Client

A leading IT products manufacturer company based in Paris, France, the client produces wireless technology solutions for smartphones and tablets, including commercial and consumer drones, Bluetooth solutions, audio products, and more.

Project

Bluetooth technology has played a significant role in the development of wireless technology. First, the launch of Bluetooth 4.0, and then Bluetooth Low Energy enabled seamless communication between devices and allowed them to operate for extended periods on a low power level. One by one, businesses started introducing wireless technology solutions, ranging from fitness trackers and smartwatches to smart homes. Users were able to wirelessly control their well-being, track fitness goals, and monitor home devices from their smartphones.

Following these trends in tech, our client presented two generations of a smart solution — a flower monitoring stick and a pot designed to control and track the well-being of home plants. The solution was created to help people who run into a situation when their plants keep wilting despite their best efforts. To solve this problem, the client integrated sensors which collect and store data on soil moisture, room temperature, fertilizer levels, and light intensity of flowers. Based on this data, the solution then generates recommendations to improve plant health.

To enable users to see that data online and wirelessly, the client approached Elinext to build mobile and web solutions. Now users are able to see the progress and receive real-time updates on their phones and tablets.

Requirements for a mobile application

The initial requirement from the client was to build an iPhone/iPad app to facilitate the process of caring for plants. The solution should include a database with more than 6000+ different plants. Additionally, the client wanted to create a multilingual app available for users around the world. Finally, the app should maintain stable performance and be capable of displaying real-time charts with the status of the plants.

Requirements for a web application

As for the website, the main requirement was to build a solution that could call existing APIs and retrieve information about flower statistics, health, tips, and other relevant data. The idea was to make the website user-friendly and with a modern user interface so that it could function correctly across all web browsers.

It was essential to achieve good performance since the website has various graphs and plants on a map.

Additionally, the project required Elinext to provide services in mobile and tablet device support, a new design template, localization, and SEO optimization.

Challenges

Both the mobile and web projects faced challenges that were critical for the performance of their core functionalities.

Mobile application challenges

The initial challenge was related to the plant database — a source for finding relevant information about plants and tips on caring for flowers. Since the database had more than 6000 botanical entries, it was crucial to optimize the source in order to get a stable and highly responsive app.

Another challenge was to ensure the speedy work of charts and graphs, which are used to show the data for moisture, light, and temperature, as well as recommendations for improving the well-being of plants and their flowers.

Web application challenges

The main challenge that the Elinext developers faced was related to implementing a website on AJAX. The obstacle was linked to the same-origin policy, which prevents the unauthorized access of data and resources from different origins.

Furthermore, hosting the website on the Heroku cloud application platform introduced specific limitations.

To ensure proper representation of text in different languages, the team had to carefully handle the localization task.

The mobile layout needed to be responsive across various devices and operating system versions.

Lastly, the website needed optimization to seamlessly integrate with Google Analytics. This would allow tracking and analysis of user behavior and website performance.

Solution

Mobile application

The mobile solution is a multilingual application available for iOS users. It connects with a flower pot and stick, and sends alerts to mobile phones via Bluetooth when a plant requires watering, fertilizer, light, or a change in temperature.

The solution has a massive database of plants where users can find expert advice from international botanists. Users can browse through the database to discover new plant varieties and learn how to care about them from tips & tricks.

To address the challenge of optimizing the database, Elinext developers implemented a specialized caching mechanism that retrieves plants from the web server based on timestamps.

To ensure a fast response when a user swipes a flower, the team validated and presented more than 7000 combinations of flowers in the correct format.

The team also developed a custom localization library. This library enables the dynamic display of flower combinations in different languages, ensuring a personalized experience for users worldwide.

To enable stable and real-time uploading of graphs, the development team integrated an OpenGL plan view. Known for its real-time rendering capabilities and high-quality representation of graphics, this integration provides a visually appealing experience for users interacting with the graphs.

Overall, the mobile application has the following functionality:

• Personal garden
• To-do list that is automatically updated based on recommendations
• 6000+ plant database with detailed information
• Ability to manage connections with various sensors of the device
• Live mode, a feature that shows a moving graph with a flower’s current conditions

Web application

The Elinext team implemented the project architecture utilizing Backbone.js as a JavaScript MVC framework. Additionally, they focused on optimizing and minifying source codes to enhance the overall performance of the project. UI developers from Elinext created various workarounds and polyfills to ensure compatibility with older devices that lack support for modern CSS properties and JavaScript objects. The web team made sure all pages are displayed properly in different languages, including hieroglyphs and other special symbols.

Results

Both web and mobile applications have been used for over a decade by plant lovers worldwide. With the digital solutions developed by Elinext, users can check real-time data on the light intensity, ambient temperature, soil moisture, and water level of their plants. The mobile app allows for the ability to create a personalized garden manager to facilitate the process of caring for plants. Additionally, there is a possibility to create standardized text (email or SMS) or personalized texts using pre-written sentences.

The web solution was divided into several phases, which included improvements and new functionality. Overall, the project was released on schedule. The website was optimized for different screen resolutions. The team worked with the client’s developers on implementing several UI enhancements. For example, we optimized UI elements specifically for Windows Phone devices since the mobile version of Internet Explorer has limitations and internal issues. The team also integrated the Google Analytics API in order to track content generated through AJAX.

The work on this project lasted for over a year. Throughout our collaboration, Elinext created solutions for two generations of wireless devices. Both of them received recognition in the market and became breakthroughs in the 2010s, following the boom of Bluetooth technology devices. This project laid the foundation for other joint projects in the future. Elinext developed car-related solutions, such as a car audio infrastructure, a music streaming app for car kits, and an app to connect with a hands-free car kit. Additionally, our developers created a mobile application for controlling mini-drones.