Our Cloud is fully backed by AWS services. Airtame devices communicate with the Cloud via secure websockets. Usage of websockets results in a large number of active connections, usually around 10k. Websockets are used to synchronize settings between the Cloud and Airtames.

The size of the exchanged data is relatively high. Devices send pictures of dynamic dashboards, which are displayed while the Airtame device is not streaming.

If we gather all these facts we start to see that Cloud costs are related to the increasing number of users. This was a good starting point for us.

The problem

Our infrastructure hasn’t changed much over the last few months, the only change was the number of users – which is, of course, a great problem to have!

We discovered the problem quite quickly: we were running server instances in multiple availability zones (AZ) inside one region. From our billing information, we could see that we were transferring around 2200 GB per day. 1900 GB inside AZs and 300 GB to the internet. Prices for transferring to the internet are 10x higher than between AZs. Costs for transfer between AZs should be zero.

 

 

Finding a solution

We started exploring our internal Cloud network in AWS Console. As an entry point to our Cloud, we use Nginx public proxies. Only our public proxies are accessible from the Internet, and they purpose is simple: They serve static data and proxy API request to a backend instance. Public proxies were running in AZ 1b.

The backend does the heavy lifting and processes API requests. Unfortunately, the backend instances were hosted in AZ 1a. This means that all API requests were transferred between AZs.

To handle requests, the backend additionally connects to MySQL and Redis. And only to make things worse, MySQL and Redis were in AZ 1b, resulting in additional transfers to the first zone and then sending results back the same way requests came in.

Once we figured out the root cause of our problem, we came up with a plan to move everything to the same AZ. Moving so many servers between AZ wasn’t easy, and we caused only a few outages along the road.

We were able to move RDS from one AZ to another without downtime with this neat trick: First, we enabled multi-AZ deployment and then used reboot with failover to switch primary DBs. AWS guarantees that DBs in multi-AZ are consistent and can be used interchangeably.

We took advantage of an interesting side effect of a reboot with failover, which is primarily used for DB updates. It first switches primary RDS to failover DB and then performs a reboot, resulting in zero downtime.

dbtechno.blogspot.com

Now the real question: how did this happen? Terraform, our infrastructure as code software, is a good servant, but a bad master. Its defaults can be dangerous. We didn’t specify AZs in Terraform’s configuration and as a result, it has chosen random AZs. The easy fix was to define AZs for all resources.

We’ve successfully minimized costs of inter-AZ transfers to zero. This significantly reduced the cost of our Cloud network cost by 63%. This price reduction – not to mention the resource and time surplus – will be fed back into our production line; creating an even more sustainable Cloud environment for our growing user base. 

Watch this short video showing how the Airtame Cloud management works:

This piece was written by Peter, with additional writing from Raghav Karol and Jakob Bauers from the Airtame infrastructure team

The post How we reduced Cloud network infrastructure costs by 63% appeared first on Airtame.

Deciding on what a new product should look like and be capable of is challenging to say the least. The new product specifications need to support the entire company strategy, which requires a lot of alignment and maturity within a company.

The specs should also be somewhat future-proof to accommodate for market variations because of the relatively long development time of most hardware products. Many things can go wrong, but in the end, that’s also what makes it so exhilarating.

Now that we have a second generation product out, we thought we’d share with you what the journey towards a new product looks like.

Better, faster, stronger

Our primary objective with the first Airtame was to get rid of cables. It’s a common problem that’s easy to solve with a tool like our first generation product. However, with the feedback we’ve received since, we realized there’s a huge potential to do more than make connection to screens cable-free.

We want to create a more inspiring environment for learning and sharing. To make screens in a professional setting easier to use and more functional for everyone. That’s why we’ve shifted our focus a little bit with the development of Airtame 2. We not only want to kiss cables goodbye; we also want people to use screens better.

It’s been approximately four years and 100,000+ devices shipped since our first device saw the light of day. What happens naturally in the lifetime of a hardware and electronics product is that some components reach their end-of-sales (EOS), which means it’s time to develop a new solution.

There are so many small electronic components that go into making a single device, each produced by different manufacturers spread across the world. The decision to stop or start production of any of these components is taken by their manufacturer based on profitability, supply and demand, and is not something controlled by end-product developers.

It is, however, standard within the industry to announce when parts are being introduced or removed so that development companies can adjust their product pipelines accordingly. This happened with some of the first-gen Airtame components, which, as a stroke of luck, coincided very well with our plans for the next generation product.

While the first Airtame is still a very capable streaming device, things have also started to shift during the four years since its first release, and our users are now hoping to do more with their screens than just screen mirroring. They want to utilize them in ways they haven’t before, such as implementing personalized digital signage, and we want to empower them to do so with Airtame 2.

