Homenergy

Homenergy is a mobile app that enables household owners to better understand their energy consumption by providing insights about their electricity usage and multi-level monitoring.

Features & Functionality

Power usage breakdown

The app provides an overview of a home’s electricity usage per specific period and smart device, enabling more precise consumption monitoring and calculation.

• The current consumption chart displays the amount of consumed energy (kWh) at different times of the day. It’s calculated automatically and appears as the percentage of usage compared to the previous day.
• The daily/weekly/monthly consumption dashboard shows the absolute amount of electricity used per day, week, or month accordingly. The data values are read on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Intermediate values are calculated linearly.
• The device consumption chart displays power usage by particular home appliances for a specified period.

Multiple appliances connection

App controls work with smart devices that users connect to the Homenergy app, including bulbs, WiFi systems, plugs, vacuums, and TVs.

Data collection

The Homenergy app is designed to collect the following information to function:

• Consumption data from connected smart devices is the app’s core information for building electricity usage charts.
• The list of installed appliances is also key for app functionality and analytics. This data can also be used to suggest third-party apps users may use to connect to their smart home devices.
• User-generated content, such as entered device names and personal identifiers.
• User interactions, logs, and diagnostics for analytics are essential to monitoring functionality, crashes, and drops in reliability and improving the overall experience.

The collected data is encrypted in transit.

Architecture

• The R&D team uses Expo SDK to build the initial version of the mobile app. It’s a platform to create native iOS and Android apps using JavaScript and React Native and distribute them via the Expo app.
• When an app is built using the Expo SDK, it can be published to the Expo app store, which is accessible through the Expo app. This allows developers to distribute their app to users without going through the App Store or Google Play.
• Depending on the specific requirements of an IoT device, the app will use appropriate IoT connection protocols such as MQTT, AMQP, or HTTP to facilitate communication. The Homenergy developers will use Network Interfaces such as WiFi to establish the connection between the app and devices.
• AWS SNS (Amazon Simple Notification Service) is used for push notifications in the app. It is a cloud messaging service that allows developers to send messages and information to users in real-time, including to devices organized by specific topics. SNS can send messages to various endpoints, including mobile devices, email addresses, and web applications. It also provides features such as delivery and reliability, message filtering, and analytics.
• AWS Lambda is the platform for running the app’s backend logic. It allows us to run code without the need to manage servers or infrastructure.
• AWS Cognito is used for user authentication and authorization. It will provide a secure way for users to log in and access the app.
• The database solution for the app is AWS DynamoDB.

Homenergy is an ongoing R&D project involving Beetroot’s senior UX/UI designer, lead software engineer, business analyst, and project manager.

The app’s architecture is built with scalability and agile programming in mind.