Customer Background
Our US-based customer is a leading manufacturer of premium heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) products, including geothermal heat pumps, water heaters, boilers, and fan coil units. With a focus on comfort and efficiency, their innovative solutions cater to commercial and residential sectors, spanning industries such as healthcare, education, and hospitality. Supported by a workforce of over 1200 professionals, they have earned strong brand loyalty and established themselves as market leaders.
Customer Need
The customer aimed to develop and deploy their own controls platform system, replacing existing third-party HVAC controls. They sought seamless interoperability with their current HVAC systems, requiring comprehensive system integration testing with complete adherence to due test process. With Softdel’s extensive expertise in the HVAC industry, product development, and testing services, along with our advanced IoT Labs set-up for the HVAC industry, the customer chose us as their trusted partner to build and test this next-generation controls platform.
Softdel’s Solution
- Softdel actively engaged with the customer on two levels - developing the controls platform and delivering end-to-end testing services after implementation.
- Development included :
- Design and development of firmware for the thermostat and gateway components, integrating cloud services into the solution for advanced functionalities
- A feature-rich mobile application for iOS and Android with functionalities like a dashboard for both professional and homeowner use, a discovery and device list, scheduling, user configuration, vacation mode, thermostat settings, and system monitoring
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- A 3-week workshop with the customer was conducted to finalise the test strategy, ensuring a thorough understanding of their testing requirements.
- Softdel’s offshore testing implementation included :
- Establishing a dedicated environment at Softdel’s IoT labs, which were equipped with custom infrastructure for the customer’s HVAC system
- Performing black-box testing, covering system, functional, integration, regression, and performance testing
- Conducting manual and automated testing of multiple features across Thermostat, Gateway, Cloud, and Mobile Application modules
Standards and Technology
Communication Protocols: Bluetooth
Platform: Android and iOS, Microsoft Azure Cloud
Database: SQLite
Programming Language: Python, Kotlin, Swift, Angular
Benefits
- Solution tailored to the customer's needs: Softdel actively collaborated with the customer, incorporating their input throughout the development and testing phases, resulting in a tailored solution that perfectly aligns with their needs.
- Comprehensive testing approach: Our rigorous testing process covered all aspects of the solution, and test iterations were handled quickly and smoothly, especially at the regression stage, improving the HVAC systems' overall reliability and quality.
- Supersized customer benefits: The new solution reduced the customer's time to market by almost 30% and optimised their engineering budgets by 25%.
