Kyiv, Ukraine
The brief
Ezlo is one of the most innovative companies in the home automation industry. The company’s mission is to provide automated solutions for routine tasks by delivering innovative smart devices to the home. Ezlo aims to make home automation more accessible and easy to enhance by promoting wide compatibility and connectivity.
Challenge
The key challenge of the project was to create a universal platform which allows connecting all IoT vendors into one ecosystem — for example, connect a Z-Wave button to a Zigbee lamp and manage everything via Alexa and Facebook messenger.
Solution
We decided to use a microservice architecture, which is a key aspect of the success. All communications are in real time, both a service-to-service (MQTT) and a service-to-UI (websockets).
The system consists of a core (which manages all the devices), system manager, installable bridges to support different vendors (can be developed by 3rd parties), application store, cloud UI, mobile UI, etc.
We have made more than 10 pluggable integrations with 3rd party platforms: Google Voice, Fibaro, Xiaomi, Sonos, Amazon Alexa, Facebook, Telegram, etc.
Deep understanding of low level protocols and hardware specifics helped us to create a performant and expandable architecture. As the platforms allow 3rd parties to create their own apps, security was a keystone of the system.
The platform for home automation systems supports app isolation with docker, sandboxes for execution of untrusted scenarios, a sophisticated user management system, RBAC, and 2-factor authentication support built-in.
Results
The delivered platform allows for the seamless integration of all devices and cloud apps. It enables users to centrally control all smart home devices regardless of their brand without requiring multiple apps.
The automation technology makes it simple to develop workflows that put the home to work by connecting all of the devices. No coding is required when using the query builder — with only a few clicks, you can automate actions for any event.
The platform for home automation systems also enables visualization of all smart devices on a single, customisable dashboard.