These are the features our users have been requesting most frequently, and consequently the ones we have sought to improve with Airtame 2:

• More reliable streaming performance, especially when playing videos
• Better support for web content, digital signage, and dashboards
• Faster upgrade times, and improved speed all-round
• Stronger, more reliable wireless connection
• Robust security measures against theft
• Flexible hardware setup and installation

Let’s take a look inside Airtame 2 and check out some of the powerful components we’ve included and how they add value to our users.

Electronic components

When setting specifications and speaking with field application engineers (FAEs) and distributors about what components on the market were suitable for use in Airtame 2, we took complete advantage of the opportunity to select parts that improve on the exact features that our users were requesting. That’s why upgrading the following components was of utmost importance:

Cypress CYW88342 RSDB WiFi chip

Our new RSDB (Real Simultaneous Dual Band – more on this functionality in another article) WiFi chip on the Airtame 2 has more bandwidth than on our first generation, which means that it provides much faster and more reliable internet connection. It’s more than 5 times faster, actually.

With the first-gen Airtame, we received feedback from users that the network speed was relatively slow and you could only reliably stream offline content. We wanted to change that. With Airtame 2, the user can stream internet content such as cloud documents or YouTube videos while using WiFi Forwarding.

We worked closely with the chip manufacturer Cypress and our hardware partner RTX to implement this dual-band chip in an onboard design with custom antennas to maximize performance in all product orientations.

The RSDB functionality of the Cypress WiFi chip makes our product complete.

Ros, Firmware Team Lead @ Airtame

i.MX6 Dual(Core)Plus Processor

The name is quite a mouthful, so let me explain a little bit. Our new processor/SoC (System on Chip) has a better GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and is much faster, stable, and optimized for graphics. In layman’s terms, that means bigger and more advanced dashboards and websites can be shown. Another nice perk is that when streaming, it can run up to 60 fps while the first-gen Airtame could only go as far as 30 fps.

2GB DDR3L RAM

The Random-Access Memory (RAM) is required for the device to operate. It allows for reading and manipulating data faster than from local storage (eMMC). With Airtame 2, we’ve upgraded both the size and the performance.

Going with a 64-bit data bus means that Airtame 2 can handle twice as much data as its predecessor within the same unit of time. We also increased the size of the RAM from 0.5GB to 2GB, which makes Airtame 2 a much more capable device when dealing with more memory-heavy tasks such as digital signage, dashboards, and apps. Gone are the days where the page would run out of memory!

eMMC Storage

We’ve opted to use an eMMC (embedded Multi-Media Controller) instead of a Micro-SD card. The reason we went with this was to save space on the PCB, and to be able to have a more performant, high-speed storage available to hold the Airtame OS. The impact of the speed upgrade can be seen in a reduced boot-up time, and a massive ten-fold speedup for firmware upgrades, going from around 20 minutes for Airtame 1 to between 2-8 minutes for Airtame 2.

Form factor

Unlike its predecessor, the Airtame 2 is designed to be seen. We aimed for an iconic aesthetic that is easily recognizable so that anyone walking into a meeting room, for instance, will recognize Airtame 2 and know that if they need to share their screen, then they can see the device to aid them to do so.

To drive home that point, we wanted to design a device that didn’t look too ‘techy’ or make our users feel alienated by thinking that the device is too big a handful to operate – when in fact the opposite holds true.

I like to call it ‘friendly’ design, and here’s why. There’s an LED light guide on the front that glows with a dimmed, solid white as a standard setting to tell the user that the device is doing just fine. It’s not intrusive, and once again it’s not taking the focus away from the screen. When it’s performing an update, it’s flashing. That way, the LED serves as a way to communicate what the device is doing in an intuitive way that doesn’t require one to read or memorize a manual.

Your Airtame 2 should be your friendly little helper, guiding your way but never being in the way. The new design doesn’t scream tech; instead, it looks intuitive without taking the focus away from what’s important; the screen.

Production and Quality Control

Two words associated with this Airtame 2 production process: patience and integrity. We need trusted suppliers and manufacturers of components to quality check our custom parts and components over anything. Our suppliers are like an extension of ourselves, and we need to treat them with patience and integrity – just like they will treat our product. We work closely with them to implement incoming and outgoing quality checks at each link in our supply chain to ensure that the end product that ends up in the hand of our users is flawless.

Many of the mechanical parts of Airtame 2 are manufactured in China, Poland, Sweden and Denmark, but the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) is mounted and our final product is assembled and packed in Sweden at our EMS (Electronics Manufacturing Service), Scanfil, in Malmö. They mount the components onto the PCB in their SMT (Surface Mount Technology) production lines and complete the programming, test, and assembly.

Let’s take a deeper look at what that process looks like. Scanfil receives the PCB panels, each containing four Airtame 2 PCBs. The panels have some exposed copper, which needs to be ‘painted’ with soldering paste using a custom stencil designed for our exact layout before components can be put in position.

