Fell Tech set out to develop a smart home platform that would bring intelligent automation to homes and buildings. They needed a scalable backend capable of handling device control, real-time monitoring and smart energy management. DO OK was selected as their technology partner due to our expertise in IoT software development and cloud-based solutions. We designed and implemented a serverless, event-driven architecture, ensuring seamless integration between devices, mobile applications and housing association platforms.
Fell Tech was established in 2013 in Norway with the vision to create a greener and safer future. They specialise in wireless and IoT safety and security solutions, bringing smart technology to industries such as home & building, marine and energy. Their mission is to develop high-quality, durable and user-friendly products that enhance safety, improve efficiency and support sustainability.
At the heart of their innovation is AbraOS, a unified IoT platform that powers a range of smart solutions. AbraOS provides seamless integration between hardware, software and cloud services, enabling businesses and consumers to adopt intelligent automation and real-time monitoring for enhanced security and operational efficiency. By offering customisable, market-ready solutions, Fell Tech supports OEM and Whitelabel partners in delivering smart, connected technologies to their customers.
Fell Tech’s product portfolio spans smart home and building automation, marine safety and energy grid management. Their solutions are designed to prevent risks, optimise resource consumption and enable secure, connected environments. By combining cutting-edge IoT technology with a strong focus on sustainability, they help industries transition toward more resilient and energy-efficient systems.
With a commitment to innovation, safety and sustainability, Fell Tech continues to drive the evolution of smart technology, shaping a future where intelligent systems seamlessly integrate into everyday life. To learn more about Fell Tech, click here.
Fell Tech wanted to expand its expertise in IoT technology by developing a smart home platform. While their previous products focused on marine safety solutions such as man-overboard detection, they now aimed to enter the home automation market. Their initial focus was on water leak prevention, addressing Norway’s regulatory requirement for households to have leak alarms and automatic valve shut-off systems. This feature was set to be the foundation of a larger smart home ecosystem.
Beyond water leak detection, Fell Tech had bigger plans. They envisioned a comprehensive IoT platform, where the core product would be an IoT hub/Zigbee controller. This hub would allow users to connect and manage external devices that support the Zigbee protocol, enabling a broader range of smart home functionalities.
To achieve this, Fell Tech needed a backend system that could handle device connectivity, data processing and system management. While they had experience in IoT hardware development, they required external expertise to build a scalable and efficient backend capable of supporting their smart home ecosystem. The backend would need to enable communication between devices, data handling and future expansion of the platform.
Fell Tech sought a technology partner with deep expertise in IoT backend and cloud solutions to support their innovation-driven projects. They required a team capable of delivering scalable, high-performance systems that integrate seamlessly with their existing infrastructure, ensuring long-term reliability.
DO OK stood out due to two key factors. First, our extensive experience in IoT software development ensured we could provide robust and future-proof solutions tailored to Fell Tech’s needs. Second, we demonstrated a clear understanding of their vision and technical requirements, giving them confidence that we could execute the project effectively. From the beginning, our structured and methodical approach helped shape the direction of the project, ensuring that all technical aspects, architecture and development processes were well thought out. Our ability to translate complex requirements into a clear and actionable plan reinforced Fell Tech’s decision to choose DO OK as their technology partner.
Additionally, our local presence in Oslo played a role in strengthening the partnership, facilitating efficient communication and collaboration throughout the engagement. By choosing DO OK, Fell Tech gained a reliable, innovation-driven partner committed to delivering a high-quality, scalable IoT solution that aligned with their long-term vision.
The project began with an initial focus on delivering an API for the mobile app as quickly as possible, ensuring that the mobile development team had a backend to integrate with early in the process. The first phase prioritised speed over perfection. Our team carefully designed the API structure, but the initial implementation was a rough version intended to provide immediate functionality rather than a fully polished solution. This allowed the mobile team to proceed with development without delays while we continued refining the system.
While part of the team worked on the API, another group focused on designing the overall architecture of the platform. We conducted an event-storming workshop, where we analysed different architectural drivers and explored how best to build a system that would support future scalability and modularity. During this phase, we worked with Fell Tech to define the platform’s initial priorities, which included supporting water leak alarms and enabling users to control smart home devices through the mobile app. As development progressed, we also identified an opportunity to integrate the new system with Fell Tech’s existing marine safety products, allowing for increased feature reuse and potentially reducing long-term maintenance costs.
