[ Software system development consultant: https://consult.revtel.tech/ ]

Remember the complicated remote controls for traditional TVs? The variety of buttons above has a steep learning curve (think how many buttons you can master 😰), which seems a bit outdated compared to the current UI/UX trend that pursues minimalism and humanity.

Smartphones unbind human innate intuition with a complete touchscreen display. How far can you go if you apply this concept to a remote control?

Let's take a look at our practice on this matter.

In addition, if you are interested in our past development experience, you are also welcome to visit "Case Sharing" .

origin

In the past, we have worked with the Information Council to develop remote-controlled fitness equipment based on mobile phones, allowing users to enjoy customized courses in the gym with high-brightness and high-precision fitness mirrors.

With this kind of experience and thinking, what kind of sparks can come out of a high-quality picture frame for home use?

Smart home has been a trend for more than ten years, and the ideas surrounding the theme of "display" are even richer. If you can enjoy famous Chinese and foreign paintings and past memory photos at any time in the living room or bedroom, I believe that it will greatly enhance the taste of life.

So let's bring our past experience to the subject!

challenge

But to display photos and high-definition texture famous paintings at will on a given frame will of course encounter many difficulties. Here are a few problems.

1. What kind of software architecture should the picture frame use to take into account development efficiency and maintenance costs?
2. There is not always a networked environment in the family. How should the file management be designed?
3. How should pictures be managed to optimize the experience on mobile phones and picture frames?

Before looking down, please design it in your mind.

solution

As the operating system of the picture frame, we finally chose Android as the carrier. The reason is probably as follows

• Android has a complete development framework, and only needs to use Java/Kotlin to loosen the relationship between software and hardware
• Android has a complete update process, which can be only for applications or system-wide.
• Android has a rich talent pool in the industry, so there is no need to worry about subsequent maintenance and expansion

After choosing the operating system, let's think about the file management part. The whole user experience hopes to make users feel that after picking a picture on their mobile phone, they can throw it to the frame with a concept similar to "drop". Therefore, some degree of image management is very necessary. In fact, we have implemented complete file correctness and historical tracking on the frame, even if multiple people pair the same frame at the same time, the consistency of the picture group can still be achieved.

Considering that this terminal may be placed in the living room, it may be placed in the bedroom, and the network conditions are not perfect everywhere. The offline prompt and the background retransmission mechanism can effectively let the user know the current network connection status of the picture frame.

In the end, just like smart locks still have hardware keys, smart hardware like this also has a corresponding remote control design. How to unify mobile phone and hardware remote control? We use the "menu key" on the remote control as a switch, and after calling the menu option, it is naturally the setting entry related to the APP. The smoothness of the virtual and real integration of the user input method greatly affects the learning speed of getting started .

Epilogue

Here we share some ways of using the mobile phone as a remote control medium. From this starting point, we can have more extended thinking, such as:

• How can more complex business situations (such as advertising) be seamlessly integrated?
• How to design the architecture in the face of a more severe network disconnection environment?
• If multiple people want to control the same terminal at the same time, how should the device management and command sequence be handled?

Do you have other different ideas and ideas? Welcome to contact us~

RevtelTech Xinlv Technology https://www.revtel.tech/

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