Parallel to that, they collect all needed components from their storage system and prepare them to be mounted in the SMT pick-and-place machine by putting the reels or trays of components in special feeders. When the panel (with soldering paste added) finally passes through the production line, the SMT machine has been programmed to place each individual component in the correct location and orientation.

The machine uses visual detection to position the components in exactly the right position, which is crucial as we are dealing with very small tolerances. After the components are placed, the panel continues further down the line through the re-flow oven, where the soldering paste heats up and solders the components, fixing them in place.

Scanfil and Airtame also use AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) along our production line to ensure all components are positioned correctly after re-flow and that no components were missed in the SMT machine.

After SMT and re-flow comes a series of production stations for programming, assembly and testing. The process of starting with the raw PCB and ending with the packaged product is what we call the ‘production flow’ and it has been designed and tweaked to ensure quality and traceability is maintained in every step.

Scanfil helped us optimize the timing and implement the production flow of the Airtame 2, and they have been a fantastic partner because they were easy to communicate with and in such close proximity (our HQ is in Copenhagen, and Scanfil is just a bridge-ride across from us in Malmö) that we could have a lot of hands-on meetings together with the exact team that is doing the final assembly of the product. That also means we were able to get real feedback directly from the ‘end user (in production)’ and improve on the user experience and setup of the production flow.

Solving problems face to face rather than discussing them via email is a lot easier. With a good setup and partnership like this, we have a high awareness of what happens at Scanfil, we can support quickly in case of production issues, and have a more hands-on understanding of our production – with the help of the competent employees there.

Infographic: Check out the full production flow for Airtame 2

Packaging

With Airtame 2, we’ve gone with a packaging design that we call an ‘at-a-glance overview’. When you open the box, you’ll find all the essentials right away. The Airtame 2 itself is neatly encased in foam to keep it in place and on the inside lid of the box is a simple setup guide that’s hard not to notice. In the foam just below the device sits the magnetic wall mount and underneath the foam is a (quick) installation guide and the two other parts needed for installation; the Aircord (our custom cable) and the power supply.

We’ve kept our users in mind when we designed the packaging. First of all, we wanted there to be as little packaging as possible – both for ease of setup but also to minimize the carbon footprint. Secondly, it’s easy to assemble and disassemble the box, and it can also be flat packed for easier recycling.

B2B users, such as ours, don’t require ‘pretty packaging’ as much as B2C users do, and we’re very aware of that. For B2C users, it’s important to have good-looking packaging because they might want to resell or keep it in store (think Nike sneakers or iPhones). What B2B users need is a functional packaging design that’s simple to figure out, neat to look at, and easy to throw out (hopefully, recycle) afterward.

Another initiative we have in the pipeline is ‘bulk-packaging’ which will make it easier for our users to unpack and deploy devices for larger roll-outs and of course dispose of the packaging when they need to.

Most of the packaging material is entirely recyclable, and at some point, we would like to become fully sustainable too. That demands us to take a closer look at the entire supply chain and production process. It’s a work in progress but something that’s very important to us so we’ll be working towards that. The Airtame 2 packaging design is a step in the right direction.

Suppliers/Partners

We have a wide variety of skills at Airtame, but we don’t have all the expert competencies required to run a development project. That’s why we partner up with the best-of-the-best to apply the expert competencies to our projects that we ourselves do not possess. We work with our suppliers to find the best working solution throughout the process, from manufacturing the components, through (sub) assembly, to quality control, testing, packaging, and shipping.

In a development process, your suppliers and partners mean everything. Especially when developing (physical) hardware. Our suppliers have been of great help in the process. When it comes to suppliers, we think it should be a mutually beneficial relationship, and we try to make it so. We want them to be a part of the Airtame family with all the trust and loyalty that entails.

Many of our component and part manufacturers are based in China.  Because it’s so far away, it’s imperative to get a good relationship up and running and find out whom to trust. Luckily, we have many trusted suppliers. In such a short article, we don’t have space to name the many, many great suppliers that we have collaborated together with on this project, but we would like to shortly highlight a few of them below.

Goodway Plastics

Goodway Plastics, based in HK/China, is our custom injection molded plastic part manufacturer, who are also doing some of our sub-assembly. Goodway Plastics is a new partner for Airtame, but are easy to communicate with and great at finding a solution when problems arise.

For the collaboration to work, we need to trust in their abilities to control these processes, and they really shine at that. There are many concerns when trying to find a good supplier far away, but Goodway Plastics has put all those to shame. They serve as a shining example of a company that has fantastic communication and service despite the remoteness.

Cypress

We have some special relationships with part manufacturers as well. Take Cypress, who manufactures our WiFi chip (IC CYW88342 802.11ac transceiver with RSDB for the tech-heads out there). This relationship is special because it’s the first time this specific RSDB chip has been used in a consumer device outside of an automotive application. They’ve been extremely accommodating and supportive on this new journey, and we’re so excited to have had this opportunity work with them.

