About iSantaCam
iSantaCam is an interactive holiday device that brings Santa Claus into customer’s home. iSantaCam features a Bluetooth enabled LED messaging panel for displaying custom and stock holiday messages. When messages are received, the LED panel lights and twinkles.
Challenge
iSantaCam device is a LED device that displays stock library messages in a stand-alone mode. The primary audience for iSantaCam device is young kids. The pretend camera on the iSantaCam makes kids believe Santa Claus and his Elves are watching them from the North Pole. In addition to the stock messages, customer wanted to build an app for iOS & Android phones for sending custom messages from app over Bluetooth to the iSantaCam device. Parents can use mobile app to send custom messages to the iSantaCam LED panel making kids think that those messages are sent to them by Santa Claus and Elves.
Objectives
Interactive User Experience | Growth in Product Sales
Solution
Customer didn’t want iSantaCam app to have high-end user interface. Their focus for the initial version of the app was to deliver the functionality quickly to test the market for iSantaCam devices. Mobile application required using Bluetooth to interface with the LED peripheral device. For this project we had to work in conjunction with the device manufacturer based in China. They had defined a protocol for transferring data over Bluetooth. One of our developers, natively from China, became an asset for this project. He served as a translator and helped customer communicate with the device manufacturer. That greatly helped us building interface between iOS app using Core Bluetooth framework and custom protocol on the peripheral LED device. Mobile app included capability to detect nearby iSantaCam devices and allowing parents to send message to a selected iSantaCam device.
Results
iSantaCam app was launched successfully, on-time and within budget, right before the holiday season. Our client sold over 50,000 devices during holiday season making their venture a great success.
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