UltronSMART Inc
Customer Name: UltronSMART Inc
Use products and services: GCP
Industry: Internet of Things
Country: Taiwan
New Garden Co., LTD was formally established in 2016, mainly providing WIFI Mesh SDK with patented connection technology to domestic and foreign netcom industry and telecommunications industry. Established UltronSMART Inc., a subsidiary in Taiwan in 2019, and began to provide IoT modules and platform services based on powerful connection technology.
The Ultron Smart Team also provides a smart management platform (Ultron Platform), which can be used by power supply operators, builders, property management companies, long-term residential service agencies, etc., which can manage various smart devices, on-site network environments and more functions at the same time.
Complete cross-brand smart home APP and platform development through GCP products
In the construction of cross-brand smart home mobile phone applications and platform services, the main application used by Ultron is GCP IOT Core. All Ultron's connected devices are managed through this service.
GCP service details
Cloud IoT Core
Cloud IoT Core is based on Cloud Pub/Sub, which can aggregate the data of individual devices into a single system that is tightly integrated with Google Cloud data analysis services and is universal. Use the customer's IoT data stream to perform advanced analysis, data visualization, machine learning and other functions to improve operational efficiency, predict problems, and build various models that can describe and optimize business in detail.
The second is Friestore, which is used to update the real-time status of all the displayed data of the APP, such as product status, historical records, environmental information updates, etc. Friestore allows the database to communicate with the front-end easily; the account management of Ultron is directly Use Firebase.
Use different GCP product portfolios to develop the main functions of products In addition, Ultron has integrated various GCP products to develop the main functions in the Ultron Utility APP, including schedule setting, Ultron KEY function, context setting, viewing device action records, etc. Each product has the aforementioned functions A brief description of the application is as follows:
1. Scheduling function: preset the time when the smart device is turned on or off This function applies the comand, config, and state functions of GCP IoT Core, allowing smart devices to make various settings.
2. Ultron KEY function: After scanning the QR Code of all devices and binding the account, the Ultron KEY function can be activated to connect a large number of devices to the Internet at once. This function uses IoT Core and Friestore. First, the IoT Core sends a command to the device, and the device returns the status, triggering Smart Connect (Ultron’s patented connection technology), and Friestore completes the real-time status update. Scanning the QR Code to connect to the account is Ultron’s choice of binding account, because it is the most intuitive and fast for users. Technically, Cloud Spanner is used to complete the development of this function.
3. Context setting: You can save the current device state as a context with one key, and you can use one command to control multiple devices to the desired state without separate settings. This function uses Cloud BigTable to group data into groups and keep historical records, and can distinguish whether it can be recorded as a situation according to the status.
4. View device action records This feature combines BigQuery and Memorystore> Redis. Use BigQuery to store a large number of complete data records, and you can put time series records, and then use the copy of Memorystore> Redis to retrieve the latest records and display them on the front end, so that the reading speed is faster.
5. Link with Google Home Direct integration of AoG.
Apply the service to internal management, saving a lot of time and cost In terms of internal management, App Engine, Compute Engine, Montering (Stackdriver) and Cloud Scheduler are mainly used.
App Engine can manage a large number of customers of the IoT Core SDK. It saves a lot of time and cost without having to manage and maintain servers connected to many devices. Compute Engine is used in API internal detection. This detection requires a fixed IP,
because App Engine's IP is floating, so Ultron uses Compute Engine for data collection. Montering (Stackdriver) is mainly used to check Log. Ultron uses Cloud Scheduler to do regular backups of the database. It will run a set script every morning to make sure that the overall structure is okay.
They also use Cloud Task to handle tasks that need to be scheduled, such as:
1. FW upgrade progress bar: Check whether the progress of the device is reported to the front end.
2. Offline notification: Double confirmation of the device status, a passive Timer mechanism function is required to reduce false alarms and avoid unsatisfactory user experience.
The effectiveness of Ultron Smart Module under the use of GCP Ultrons smart socket and temperature and humidity sensor application scenario diagram Ultron Smart Module started research and development and testing in 2019. In 2021, Ultron’s cross-brand smart home mobile phone application-Ultron Utility App was officially launched. This service module was built based on GCP at the beginning. It is currently available in Taiwan. Approximately 30 manufacturers have adopted Ultron smart modules as their product smart solutions, providing the largest shipments of IoT modules with services in Taiwan.
Since the official launch of the mobile application service, more than 1,000 devices have been launched on GCP, and there are also many products that have been sold but not yet launched, which will be further fermented after market education and subsequent product launches.
The exclusive patented connection technology service UltronKEY (scanning QR Code is the connection function) on the module has been developed since 2012. As of now, there have been more than 6,500,000 online devices using Ultron WIFI Mesh technology.
Competitive advantages of Ultron modules:
Regardless of brand restrictions, the same App can be added to the ecosystem as long as it adopts modules.
Standardized modules with services, allowing home appliance manufacturers to obtain one-stop intelligent services with a reasonable budget (including cloud building, App interface, mass production testing tools, etc.)
Natively in GCP, account and information management are backed by Google, and most of other competitors are Chinese manufacturers who have information security concerns. Exclusive patented connection technology (telecommunications grade WIFI Mesh technology), making it easier for smart home appliances to install and connect (scan QR Code to complete the connection)
Ultron employees' thoughts after using GCP
RD Team said that it was the first time to come into contact with serverless services, which reduced a lot of time for cluster management, and made overall configuration and parallel
expansion easy. The interface of Google Cloud is also very good, and the user experience is very intuitive.
The technical staff said that the previous company used the VM architecture. In the past, 7-8 people were required to prepare the entire server team, but currently only 3 people are required for the server team.
When using the updated version of the VM architecture, the steps required to achieve zero downtime are quite troublesome. For ordinary VM practices, half of the machines must be removed from the load balancer first, and then added back after the update is completed, and the remaining processing must be continued. The other half.
Serverless architecture can automatically help with version switching, without complicated steps at all. Except for a small number of services that require VM processing (such as third-party API connection with fixed IP), other Ultron basically uses a serverless architecture.
About Ultron
Since 2019, the Ultron Smart Team has assisted various home appliance manufacturers to launch IoT products by providing Ultron Modules. So far, it has supported more than 30
home appliance brands, including Shengbao, Hitachi, Airmate, Alaska, etc. Major brands will
begin to launch smart home appliances in August 2020. Consumers no longer
have to worry about brand incompatibility or network connection problems. Smart home is no longer an
unattainable dream. As long as you choose Ultron empowered brand appliances according
to your preferences, you can just like the way of adding friends on Line. , Use the same
mobile phone application to scan the QR code on the home appliances, you can connect all
home appliances to the Internet to complete your own smart space.