RTX

RTX is our hardware development partner and we have spent many months together building and qualifying both our first generation product and Airtame 2. They are really an example of a partner with expert knowledge in radio devices, and without them, we couldn’t have implemented this new Cypress chip and on-board antennas, that optimize our device performance.

They have collaborated with us to really push the limits of innovation with some new advanced components on Airtame 2 that allow us to, for example, have only one USB-C cable going into our device that can provide three things: power, HDMI, and Ethernet.

EKTOS

Finally, we have worked with the Danish testing lab, EKTOS Testing & Reliability Services (TRS), in the final phases of the project to get our device tested and certified for the market. EKTOS TRS has tested our product according to the relevant European and USA/Canadian standards.

Their accredited test reports can be used as a basis for obtaining the necessary certifications. It’s a crucial step in the development process to get these tests done and reported correctly, so we can back up our claims, that we are a safe, tested and reliable product for our end users.

Read more about our EKTOS collaboration here.

Ready for the future?

We designed Airtame 2 with the future in mind. Users shouldn’t have to throw out their hardware annually or biannually just because it doesn’t live up to the new expectations. That’s why we chose to focus on a future-proof solution that works for how we see our users utilizing their screens in the years to come.

Airtame 2 is designed for more demanding digital signage tasks, more advanced cloud app integrations and of course better and more reliable streaming. Some of those features we don’t even have yet, but we know that Airtame 2 can accommodate them.

Our new hardware device, Airtame 2, helps us get towards that goal we have as a business, while simultaneously allowing our customers to use screen better.

Find out more about Airtame and its new features in this short video:

Pre-order your Airtame 2 devices today!

The post How we made Airtame 2 appeared first on Airtame.

Product

Airtame is a wireless streaming device which helps people work better. It’s powered by embedded Linux on custom-built hardware, with a diverse software stack ranging from our carefully-tuned firmware and high-performance C++ streaming engine, to our cross-platform Electron/React desktop application and Golang Cloud platform.

Technology

How do you make video streaming with high quality and low latency work in poor network environments? How do you integrate four different operating systems? How do you scale cloud backend to support tens of thousands of concurrently connected devices? These are just some of the many difficult challenges we face every day, and we work hard together to solve them. It’s an exciting opportunity to work alongside software, hardware and firmware deliverables with tasks that aren’t repetitive.

We have experts across the entire spectrum of technology. It gives everyone the chance to learn what they don’t know and challenge their own way of thinking. More than that, it’s a unique spread of technical knowledge, something we put it to good use every day working with the complexity of the product. Team structures are fairly flexible, and we’ve had several people start working in a specific range of activity, then gradually move to other areas of problem-solving.

Our talented engineers work with different tools, languages and types of infrastructure, and they are driven towards producing high-quality, maintainable code and software. Frequent code reviews, linting, and pairing are all integral components of our engineering culture. Significant ownership and responsibility over projects is key to our organization. Every developer is able to have a an impact on the direction of the product, and the company as a whole.

Our engineering teams

Streaming team:

In charge of the high-performance streaming pipeline, written in C and C++. And our cross-platform Application, made in Electron and JS.

Cloud team:

Working on the cloud-based administration portal for the Airtames and our upcoming internal digital signage platform called Homescreen. The tech stack here is Golang, React, AWS.

Firmware team:

Leading the efforts on the OS running on the Airtame. They cover everything from the bootloader, Linux kernel, to networking and graphics.

Infrastructure team:

Making sure our internal and external services are up and running. They do Docker, AWS, Ansible, Puppet and Jenkins.

QA team:

Ensuring the quality of our releases. They focus on both automated and manual testing. The tech stack is Python, JS and Jenkins primarily.

Community

In the past, people have relocated to work with Airtame’s Engineering team, and we pride ourselves for our sense of community.

Work is a nice mix of laidback and laser-focused. We know when to work hard, but we make sure to have fun along the way as well. Once per quarter, we host internal hackathons to get the creative juices flowing. No idea is too big, wild or crazy, and some of them might even be implemented afterwards. We value a relaxed environment where socializing is encouraged, but never mandatory. Sometimes, we even pack our toothbrush and go off-location. Here’s the Airtame team at the last offsite event, Workathon 2017 in Corfu, Greece.

Flexible work hours make all the difference to balancing work/life. That’s why 20% of an engineer’s working hours can be used to work on anything they want. It fosters creativity and independence, and we know for a fact that hobbies can lead to solid ideas of implementation.

We’re remote-friendly, something that has been put to good use by several engineers in the past. Airtame is made up of many different nationalities and clever minds, and no one should feel weighed down by the fact that they’re far from home.

Check out this Favro board we made about the Airtame culture.

What does the team say?

