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Web Solution For Real-time Optimization of Thermal Energy Consumption

How developing a remote data acquisition system for physical heating control devices empowered one of Norwegian municipalities to monitor and optimize thermal energy consumption across the city in real time and save up to 30% of energy for heating public spaces.

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Challenge

We needed to develop a remote data acquisition system with heat metering and regulation devices. Based on the data acquired and energy consumption analysis of its consumption indicators in certain houses, was to be adjusted the work of the regulation equipment.

Solution

We built a data acquisition system using interface Ethernet converters. Metering and regulation devices are connected to the converters. We made this decision because heat metering and regulation devices are located in the same houses where, in most success-stories, data communication networks are installed.
We developed a software package that consists of a data acquisition and long storage system, with a user interface accessible via web.

Features

Constant control of heat metering and regulation equipment

Access to user interface via the web

Possibility to adjust the work of equipment

Possibility to acquire data remotely and provide long-term storage

Technologies

Energy Trading Platform For a GreenTech Startup

How creating a trailblazing digital marketplace for renewable energy producers and local households with an opportunity to save up to 20% on their monthly energy bill allowed a German startup to be available for 41 million households across Germany.

Domain:
Energy

Expertise:
Blockchain

Duration:
~1 year

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About the project

The objective of the project was to implement a blockchain infrastructure based trading platform for open and direct energy trading.

Challenge

Lition approached instinctools with an idea of creating a platform for direct energy exchange within Lition Energy System. The goal of the project was to simplify the legal, operational and economic hurdles for green power producers while facilitating customers to buy truly green electricity at a reduced price.

Tasks

An initial consulting phase ensured clarification of customer needs and purpose of the product. It helped to determine the main tasks for the *instinctools team:

Trading platform development including backend, frontend and UI/UX design reflecting Lition corporate style
Blockchain-based solution development
Consulting and integration of project management methodology and configuration of project management processes

Solution

The end solution met all the customer’s requirements and expectations. Around 10 JavaScript frameworks were implemented to build reliable and functionally rich web application.

Key features

Well-organized development process from goals and needs decision to solution architecture allowed to create the product with the following key features:

High performance and usability

Informative dashboard (with information about producers, types of energy, current rates, transactions and contract data)

Option to choose power plants and create several energy supply contracts with Lition

Based on Ethereum and proprietary blockchain

Access to energy market – the platform connects customers and producers to trade energy and receive financial benefits

Possibility to try a live demo and experience the trading platform interface

Result

The platform is currently the key product of the Lition and commercially available for 41 million households in Germany. Customers from more than 30 cities save up to 20% on their monthly energy bill, and producers generate up to 30% more profit. The solution gives users a possibility to support ecological energy plants and help to save the environment.

Client’s testimonial

“People at *instinctools are quite tech heads, which I like. They have used very advanced libraries, advanced techniques, advanced coding paradigms. So the advantage is that we get reusable code, that we get well-testable code, we get well-maintained code.”

– Richard Lohwasser, Co-founder and CEO of Lition

Technologies

SCRUM

Frontend:

Backend:

Blockchain:

Online Business Assistant For an Investment Holding

How rolling out an intuitive online assistant backed up with up-to-the-minute data brought an investment company a 37% growth of their customer pool and helped thousands of users unlock their business development capabilities.

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About the project

Genome Ventures came to *instinctools being in need of a project called Online Business Assistant — a business tool, which collects data about one city or region and performs different kind of information (for example economic or demographic situation) to the user according to their request. It is aimed to help future entrepreneurs to quickly orient in business environment and buyers potentials in any area.

Challenge

Main goal of the project was to create a user-friendly platform which would analyse input data on some sphere of interest (economic, social, commercial, demographic situation, etc.) and return a result giving user a clear understanding of situation in specific area.

Due to this, application’s work included the following processes:

Comprehensive database: the app collected data by specific criteria from open and close resources.