Over the next months, we focused on developing the backend system, ensuring it was scalable, asynchronous and highly responsive. Since Fell Tech had already chosen AWS Serverless as the foundation, many architectural decisions were based on this ecosystem. We implemented AWS Lambda as the compute platform, using Python for its rapid development capabilities and scalability. AWS IoT Core was used to facilitate communication between devices and the backend, while GraphQL was selected as the API technology due to its real-time capabilities, allowing users to see updates from their devices instantly without needing to refresh the app. We built the system around event-driven architecture principles, using AWS EventBridge as the main event broker and AWS SQS for point-to-point communication. To guarantee reliable event delivery, we developed a custom implementation of the Outbox pattern, ensuring data consistency across the system.
Collaboration with other teams played a crucial role throughout the project. We worked closely with the teams responsible for the mobile application and embedded systems, aligning on API design and ensuring smooth integration across all components. Our role involved not only backend development but also guiding architectural decisions that would enable efficient coordination between different parts of the system.
Once the platform was launched, it was deployed in over 5,000 homes, with each home typically having multiple users. With the core system in place, our team extended its functionality by adding support for additional device types, enabling cloud-to-cloud communication and integrating new alarm systems, including smoke, fire and security alarms. We also implemented integrations with Norwegian data providers for energy usage and pricing, which allowed us to introduce smart energy features. These features enabled users to reduce electricity costs by adjusting consumption based on real-time energy prices. Additionally, as Fell Tech expanded its platform to support housing associations, we developed a complex authorisation system that allowed or restricted access to homes within a shared organisation.
The project presented several technical challenges that required careful planning and problem-solving to ensure a scalable and reliable system.
One of the first major challenges was balancing fast initial delivery with the need for a long-term scalable architecture. Since the project was expected to grow significantly, we designed the API as a stable contract between the backend and mobile, ensuring future compatibility even though the initial implementation prioritised speed. While part of the team focused on delivering this API quickly, the rest worked on defining a long-term architecture that would support scalability. Once the foundational system was in place, we migrated the initial implementation to align with the refined architecture.
Ensuring consistent communication across the system was another key challenge. The platform had to support synchronous API calls via AppSync while also handling asynchronous event-driven interactions through EventBridge and SQS. We structured services and modules to handle multiple entry points while maintaining flexibility and reliability.
The system also required real-time updates, so we implemented GraphQL subscriptions to allow users to receive instant device state changes without manually refreshing the app. Reliable asynchronous messaging was crucial for communication between devices, the backend and mobile. To ensure message consistency and delivery, we developed a custom Outbox Pattern implementation, using AWS Lambda and DynamoDB Streams.
Handling large-scale data storage was another challenge. The platform needed to process, store and present real-time and historical data from temperature, humidity, power consumption and energy pricing sensors. We used AWS Timestream, optimised for time-series data, allowing efficient data retrieval and integration with features like Smart Energy management.
Due to the scale of the system and the client’s requirement to use AWS Serverless, we had to manage a large number of infrastructural components, including Lambda functions, queues and databases. We implemented Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using AWS CDK, ensuring consistent and scalable cloud resource management.
The project resulted in the successful development of the backend for Fell Tech’s IoT platform, enabling device control and telemetry, alarms and notifications, smart energy management and complex authorisation. The backend supports multiple mobile applications and a web portal for housing associations, allowing seamless interaction between users, devices and data.
With this platform, Fell Tech was able to expand beyond the Norwegian market, applying its smart home solutions to new regions and exploring additional applications. The modular architecture also made it possible to integrate with their marine safety products, demonstrating how the system could support multiple business areas without requiring significant rework.
The collaboration led to a long-term partnership, with DO OK continuing to support Fell Tech in backend development and system expansion. By designing a scalable and event-driven architecture, we ensured that the platform could efficiently accommodate new features and system improvements as Fell Tech refined its offerings.
The structured and adaptable design of the platform allowed for faster implementation of additional functionalities, including extended device support, real-time data monitoring and cloud-to-cloud integrations. As a result, Fell Tech was able to introduce new capabilities, enhance system performance and scale their infrastructure to support thousands of users while maintaining stability and reliability.
“We have been working together with DO OK on a challenging and highly complex IoT platform. They have been a strong partner and we have relied on their technical expertise in order to be able to make deliverables on the project.” - Head of Software @ Fell Technology AS
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