“Airtame is a great place for engineers who thrive on learning. I really enjoy our team breakfasts and roundtable discussions, where I can level up my knowledge in areas ranging from hardware design and kernel development to browser APIs and frontend frameworks, plus lots more in between. With 20% time, quarterly hackathons and flexibility to move between projects, I’m constantly developing my skill set, which helps keep my work fresh and engaging.”

Andrew Keating, Lead Software Engineer

Join the team!

See the full list of job openings here. To learn more about what others think of us, take a look at our company overview.

Ready to join our ambitious team? Send your CV and application to tech-jobs@airtame.com letting us know why you would be a great fit. We can’t wait to meet you!

The post Why join the Airtame engineering team? appeared first on Airtame.

What is a hackathon anyway?

A hackathon is a time-limited event where the engineering department, UX and design – even marketing and sales – come together to collaborate on a project with a particular focus. The time limit forces participants to boil down visionary concepts to concrete, applicable solutions.

While hardware and software teams often work alongside, hackathons give them the place to collaborate on creating something new, or solving a specific issue. Besides finding an answer to internal workflow problems, hackathons could help the business innovate new ideas.

At hackathons, participants shuffle teams around and work with no restrictions to the project, which unleashes people’s creative energy even more than in day-to-day operations.

The sky’s the limit at any hackathon because of the casual, creative environment. In our experience, they can invigorate the entire team by boosting these four essential areas:

• Teambuilding

  Just as it is great for problem-solving, hackathons work as a bonding exercise too. We have people from many different backgrounds and nationalities working together, and hackathon events push all members to unite and brainstorm. Bringing together the entire team is a great opportunity to share insights and knowledge while also learning from each other.

• Innovation

  We can’t afford to stop focusing on product development, no matter how well our growth efforts are coming along. We want to do better, and we can’t do that without giving center stage to the engineering team on a continuous level. Just as customer needs change, so should our product. Hackathons help predict and improve that development.

  Even though we’d like it to be, problem-solving is rarely a linear process. The creative environment of hackathons allow new ideas to flourish in a vigorous way, creating a ripple effect throughout the entire company. Suddenly, people not within the engineering team start to realize the endless amount of technical possibilities that can be achieved when the team works together.

• Company culture

  Hackathons give everyone an opportunity to try another, unconventional role and discover other challenges and ways of thinking than usually.

  The time spent understanding other areas of expertise, their particular technicalities, abilities and challenges, gives a more detailed level of insight that can be applied afterwards. Besides working together in less typical groups, it helps the team see the company as a cohesive unit.

• Recruitment & branding

  Every tech company and startup want to be perceived as “hacker-friendly”. Certainly because we believe it to be true and something our whole business is founded on, but also because we gain awareness, even if the hackathon is only internal. This helps attract top talent and continue to push already onboarded talent to bigger, better things.

How we do hackathons at Airtame

Airtame builds hardware, firmware and software, all platform-agnostic, which means there are numerous opportunities for exciting projects and creative freedom.

We do not have strongly divided departments at Airtame, and we work together towards a common goal on a daily basis. However, hackathons still provide us with the chance to tie together different perspectives and touchpoints in a risk-free environment, and that is both refreshing and exciting.

We host 3-4 hackathons each year at Airtame, and they are usually restricted to a 48-hour period. As you can imagine, those two working days are buzzing with bright ideas and imagination. The whole office is lit with a vibrant energy that feeds through all departments.

The hackathons we host differ each time. Sometimes they are company-wide, other times confined to one department that dedicates it to a specific consumer-related pain-point. We often have a theme for the hackathon that participants must gravitate towards. At our last hackathon, the theme was “space” – not for any particular reason other than we’re a bit occupied with our office space at the moment because we’ll soon be moving to a new HQ. Hence, space is on everyone’s mind!

There are pros and cons to both setups. It’s not easy to manage an all-team workshop for several reasons, one being that it takes focus away from directly revenue-tied tasks, and second because the coordination is a pain. On the other hand, hackathons build a bridge to the world of developers. They offer a different perspective the engineering team couldn’t think of besides supplying the technical swag other departments lack.

Organized chaos = lots of fun

Yes – fun! It’s something we prioritize, and we’ve taken it to the next level for all employees several times, most recently for a Workathon in Greece! Our workathons give us the chance to work cross-team in a different environment, and they function both as a team bonding exercise and a work sprint.

While hackathons are not mandatory, it’s an essential part of our company culture, which is why we strongly encourage everyone to participate – unless they have a pressing issue. We also encourage working in teams, but working allow is allowed too.

The pursuit for “the perfect hackathon” …

Hackathons give the freedom to work on something completely different and come together in a stimulating environment. At hackathons, we can all learn from each other and gain inspiration from other areas of expertise.

Whether it’s a technical workflow issue or a new innovation free of restrictions, there should be room for fun while figuring out the best solution.

What does the perfect hackathon look like? It’s hard to say, but we do know it involves lots of pizza!

Have hackathons helped your business? How do you do them? We want to hear all about it!

