February 10, 2015 at 20:40The history of iRidium mobile: from trade in computers to the global manufacturer of software for smart homes
The first fact about iRidium mobile : it is from Nizhny Tagil. We omit the folklore celebrity of this city - it is mainly known, of course, due to its metallurgical industries (the legendary Uralvagonzavod is also from there). And this metallurgical environment played a role in the future of iRidium, but more on that later.
Nizhny Tagil: tank city, the birthplace of the brand new OS Denis Popov and the house iRidium mobile
The history of the company began in 2006, when Sergey Korolev, its founder, was still involved in the sale of computers. Uralians can remember the Square trading network. In the "Square" there was a unit involved in the development of cable networks. For example, it was engaged in Internet access to schools in Nizhny Tagil under the program " Internet to every school " as part of the national project "Education", which started just in 2006. Thus, a team of people who knew how to configure security systems, fire safety, video surveillance, local networks, etc. was formed in “Square”. - the unit received the “Square-Service” award.
At the same time, Korolev came to understand that computer trading as a business is doomed: competition with large networks will kill him. Looking ahead: it happened when he cameDNS - “Square” has been gone for a couple of years now. But then the company still had time. The ability to work with networks and automation systems led the team to the topic of smart homes. The decision was made - and the company appeared the unit "Square - smart home." So one national project and the foresight of the founder of the company pushed the seller of computers to become an integrator.
"Square" is actively engaged in promoting a new direction. Like other integrators, Smart Home began by going to interior design studios. The representatives of “Square Service” were so energetic and confident in the prospects of smart homes that they managed to infect even Marat Gilyazetdinov, a programmer with 15 years of experience at that time, whose wife was working in one of such design studios with her enthusiasm. But only when he came to get a job with them, Marat found out that there are still no programmers in “Square”. So he stayed there, becoming the first and for the next two years the only software developer for the needs of an integrator.
A new turn in the company's history, which transformed it from a regular integrator into a software manufacturer, used by thousands of integrators around the world, happened in 2009. As in the previous case, it was predetermined by a combination of a number of factors.
The first is the high cost of smart homes. In the mid-zero, smart homes were not just considered a luxury item - they were only for the richest. The minimum budget for the Square Service project was $ 150,000. Studying pricing, the company realized that the main budget eater is the control panels - i.e. the same touch-sensitive control panels with which smart homes actually associate. For example, the AMX MVP 8400i cost $ 5-6 thousand and weighed 2.5 kg, while the functionality is not much different from any PDA.
AMX MVP 8400
He actually had no alternatives - the products of another manufacturer, Creston, cost the same, and industrial solutions were absolutely prohibitively expensive - up to $ 10 thousand per console and above.
For the second clue where the project should move, you should thank Steve Jobs, who introduced the first iPhone in January 2007. He reached Nizhny Tagil only a year later, in February 2008, when he was presented with a gift for Sergei Korolev. The high-quality touch screen, ease of operation and a well-thought-out, with many excellent solutions interface made a huge impression on the employees of “Square” - including Marat.
It was decided: the company needs its own version of the AMX protocol, which allows controlling the company's controllers from other devices. And the first such device was supposed to be the iPhone.
The development of the protocol began in March 2008. Then the name iRidium (Iridium) arose for the first time: the metallurgical environment affected it, which was impossible not to notice, working in Nizhny Tagil. Already leading to that time, the programmer Marat had a habit of calling his projects names of metals - in his other works he already used the names Aurum, Argentum and even Tantalum (that project died). The feeling that the new project will surpass them all was immediately. Therefore, the name Marat chose the appropriate one: Iridium is higher in the periodic table and surpasses all these materials in density. For the time being, Iridium remained an internal name that became a brand only in 2010 - but more on that later.
In July 2008, Apple, under pressure from developers who had already begun to hack into the device so that they could develop and install their own programs on the iPhone, released an SDK for iOS. In January 2009, in “Square” they acquired a license for development for iOS, and started creating their own version of the protocol, which would allow controlling AMX controllers from other devices, “pretending” to be control panels of the same brand.
To do this, Marat had to pick out the originally closed AMX protocol - and in March 2009 the prototype was already ready. The first object on which Kvadrat applied its version of the AMX control protocol was the demo stand in Yekaterinburg, which imitated a one-room apartment with control of lights, heating, a fireplace, motion sensors and a camera at the entrance.
