HKS

Your home. Away from home.

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Inspiration

Our inspiration came from all the fragmentation that is in the smart home industry,with devices that are locked down to specific ecosystems.

What it does

Our project aims at unifying these different systems so that they all work together,while also adding support for new devices that are meant to ‘smartify’ your current appliances.

How I built it

The server was initially built using Node.JS and Apache for easy development.The project was based on HAP-NodeJS,an open source backend for Apple’s HomeKit.Later in development,after finalizing the infrastructure,we migrated the project to Google Cloud Platform,and around this time we added Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support.To our luck,Microsoft just announced that Cortana will be able to get Alexa skills,so we bridged the gap and made it work for Cortana.

The physical hardware modules were initially based on NodeMCUs (a variant of the popular ESP8266 boards),but after realising that 802.15 mesh network ran so poorly,we started from scratch using STM32s. We also built some hardware that would take advantage of this,ranging from motors that would control existing blins through a box near the top of the window to remote control module for existing TVs that you could hide away in a corner and control your TV away from home to remotely controlled wheelchair stair elevators.

One of the final steps toward this device being what it was originally meant to be was adding HomeKit missing functionality through a separate hub module that would enable Siri and automation.

Challenges I ran into

One of our main problems was the creation of the mesh networks between the devices,as we planned on one module connecting to the cloud and the others connecting to each other,so we would have a ‘master module’ without using a hub for connecting to the internet.

What I learned

I improved my Node.JS skills,Google API knowledge and Apple documentation reading skills.

What's next for HKS

Our goal for HKS is to get Apple MFi certification so that we could start shipping our hub modules that would connect all these separate ecosystems together,along with our wheelchair,TV and blind smart retrofitting modules

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