Home Security System Development

Executive Summary

Our customer is a start-up based in USA who came up with an idea of developing a system which helps end customers to monitor various devices at home.



Our customer did not have any engineering team, and eInfochips associated with them to become their engineering wing.  eInfochips delivered the complete market-ready solution for the Home security system for the customer.  We worked with the customer for porting Linux on the customer hardware platform and building the application software development on top of it. We developed the system with Freescale Multimedia Applications Processor and QNX. Leveraging our expertise in the area of smart security devices, eInfochips helped the customer in launching and enhanced system with advance features at a 50% lower total cost of ownership of the developed product.
The security system is an advanced Widget based UI on a touch screen device and a web portal. On events such as opening-of-a-door, the system generates alert notification on the touch screen and the web portal. The system facilitates a customized content delivery to the touch screen on a regular basis. eInfochips developed the system to give complete control of devices from touch screen and web portal with remote arm/disarm facility.  The system also houses a Wi-Fi camera and devices support for live video streaming from home on the web portal with a facility of taking snapshots.

The Customer

Our customer desired to move home security beyond the stagnant offerings of traditional systems and into the future, with hopes of enabling partners to offer their customers a unique, differentiated service offering with lifestyle enhancing features and unprecedented peace of mind – something beyond the typical yard signs and window decals of the status quo.
Our customer, a startup based in the Bay Area, launched this advanced security system and to achieve their market position.

The Challenge

  • Incorporating complete control of security system including lighting and thermostat from touch screen and web portal
  • Enabling live video streaming from home on the web portal with a facility of taking snapshots which makes security system full proof
  • Developing the solution to be user friendly and enhancing system with remote arm/disarm facility

The Solution

Design & Development

eInfochips enhanced customer support with various developments for advance home security systems.
Team eInfochips was involved in porting the OS to the customer hardware platform. We have ported Linux from existing hardware platform to new hardware. The original Linux code was written for a similar board; however it had to be ported to the new hardware revision.
Team eInfochips was also associated with the Board Bring Up. We engineered the bring-up of the Processor in Boot Mode and programmed it as a Controller to enhance system performance.

  • Device Driver Development
    • We developed device drivers for hardware using specific Protocols. Independent drivers had to be written which works with respective hardware would as well provide the transparency to the middleware using it.
  • Middleware Development
    • We also developed Middleware which incorporates the logic to deploy a Security System. The middleware was developed to build a stable and sturdy security system.
  • Ethernet over USB Device Driver Development
    • This work involved porting of USB Stack on the Boot Loader and development of Ethernet Driver over the USB Stack. We were required to design and implement a Network-Driver over USB, which would initialize the Power control to USB & PHY controllers and communicate using Ethernet Protocol, using USB protocol at the host side.
  • Porting of WebKit Browser on RTOS

Testing

  • Manufacturing Tests

Architecture

The Customer's Touch Screen Keypad was an embedded device which has a main processor with a 7’ LCD with touch screen support, Wi-Fi, GPRS, Ethernet, PSTN, USB, Camera, Speaker and microphone interfaces. It also included proprietary wireless controllers to interface security devices.
The Device ran a RTOS with all necessary drivers and talks to the control center through a wired connectivity via proprietary key bus interface protocol and other devices through WiFi. At the time of installation, depending upon the make of the security device to be interfaced with, corresponding drivers get loaded. Our Customer worked with various security alarm device manufacturers to integrate their systems and develop corresponding drivers.
The Device interacts with the server in a real-time over the internet to update the status of the devices connected as well as to get instructions and data to update various services (like sports, weather, stocks etc) on the keypad. The Server runs Weblogic and has Oracle as the database server. The complete code package houses various technologies/scripting languages such as are Java, Spring, Struts, Hibernate, Xdoclet, Ajax, Ext JS etc.
All the installed devices poll data to the server on a real-time basis which interprets and display it on a portal. It also sends alerts to the customer and any other agencies configured depending upon the severity of the situation. Customers can login to the subscriber portal and configure/.control various services.

Technology

  • Server Side: Java, Struts 2.0, Struts, Spring, Hibernate, Acegi Security, Weblogic, JBoss
  • Presentation Layer Side: Web 2.0 complaint, JavaScript Frameworks like YUI & ExtJS, JUnit, CSS, HTML
  • Development Tools: Eclipse IDE, Firebug, Visio, Aptana Studio, SVN, Blackberry Emulator
  • Unit Testing Tools: JUnit

The Benefit

  • Our specialized expertise in security devices and video processing systems development enabled the customer build the system with unique features and capture maximum market share
  • eInfochips team took 100% ownership of the product development, and delivered the complete solution with very low interrupt to customer which helped them in concentrating on their core functionality
  • Though our amplified offshore engagement model, eInfochips enabled the customer to complete the product development at a 50% lower project cost and saved about 10% of development time