The post How and why we do hackathons at Airtame appeared first on Airtame.

Automated offices

One big theme of this year’s ISE conference was automation and control systems.

An endless number of companies at ISE offered to automate the curtains, lighting, projector screens, audio, and much, much more.

We are especially excited about this, because of the potential it has to empower the classroom.

One company that stood out was Neets, a Danish company:

They make a simple, easy to install automation platform that can turn on everything in the room with the touch of a button. Adding a motion sensor turns everything off when nobody is using the room.

Screens everywhere

At an AV conference, we knew screens would be featured heavily.

What we did not expect was the quality and sheer size of the screens.

There were ultra-large outdoor LED screens of a quality and sharpness that we had not seen before.

Of course, the much-raved about OLED technology was shown off in full force. A notable example of OLED screens is LG’s display of their ultra thin dual-sided signage displays.

Transparent screens were another screen trend using screens and projections in unexpected ways:

An example that really impressed us was commercial fridges with a transparent screen as a door. This meant that advertisements could be running on the screen front, while it was still possible to identify the bottles behind the glass door.

Go big, go nerdy

We saw two types of AV technology that grabbed everyone’s attention:

The kind that went big and the kind that went nerdy.

Go big

Panasonic’s robotic arms mesmerized most people walking by. The arms showed off both massive robotic power and impressive digital signage processing by moving around three large displays, while content that stretched over multiple displays stayed still and in focus.

Go nerdy

Another impressive crowd-pleaser and nerd-magnet was the Drone Arena.

This place had everything from DJI Phantom’s best seller to high-end photography drones at prices over €40,000 a piece.

It didn’t matter that the Drone Arena was in the furthest corner of the whole conference. There was a constant crowd who wanted to see the latest trends with these flying robots.

This bad boy costs 40,000 euros and can carry a large photography camera

Wireless office solutions

A trend that didn’t come as a big surprise to us was the amount of booths exhibiting wireless display and collaboration tools.

Many of the major AV companies now offer some kind of wireless display tool, ranging from the market leader, Barco, showing their new Clickshare lineup to smaller companies offering inexpensive Miracast streaming sticks.

A drawback of the solutions we saw at ISE 2016 was that they offer a long list of features that the user might not actually need.

It confirmed what makes Airtame stand out:

A simple and easy wireless solution that anyone from businessmen to high school students can use.

In any case, seeing the enthusiastic crowd around wireless display pumped us up!

Don't let cable clutter your office!

Did you attend ISE 2016 or have an idea where the future of AV technology is heading? Let us know in the comments.

The post AV trends from ISE 2016 appeared first on Airtame.

Manex is a family-owned company of over 50 engineers that has over 20 years of experience in creating automated technical solutions in the areas of product transportation and packaging, among others.

Some of our work includes designing different types of robots for our customers’ automated lines. Our “Pick and Place” robot, for instance, can pick up an item and place it on a tray.

Just like the automated assembly lines we create, Manex works towards smooth operations in our offices, as well.

That’s why we made the choice to go with Airtame when we were looking for a way to streamline our meetings.

How we use Airtame

We use Airtame for several reasons. To understand how Airtame has improved our work flow, let’s go over each use case individually:

Client meetings

Every day, our employees use drawing and 3D modeling programs to show our customers the engineering solutions we create for their automated lines.

It’s so important that we make a good first impression when we present our models and simulations in front of customers or management. To do this, we needed to make sure that meetings run smoothly from start to finish.

This is the main reason we started using Airtame. It’s hard to impress a customer during a presentation if you’re fumbling around with cables to connect your computer to a bigger screen.

Now, our business partners often make it a point to tell us that they have never seen this wireless HDMI system before. Not to mention, they get very enthusiastic that we implement modern ideas not only in our engineering solutions, but also in our work culture.

Collaborative employee meetings

In our conference room, it’s commonplace that more than one person would need to present at the same meeting. With an HDMI cable, this meant having to unplug and replug every time the presentation switched to a new speaker.

This constant interruption made it very difficult to stay focused during our meetings. Long story short, our previous cabled solution made communication ineffective.

Now that we’ve used Airtame for a few months, this interruption is gone. It’s been easier for us to smoothly and quickly switch from one person to another during a meeting.

Board meetings

I’m the CFO of Manex, which means I am responsible for the company’s economic and financial aspects.

Tracking our performance, internal reporting and data-driven decisions are essential to our business’ good health. A business that doesn’t track its financial data runs the risk of blindly operating.

I personally use Airtame for board meetings where I present the company’s economic results and I suggest new ways to develop the financial area.

The technical setup

I would be lying if I didn’t mention that the implementation of Airtame requires a certain amount of patience with the settings, depending on your company’s needs. But the result once it’s installed is definitely worth it!

