Norsk Guardian

Norsk Guardian is an app that has a unique ability to monitor your boat's battery charge and thereby make your trips on the water safe.

The global market for battery management systems is growing rapidly every year. According to forecasts, in 2024 the entire BMS market will be valued at 12.6 billion dollars. The development of the market is driven by the growing need for monitoring and management of batteries in renewable energy systems. And that’s when Norsk comes into play!

Year

2020

Country

USA

Team

7 people

Commits

972

Development

30 weeks

Challenge

Norsk Guardian is an application that the Stormotion team created for Norsk, a company that develops original lithium-ion batteries for open water, ice fishing, and kayaking.

Each Norsk battery has a unique Bluetooth module, thanks to which the application can receive and process information about battery status. One of the main ideas behind the app is to avoid critical situations at sea due to battery problems. Using the app, users can monitor the battery temperature, voltage, current charge and a bunch of other crucial parameters. The application analyzes all these indicators and in case of significant deviations from the norm, which may lead to a short circuit, sends a warning to the user.

Thus, one of the key technical challenges for our team was to create and ensure instant data exchange between the battery and the phone. In addition, configure the system so that it understands in which cases the indicators mean possible problems and need to warn the user about possible problems with batteries, even before they appear.

Process

The full-cycle development of the Norsk Guardian application went through all the key stages — from Wireframing to QA & Release.

One of the main stages was the Discovery stage. The Stormotion team had to figure out if the battery could get all the data the customer wanted. For this, we developed a BLE module, thanks to which the connection and data transfer via Bluetooth takes place. The React Native framework turned out to be the best solution for creating such an application.

Norsk Guardian needed a solution to monitor multiple batteries simultaneously, retrieve telemetry data, and display charging indicators. To address these challenges, we conducted thorough testing, established data retrieval methods, set up database entities for user and battery associations, and initiated work on voltage-based charging indicators.

To deliver the app, 7 members of the Stormotion team participated: 3 Developers, 1 QA Engineer, 2 UI/UX Designers and a Project Manager. It took about 30 weeks to create the app.

Pre-Project - 11 Weeks

Scoping

Planing

Discovery

Agile Development - 18 Weeks

Design

App Development

QA & Testing

Release - 1 Weeks

Release

Handover

Solution

The final Product fully met our expectations. While keeping it user-centric, we managed to keep the balance between both parties involved – employees and employers.

When working on IoT projects, we always ask for a device itself. That’s why Norsk sent us models of their batteries so that we could develop and test all the features of the application directly.

The application design developed by our UX/UI designers is both minimalist & functional. Despite the app is quite “technical”, we implemented a bunch of smooth animations to make it even more eye-pleasing.

Finally, we’ve set up a flawless communication system between the battery and the app. This minimizes the possibility of battery failure on water. Now every user of Norsk products can enjoy their holidays at sea and don’t worry about possible problems. If that, the app will warn you!

Success for Norsk from a:

IoT hardware's unpredictable nature and firmware versions acting up posed significant challenges to our project. Moreover, the absence of documentation and unexpected compatibility issues added complexity.

Yet, our team tackled these obstacles by addressing any discrepancies early on. We implemented a logging system to transmit real-time battery data to the cloud, enabling Norsk to monitor battery health. Our transparent and proactive communication approach fostered a partnership built on trust and collaboration, positioning us not just as vendors but as reliable partners in Norsk's pursuit of innovation.

Throughout the development process, optimizing application performance remained our top priority, given the continuous data exchange requirements. To address this, we optimized rendering processes and leveraged techniques like transforming 3D animations into videos for improved performance. Additionally, robust data tracking mechanisms provide timely support to users.

Limited availability of actual batteries for testing prompted us to introduce mocked test batteries, simulating real ones to conduct thorough performance testing, even under stress scenarios.

One intriguing test case involved evaluating the app's "Heating" functionality under sub-zero temperatures, simulating real-world conditions. This rigorous testing ensured optimal performance and user safety across diverse environments. Furthermore, implementing a feedback mechanism within the app allowed us to incorporate user suggestions, enhancing features like runtime calculation for improved user experience.

Our team developed a robust infrastructure to handle surges in user traffic and data volume. To establish a resilient framework, we utilized Firebase for backend operations, such as authentication, data storage, and serverless functions. This choice ensured scalability and streamlined the management of user data and interactions.

Monitoring the application's performance became a crucial task after its launch. We relied on tools like Sentry and Firebase Crashlytics to scan application health in real-time, promptly addressing any issues to maintain a seamless user experience.

As a result, 95% of Norsk clients are satisfied that they can monitor batteries’ performance within the app. Our collaboration and innovation provide clients of Norsk Guardian with peace of mind and confidence in the reliability of their battery systems during every voyage.