Building analytics in various profiles in terms of existing database.

Integrating user-friendly interface with rapid output of the information requested.

Solution

Our team successfully coped with all tasks set and did their best to meet customer’s expectations. As a result we’ve got an application which could analyse users’ requests and show information useful for future entrepreneurs and small-medium businesses, who want to create or improve their business possibilities.

Key features

The app gives a user a wide choice of needed parameters, which can be useful to analyse current business environment in some area.

Analyzed information is performed in simple and understandable for user way.

The database is constantly updated from open and close resources, so the app reveals only relevant information.

Technologies

Healthcare Management System (HIPAA compliant)

How transforming HMS’s MVP into a full-featured SaaS solution allowed a US company to automate 86% of manual processes, create monthly reports in a click, simplify HIPAA compliance checks, and streamline calculating NHSN reporting metrics while wiping out the possibility of a human error.

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About the project

The customer is a U.S. based early-stage healthcare startup established at the beginning of 2016. Their main goal is to help healthcare organizations simplify and automate occupational healthcare management. The founders have years of experience working with large hospitals and healthcare systems.

They discovered a better way of getting rid of manual processes, streamlining data collection for immunizations, fitness tests, TB tests, and quickly rolling out reports for internal and external use.

Challenge

The main challenge for *instinctools was to transform the MVP into a full-featured product – a robust and easy-to-use tool that would efficiently reduce the administrative burden and workload.

Solution

In close communication with the customer, *instinctools team offered the following solutions to assist with achieving the company’s main goal:

Enterprise Hierarchical Adjustability
Full Configurability
All-round Monitoring
Cloud-based web + backend
Modern Technologies

Maximum Data Security:

Multi-tenancy
Isolated data
Encryption
Leakage protection
Role-based data access

The project is still in the development stage, but we’ve already successfully delivered many important features.

Result

The customer is pleased with the efficiency of communications and the quality of work delivered, and plans to take cooperation to the next level by entrusting more work to *instinctools in the coming months.

Key features

Full enterprise SaaS solution:

Monitors compliance at the enterprise level

Tracks and reports staff immunization requirements, tests, and health events

Standardizes immunization requirements by job code and title

Drills down immunization status from department to individual in one click

Flags compliance gaps and upcoming requirements

Automatically notifies staff when immunizations are about to expire

Complies with HIPAA

Integrates with existing HR systems to eliminate duplicate entries and automatically deactivate associates

Creates monthly reports instantaneously

Easily calculates NHSN reporting metrics that can be easily cut and pasted directly into reports

Technologies

Baby Monitor App For a Polish Wellness Company

How honing the logic of baby monitoring software and enriching it with new features allowed a wellness company to get a 16% increase in application downloads.

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About the Project

Baby Monitor app can be used as a real baby monitor with live video streaming within the same Wi-Fi network. In all other networks, the user can take snapshots or photos of their child.

The user has to install the app in two iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad, starting from iOS6.0). The first device acts as a sender in the baby’s room. The user then takes the other device with them as a receiver.

If the user’s child cries, they will first hear a warning beep. Directly afterwards, the app transmits all sounds made in the child’s room. Thanks to the two-way communication, the user is able to talk to the child, and to take a picture to check if everything is ok.

The app works on all data networks (Edge, 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi). It is useable worldwide – not just in the Wi-Fi area.

Challenge

We participated in the development of this application in 2012. Five years later, in 2017, the company contacted us with a request to improve the product.

Tasks

The customer gave us the following tasks:

to add a new feature – multiple users. This feature enables several users with the role of Parent to connect to another device with the role Child and observe audio and video streaming;
to improve UI and to make it more up-to-date;
to improve the application’s stability and speed;
to speed up the rerouting of the devices when changing the role;
to reduce the time of Parent device receiving and reaction to the alert from the Child device;
to monitor the controller logic of devices and management between them, by means of the MQTT messaging (before the MumbleKit was used);
to make numerous changes in the codebase with the result that the previous functioning performs the same way as before, without changes.

