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Bluetooth-Connected Consumer Device with Mobile App

Posted in Application Development, Circuit Design, Consumer Goods, Embedded Development & Programming, Product Development, User Interface Design

Summary

SNOOZ is a white noise generating sound conditioner. The company got its start from a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign.

The SNOOZ device includes an adjustable speed, brushless DC motor-driven fan, capacitive touch buttons, indicator LEDs, and optional night-light LEDs. SNOOZ can also connect to a phone over Bluetooth LE where a user can adjust the fan speed and night-light LED brightness as well as set a timer that will turn SNOOZ off in the morning.

The engineers at SNOOZ have deep expertise in the fluid dynamics problems involved in creating an efficient white-noise generating fan and enclosure. They came to DMC to help turn their initial prototype into a production-ready design. DMC's experience with printed circuit board design, firmware programming, and mobile app development allowed us to create a cohesive end-to-end solution.

Solution

DMC helped SNOOZ select and/or evaluate core components in the system based on initial requirements.

  • Hengdrive Brushless DC Motor with an integrated driver - This motor allowed us to gain the benefits of a BLDC motor (i.e. noiseless operation and long life) while keeping the electrical design simple.
  • EFM32 Tiny Gecko - Silicon Labs' ARM Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers offered the right balance of low cost with strong performance and an integrated capacitive touch detection peripheral.
  • Bluegiga Bluetooth LE Module - Bluegiga, which is now part of Silicon Labs' portfolio, enabled us to communicate with BLE devices without the overhead of BLE firmware development and RF electrical design certification.

We also utilized Silicon Labs development kits to jump-start firmware development in parallel with the printed circuit board design effort.

DMC's in-house graphic design team created an initial user-friendly mobile app design. We later worked with SNOOZ's industrial design partner MNML to revise the user interface of the app to align with SNOOZ's brand identity.

We leveraged Xamarin, now part of Microsoft's .Net ecosystem, to create an app that ran on both iOS and Android devices with a single, shared code base.

Screenshot of Snooz App

Throughout the design process, DMC worked with SNOOZ to integrate features that the SNOOZ team found to be valuable to their users. Some of these features include a volume calibration tool for adjusting the speed of the SNOOZ to be within recommended limits for long term sound exposure. This tool makes use of the internal microphone in mobile devices and features a workflow for accurately calibrating sound levels across devices.

The use of a real fan that creates a natural and calming white noise, combined with mobile app connectivity makes the SNOOZ white noise generator a unique and beneficial product. We were happy to be a part of the development process. 

Customer Benefits

The SNOOZ project is a great example of how DMC can assist companies in the product development process. SNOOZ had a working prototype of their design which allowed us to quickly define specific requirements early in the project. 

DMC worked with SNOOZ's industrial design partner MNML to design printed circuit boards that integrated with the enclosure. We created 3D models and renderings of the electronic design so we could quickly iterate with the industrial designers to meet space and assembly requirements.

Technologies