices to cloud storage and subsequent, independent retrieval of this data from other devices.
In many cases this strategy is inefficient and unnecessary, leading to high costs for marginal benefits.
The Challenge
A global smart-home IoT device manufacturer wanted to reduce the amount it was spending on cloud infrastructure, storage, and communications for a line of smart-thermostats.
The existing solution:
- Monitored and controlled smart thermostat settings through a mobile application
- Distributed firmware updates to thermostats
- Required costly and unwieldy cloud infrastructure and storage
Technical Requirements
Our engineers were tasked with building a solution that:
- Provided support for communications between mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc) and thermostats:
- Within a LAN (such as on a home WiFi network)
- Across multiple networks (such as from a home WiFi network to another WiFi network, or to a phone connected to a mobile data network or a mobile hotspot)
- Supported periodic distribution of firmware updates to thermostats when new software versions were available
- Minimized use of cloud resources as much as possible
- Reduced costs
Solution Overview
A secure peer-to-peer communication mechanism that enables efficient interactions between thermostats, authorized mobile devices, and cloud services
A standards-based solution with no license fees
Enhanced features available via QoS support
Courageous Innovation
Communications Across Networks. The proof-of-concept demonstration we engineered leverages our open source OpenDDS product to support direct communication between thermostats and mobile devices within a residence on the same LAN and across multiple networks via the public internet.
Firmware Updates. Our approach provides support for efficient distribution of firmware updates using secure peer-to-peer networks.
Minimized Cloud Infrastructure. By implementing a relay in the cloud and leveraging open source standards for Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal — a technique used by routers to map internal addresses to external addresses — devices communicate directly across the public internet for traffic that's not required to flow to the cloud.
Cost Savings. Our solution satisfies all performance constraints while reducing the cost of network communications by 80% to 90% from the original solution.
BUSINESS OUTCOMES
Our client stands to reduce annual production and run-time costs from over $1M to less than $200K. This frees up funds for high-value services, such as analytics to reduce HVAC maintenance costs while improving reliability and up-time.
Reimagine the Way You Use the Cloud
Terabytes of data are exchanged and stored in the cloud today, but cloud costs can quickly eat away your profit margin. Architecting an efficient solution requires experience and expertise that is not commonly available.
We have helped clients minimize spend for their infrastructure by intelligently leveraging the cloud and using standards-based open source products, including the OpenDDS framework. In some cases, this can mean up to a 5x reduction in cloud expenditures. We can help you do the same.
IoT-Certified Google Cloud Partner
By earning the IoT Partner Specialization, we have proven our expertise and success in building customer solutions in the IoT field using Google Cloud Platform technology.
We help enterprises transform in the cloud. Let's reimagine together what's possible for your business.
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Outcome-focused, real-world practicality combined with courageous innovation
Technology & Transformation
Expert engineering from project initiation to deployment and beyond
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