At Manex, we’ve created the ideal hardware and system environment for using Airtame:

• 8 Airtames in daily use
• A router with 2.4 GHz and 5GHz antenna

We have 8 Airtames in the Manex office. As for our network setup, we use a router with 2.4 GHz and a 5 GHz antenna.

Since Airtame relies on a quality wireless system, we had to increase the transfer speed of our old router. That’s because when you use a router with 2.4GHz, it’s possible that the router will not be able to transfer large amounts of data to Airtame. This will cause the quality of the resulting streams to suffer.

Now, before that scares you away, these are issues that the employees at Airtame can help you with. From our experience, if you happen to encounter a problem, their customer service team reacts very quickly.

As a family-owned company, we know the importance of tradition. As a company of engineers, however, we also know how important it is to stay up to date with technology. Take it from us, you don’t want to get stuck with HDMI cables just for the sake of old habits.

Every company needs to find their own way into the future, because the future will not wait for anyone. For Manex, Airtame was a big help in this.

The post Smooth operations at Manex Solutions and Technology appeared first on Airtame.

It was flipping awesome!

A hackathon, for those who aren’t familiar with the term, is an event traditionally for developers and designers to let their inner hacker out and work intensively on a project. In the spirit of Airtame, we opened up our hackathon to the whole company, not just the developers.

There were prizes for best projects, because some ideas are better than others.

The mission

Our objectives were simple enough:

• Spend two days hacking something together
• Choose any project our little hearts’ desired
• Win prizes
• Have fun doing it

The entire office dedicated themselves to the mission at hand.

Even the marketing and customer support team participated when they weren’t busy answering your emails.

Our belief is the more fun we’re having, the more creative we are and, in the end, the more productive we are.

The teams

The teams covered a wide range of projects.

Some tinkered with possible integrations with Airtame, while others went for the totally-for-the-fun-of-it approach:

Team “Dolla-dolla Bill” – Viral Videos

Team “Dolla-dolla Bill” created several storyboards for potential video ads with the goal to increase sales. Their presentation ended with a surprise hip hop performance as a plan B, in case the videos didn’t work as intended.

Team NLP-Gify – Story to GIF

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and a GIF is worth a million. That’s the idea behind Team NLP-Gify’s project, a one-man team that created a natural language processing GIF generator. That’s tech talk for: it turned stories into GIFs

Team Lonely Rider – Image rotation

As the name suggests, this was another one-man team. Team Lonely Rider created a hardware image transform proof of concept. This means that you can rotate the image that Airtame shows on your TV.

Team Air-Face – The Face Detector and Swapper

Team Air-Face was on yet another one-man mission. The result was an algorithm that can detect faces while you’re streaming Airtame. The algorithm will then lay an image of the infamous trollface over the original face – for the lulz.

Team Magic – Personalized dashboard

Team Magic was on a mission to create a little magic for our customers to show that we care. They did not disappoint with a pre-installed personalized dashboard they drafted. It’s one of the few hacks that we’ll actually be testing out with some customers.

Team Airtamify – Spotify integration PoC

Team Airtamify set out to create a Spotify integration that would play your Spotify music on your Airtame. Of course, at this point, it’s only a proof of concept, but it’s a beautiful dream to believe in. The results were a crowd favorite during the hackathon after party.

Team Double Air 7 – Airplay integration PoC

Team Double Air 7 set out on a tough mission: stream to an Airtame from an iOS device using Airplay integration. It’s very safe to say this was a proof of concept and yet another beautiful dream, but we do love to dream big!

Team Big Data Warriors – Live map

Team Big Data Warriors created a live map of new streaming sessions around the world. They also presented a usage analysis using data from our Google analytics.

The winners

Winners were decided by the tried and true (and totally accurate) Clap-o-meter.

Our third place winner was Team Big Data Warriors. They created a global map that made a 5-second radar blip whenever a streaming session with Airtame was started. The results were so hypnotic that we all sat in awe watching the screen for a good 5 minutes.

Our second place winner was Team NLP-Gify, who made a program that can convert stories into GIFs. Obviously, it was the most useful hack in the room. You can see an example of a gif-ified story here.

Our first place winner was Team Air-Face, who created a crafty algorithm that can detect faces during an Airtame stream. See the demo below:

Note: For the sake of the demo, Team Air-Face used one of the most popular faces on the internet right now. That face happens to belong to a U.S. presidential candidate. This is just us officially stating that we, as a company, neither endorse nor oppose any particular political party. We also neither endorse nor oppose Trollface, if he ever runs for political office.

Although the competition was fierce, the hackathon was all in good fun and we all shared some laughs over beers afterwards.

Besides, at a company hackathon, if your colleague wins, the whole team wins.

Obligatory legal stuff

We’d like to make it clear that although we gave some leeway during the hackathon, Airtame does not plan to use any of the hacks that are not legally sound.

The post Hackathon #1 appeared first on Airtame.