Solution

iOS developers, a designer and a tester participated in the project on behalf of *instinctools. We have implemented the following solutions in the course of the development:

We have implemented a new protocol MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport). We first implemented PoC (proof of concept) to prove the reasonableness of its implementation. As a result, we realized that the solution works.
We then implemented the protocol for the application itself. This protocol is often used for operation with IoT (Internet of Things). It enables us to implement the feature multiple users: when several Parent devices can connect to the Child device (the previous application enabled the connection only for one Child and one Parent).
The device state and the operations between devices are also synchronized by means of the protocol. The implementation of the MQTT server and the ping configuration for device tracing, enabled the more rapid notification of connected devices about the loss of connection with one of them.
Our team have refactored the connection framework and organized the coordination between servers. Only one server (Mumble Kit) was used previously, two servers – Mumble Kit and MQTT are used now.
We have supplied QR for the more convenient connection of devices with each other (the code of the devices was primarily typed by hand).
We have also modified the design and made it more up-to date.

Key features

For the user

Modern and convenient application UI

The ability of multiple connections of Parent devices to a Child device

Faster reaction to the notifications from the Child device

Faster and more stable switching between the roles

Notification when the Internet access has been lost PE (provider edge), if the device has not lost the connection

Auto Reconnect when the Internet access is being restored PE

For the system

Due to the implementation of the new protocol MQTT, the application stability has been improved

Several code parts have been refactored

The controller logic and the event processing are rewritten

The synchronization logic of the device state has been supplied

Technologies

Job Search App For a Tech Company

How developing a recruiting app with a video CV feature allowed a US-headquartered tech company to attract hundreds of thousands users — both job seekers and recruiters — to their platform.

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About the Project

The idea of our customer was to develop a service that helps with a job search. The target audience for the service is Millennials. Their distinctive feature is extensive involvement with digital technologies. Therefore, the service offers the young generation the facility for them to look for a job in their usual way: by using digital technologies through recording a video CV.

Challenge

The customer tasked us with the development of a mobile application for two platforms: Android and iOS.

The company also plans to entrust us with the development of a web application for recruiters.

Solution

To manage the project’s task, in particular, to record a video CV, the greatest emphasis was placed on the development of the technological backend.

Our team met all the requirements of the customer and successfully delivered the app. The customer was pleased with the efficiency of communications and the quality of work delivered.

Key features

Video CV recording

Adding key skills and tags to facilitate searching

Possibility to maintain correspondence with a potential employer or potential employee

Identification of users through document verification

Possibility to add various social networks

A system of applicants’ ratings, which allows the recruiter to be confident about the honesty and openness of applicants

Technologies

Eclipse-Based Development For a British Startup

How using Eclipse IDE with automated syntax validation, solid debugger, and ready-made code templates allowed a conversational AI services provider to speed up their development process by 7% while wiping out the possibility of a human error.

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Challenge

VoxGen has broad experience in designing, developing and deploying novel off-the-shelf, speech-enabled interfaces. Their systems are based on a tried and tested application development framework which is built on their experience base.

The challenges for VoxGen lay in getting development services where the provider can familiarize themselves quickly with Voxgen’s framework, has expertise in Eclipse technology, can deliver high quality project results on time and can work in a self-contained manner as much as possible.

Solution

Instinctools assigned an expert project team within a week. The team included Eclipse and Java developers from our near-shore lab in Poland, a Germany-based project manager, and subject matter experts for application analysis and quality assurance.

The project was delivered over four iterations. After each one, VoxGen had the chance to test the results and adjust their requirements. Instinctools shared weekly status reports covering key achievements, open questions, and risk assessments. Any issues that came up were addressed collaboratively, with the *instinctools team offering clear solution proposals. As a result, VoxGen received a high-quality solution on time and within budget.

Technology

The technical base for the VoxGen project was Eclipse/RCP, Java and VoxGen’s own development framework.