The AMX interface on the native console and the converted AMX interface on the iPhone 3G
iPhone 3G, AMX and Samsung on Windows mobile
Then it was planned to use this solution simply as a competitive advantage in the integration business, but the third factor intervened: the 2008 crisis. By the spring of 2009, the smart home market collapsed - it was not time for luxury. Iridium then never managed to find a single client in Yekaterinburg.
Such a bizarre fate line: the high cost of AMX solutions prompted the decision to develop its own version of the controller-controlling protocol, the iPhone invention gave the idea to develop for it, and the crisis finally pushed the company out of the field of integrators, prompting the decision to go on sale of its own implementation of the AMX-protocol to other integrators . And in the autumn of that year, iRidium added the implementation of another KNX protocol, popular and in demand in Europe.
Yekaterinburg installers were not very happy about this. One of them was so upset that he even told Square: “You are killing our business.” The fact is that with bulk purchase, AMX gave a discount of up to 60%, allowing integrators to earn excellent money on hardware.
But everything worked out: that integrator not only did not die, but from the last year he himself began to buy iRidium solutions.
In short - AMX don't mind. A similar protocol, neither in Russia nor in Europe, is an object of intellectual property - unlike the USA. But even in the United States, a manufacturer could, in the worst case, only prohibit trading them in some states. Nevertheless, attempts to tell AMX about their development were made - but to no avail, the Americans ignored all attempts by Russian developers to get in touch. You could even say that they were just not interested, because they earned mostly on hardware (remember the price of each remote, yes).
But that all changed with the advent of the iPad.
The next, third turn, in the fate of the company was again accompanied by a combination of factors.
At the end of 2009, iRidium brought its decision to an exhibition in Moscow. The reaction of the market was disappointingly cautious: firstly, the integrators so far did not know much and had little trust in the iPhone. Secondly, they were confused by the age of the company. I must say that the installation business in the field of smart homes is not childishly harsh: it happened that companies that took on a project, but did not pull, for example, programming, simply ran away from the objects.
In general, when a couple of months later Steve Jobs introduced the iPad to the world, Korolev decided: go toBerlin Frankfurt to take part in the European exhibition Light & Building. And we’ll bring on it a version of the protocol for the iPad. The operation was called "Flight to the Moon."
This time, no one was waiting for a year. The exhibition was to be held in April 2010. And in January, just as the iPad appeared, iRidium downloaded its SDK and started creating a protocol version for the tablet - without even waiting for them to be able to get it physically. The company even invited an English tutor to make it easier to read the documentation. Of course, this was a risk: the application could simply “not start up”.
In parallel, through friends in America, iRidium ordered three iPads. Moreover, given the time pressure, their delivery was ordered immediately to Frankfurt. It turned out that the tablets would arrive right before the exhibition at - so the guys had only one shot: either the application will work or not. There would be virtually no time left to make a significant difference in case of problems.
But it all worked out. The iPad app, dubbed iRidium HD, made a splash in Frankfurt. At that time, not everyone had seen the iPad yet, but some strange Russians brought three at once, went with them around the exhibition and showed everyone an already working product of their own design.
IRidium founder Sergey Korolyov and sales director Nikita Kamaev in Frankfurt
Developed in the emulator, the iRidium HD application launched on the iPad on the first try.
From that moment, Iridium began to be written from abroad. Send and requests to develop something exclusive. For example, a British came and asked to develop a program for managing AMX controllers with an iPad and iPhone for a yacht rental company. He agreed with the shipyard, which added controllers, so that the client could manage household items such as lights and music from his smartphone or tablet during the voyage. At the same time, the developed application made it possible to restrict access to smart systems strictly for the period for which the yacht was rented. Around the same time, an apartment in Burj Khalifa appeared in the iRidium portfolio .
At some point, iRidium outgrew the capabilities of the standard AMX protocol, resting on the limitations of its architecture. AMX developers themselves, forced to develop software crutches, also ran into these limitations. The system was clearly degenerating - and it was necessary to break out of this swamp.
In August 2010, iRidium set about developing its own architecture.
In 2011, iRidium V2.0 prototypes for Android, Mac, iOS and Blackberry appeared (the latter did not go as a result of the low demand for the smartphone itself). Prototype tests began in April 2012, but November 2012 was announced as the official release when the app was accepted on the App Store. However, by that time a sufficient number of integrators had already used it.