But how can we actually accomplish cross-platform capability? Currently, we have 3 full-time engineers from the Airtame team dedicated to making a truly cross-platform streaming solution. Let’s go over how we make it happen.

Starter Kit

When we started this project 2 years ago, we had just one engineer working on this task. However, limited resources allocated to this project in an early phase have helped us to determine a solution that will be most efficient and proven out of all the tools available for this purpose.

During the selection process, we were driven by the following criteria in order to find the perfect framework for Airtame cross-platform capability:

• The framework has to be able to run another executable (the streaming binary)
• It has to be able to communicate with the discovery module (the piece of software that allows us to see all the Airtames on the network)
• It has to run on Windows 7+, MacOS X 10.8+ and as many UNIX systems as we can
• It has to have access to the filesystem of the OS
• Ability to design our own User Interface
• Proven track record (number of companies using it already)
• Active community and support for the framework

When we were making the initial choice 2 years ago – QT made most sense to us. It has a fairly good UI library and we could develop it using C++. However, the main drawback of this solution was that implementing the UI was quite cumbersome, especially if you are new to this framework.

In parallel, we noticed nw.js (formerly node-webkit) rising as a technology of choice when developing cross-platform UI application. Main advantage? You write your UI as you would write a website – in a controlled environment! No need for multi-browser compatibility.

We decided to try nw.js. It worked well for us. We managed to write everything for all platforms in only one (-ish) codebase, the whole thing being written in HTML/CSS/JS with NodeJS. The nw.js’s community was quite active and many other companies were using it, so it had a proven track record and it was fairly easy to troubleshoot.

However, we started to spot some limitations of nw.js over time. The project was not updated that often, we could see some bugs (many Linux issues, frameless window issues, etc.), and we were missing features that were important to us (e.g., auto-updater and balloon notification on Windows).

Around the end of June 2015, we had an important backlog of features and bugs that were hanging because of this.

That’s when we decided to take a look at Electron (formerly atom-shell).

Electron

Electron is in fact very similar to nw.js. It uses the latest version of NodeJS and allows you to write cross-platform applications using web technologies (if you want to know more about the differences between Electron and nw.js, just follow this link.)

Nevertheless, Electron is updated more frequently, it is heavily adopted, and apparent bugs can be fixed quickly by either support from the community or the official maintainers. Moreover, Electron has more functionalities than nw.js (platform specific or not). All of that brings us closer to implementing the best user experience.

One of the main advantages of the Electron framework is that it provides core functionalities useful to almost every software: Auto update, Crash reporter, installer creation, system-specific features, etc.

Architecture

Today, the architecture of the Airtame software is designed as follows:

High-level architecture of the Airtame software on a computer. It highlights the separation in modules, which is at the heart of our software.

Main advantages of the above architecture are as follows:

• Have different release process for each “module”
• Have a clear division of responsibility in the code
• Be able to replace any module easily without impacting the rest of the application
• Provide an HTTP API that other applications can talk to
• Make the testing easier. During the development phase, we can test the front-end directly in Google Chrome if the server is running. On the other hand, it is easier to mock the API of the core functionalities of Electron (like window management and other system-related SDK)

Testing

We have divided the automatic testing into 4 stages:

• Stage 1: All of the node modules tested separately (node-airtame and node-discovery)
• Stage 2: Front-end of the application
• Stage 3: Back-end of the application
• Stage 4: The application as a whole – we have integration and functional tests to verify the functionality of a full feature or scenario (still at an early stage)

We chose Mocha for the testing job and we are happy with it. Every time we submit a change, the tests are triggered in order to validate that there was no regression and that the application is still working as expected. If the test fails, you will be unable to merge the change.

When it comes to the manual testing, we have a “QA” corner in the office along with a set of physical machines and VMs allowing us to test the user case in a real environment. The QA corner is composed of a large variety of systems:

• Windows (7, 8.1, 10)
• MacOS (10.8, 10.9, 10.10.5, 10.11)
• Ubuntu (14.04, 15.04, 15.10)

We are currently working on having even more systems set up through Virtual Machine and other physical devices in order to make Airtame the most cross-platform friendly application.

Our QA corner where we manually test the software and dongle. We have different hardware and virtual machines in order to cover as many cases as we can.

What’s next

We will continue to follow the Electron evolution process. We are planning to take a proactive role by contributing to the development of the framework ourselves.

We will continue focusing on stability and usability of the application. The new architecture of the software will help us to write more tests and to divide even more clearly the responsibility of each component. We are also internally improving our QA process (which will be a part of a future post on our QA process).

We are also listening to our users and we are trying to adapt and fix the issues to always provide the best experience.

Finally, we plan to Open Source the application. We are thrilled about this idea and we will keep you posted about its development.

If you want to download the software, follow this link.

We’re always on the lookout for talented engineers who are passionate about writing clean, maintainable code! If this sounds like you, get in touch with us at tech-jobs@airtame.com.

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