*instinctools used their deep knowledge and vast experience of all major Eclipse components and Java development for this project.

Key features

VoxGen could handle the peak in their development activities by utilizing *instinctools’ resources. They were able to make use of our:

Premium software engineering skills on a short notice

Quick analysis of their existing code base

Creative solution approaches

Professional project management

Reliable delivery

Iterative and agile project methods helped to increase the quality of the developed applications and minimize risk.

Blended project teams including near shore resources and onsite project management offered an optimal balance in cost, responsiveness and liability to VoxGen.

Flight Information Control System For a Top-10 Airport

How automating flight information validation and correction helped a European airport eliminate human errors and speed up data checks by 57%.

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Challenge

Our customer required a system for automatic flight information control with an option of manual information control by a person (flight operations officer) before it is reflected on the display.

The system needed to comply with the demands of consistency, partition tolerance, 24/7 availability and total data safety.

Solution

Our team developed a system that controls the input of information about flights in the airport, based on the defined rules. Based on these rules, the system decides if flight information is right or wrong and if right, it sends messages about flights on flight information display. If it is wrong, the system corrects it automatically, or allows manual correction by a flight operations officer, if automatic correction is impossible. Manual message correction is performed through a separate visual module that can run on any machine with access to this module that recognizes display messages with flight information.

Key features

Automatic handling of flight information input

Take decisions on flight info being right or wrong

Send messages about flights to flight information display

Automatic correction

Visual interface for manual correction

Get 24/7 access to the system

Protection against data loss

Technologies

Expense Tracker App Evolution For a German Company

How code refactoring and performance optimization empowered a German company to hone the stability and maintainability of their mobile project, decreasing its upkeep cost by 11%.

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This is an app for fun and easy control of personal expenses. It helps you to plan future expenses and track performance of your current spendings in just a few taps.

The app introduces a revolutionary statistics-first approach in its user interface, so you always see the month’s budget at a glance. Adding a new expense is also extremely simple and fast.

Challenge

The customer started an app development in the beginning of 2013. Due to the app’s growing popularity, it was decided to speed up the development process. In January of 2014, the customer asked us for help. We joined the application development as a Xamarin expert and performed deep refactoring and performance optimization of the app.

App Benefits

Easy:

I set myself monthly budgets for my critical expenses and track my remaining budgets with one-click opening of the app

Intuitive:

I continuously enter my relevant spendings into this app, so that my monthly remaining budgets always stay up to date

Focused:

I track only those expenses that I care about. As for my monthly rent, I know it even without this app. But where did my latest ATM withdrawal end up in such a short time?

Solution

Instinctools quickly hooked into the development. We have not only eliminated some bugs and memory leaks, but also improved the app’s functionality with big data sets. We have helped to speed up the app development and improved the application’s stability.

Technologies

Security Analysis Tool For US Tech Company

How running code refactoring of the Eclipse plugin at the heart of their vulnerability detection tools provided a US software company with an x50 faster code scanner.

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About the Project

An analysis tool we had worked with is a client and server-side software, integrated into such development environments as Eclipse, Visual Studio and IntelliJ IDEA. Developers can be sure of building security from the very start and of detecting vulnerabilities as they appear, hence they can be fixed immediately. This analysis tool is a lightweight static analysis tool that detects vulnerabilities automatically and provides just-in-time security guidance to your developers in the process of coding. With this tool you can eliminate common security errors before they are committed to the code base or released to the public.

Challenge

Implement a plugin from the very beginning until the end with very strict deadlines of product delivery (5 months)
Creating plugins for IntelliJ IDEA was not a piece of cake, as it’s quite a narrow specialization area. It was new for us, but the challenge was handled successfully, meeting all customer objectives
We had to carry out a huge refactoring of the Eclipse plugin code to make the code scanner much faster than it was. And we’ve achieved magnificent improvements: about 50 times faster