In addition to multi-platform, the "deuce" includes more than 40 protocols; it has its own API - iRidium Driver Development Kit, which allows you to write your driver in Javascript for any device and iRidium GUI Editor, which makes it possible to create a beautiful control interface.
An important internal improvement of version 2.0 was a single core: the first version of iRidium was written for some platforms on Objective-c, and for others on C ++. The second version was already entirely in C ++. This made it possible to very quickly make changes to clients for different platforms: if earlier changes made in the client, for example, in C ++, to the client for another platform on Objective-s could be transferred for weeks, then after switching to a single core, the transfer of implemented changes from one platform to another (for example, from iOS to Android) took already a few hours.
In August 2013, iRidium V2.2 for Windows was released (however, according to tradition, the date of the official release of the version is October 2014, when it appeared on the App Store), which, among other changes, added support for the .h264 video codec, which allows reduce the load on the video transmission channel, reduce the volume of stored files and increase the frame rate of video surveillance to 25-30 frames per second against the previously used .mpeg, the transmission speed of which on slow channels could drop to 1-2 frames per second.
Today, the company already has 12 programmers. All of them are from Nizhny Tagil, and work in the Tagil office of the company. The first Marat Gilyazetdinov invited three experienced Tagil programmers to his team, whom he knew well personally. In the second wave went programmers with non-core higher education like metal processing, physics, electric drives, gunners, etc. Thanks to the streamlined mechanism of knowledge transfer from person to person, employees grow inside the company, eventually forming a strong professional team.
The company has a lot of work, including tasks for beginners: product testing, writing drivers, internal logic, customization of interfaces in the integrated JavaScript language. The ideal career path at iRidium lies through all stages, starting with the beta test - which opens up great opportunities for students. To attract them, the developer collaborates with local universities: the Ural Federal University and the Mining College, inviting students for internships and giving lectures in the educational institutions themselves. They help iRidium and integrators by creating new drivers for them as an optional programmer.
But the main project that programmers are working on is the development of iRidium 3.0. However, we will talk about this another time. Subscribe to our blog!
Thank you for your attention
with
Nizhny Tagil: tank city, the birthplace of the brand new OS Denis Popov and the house iRidium mobile
2006 year. Internet to every school
The history of the company began in 2006, when Sergey Korolev, its founder, was still involved in the sale of computers. Uralians can remember the Square trading network. In the "Square" there was a unit involved in the development of cable networks. For example, it was engaged in Internet access to schools in Nizhny Tagil under the program " Internet to every school " as part of the national project "Education", which started just in 2006. Thus, a team of people who knew how to configure security systems, fire safety, video surveillance, local networks, etc. was formed in “Square”. - the unit received the “Square-Service” award.
At the same time, Korolev came to understand that computer trading as a business is doomed: competition with large networks will kill him. Looking ahead: it happened when he cameDNS - “Square” has been gone for a couple of years now. But then the company still had time. The ability to work with networks and automation systems led the team to the topic of smart homes. The decision was made - and the company appeared the unit "Square - smart home." So one national project and the foresight of the founder of the company pushed the seller of computers to become an integrator.
"Square" is actively engaged in promoting a new direction. Like other integrators, Smart Home began by going to interior design studios. The representatives of “Square Service” were so energetic and confident in the prospects of smart homes that they managed to infect even Marat Gilyazetdinov, a programmer with 15 years of experience at that time, whose wife was working in one of such design studios with her enthusiasm. But only when he came to get a job with them, Marat found out that there are still no programmers in “Square”. So he stayed there, becoming the first and for the next two years the only software developer for the needs of an integrator.
year 2009. The crisis - and a new turn
A new turn in the company's history, which transformed it from a regular integrator into a software manufacturer, used by thousands of integrators around the world, happened in 2009. As in the previous case, it was predetermined by a combination of a number of factors.
The first is the high cost of smart homes. In the mid-zero, smart homes were not just considered a luxury item - they were only for the richest. The minimum budget for the Square Service project was $ 150,000. Studying pricing, the company realized that the main budget eater is the control panels - i.e. the same touch-sensitive control panels with which smart homes actually associate. For example, the AMX MVP 8400i cost $ 5-6 thousand and weighed 2.5 kg, while the functionality is not much different from any PDA.
AMX MVP 8400
He actually had no alternatives - the products of another manufacturer, Creston, cost the same, and industrial solutions were absolutely prohibitively expensive - up to $ 10 thousand per console and above.
For the second clue where the project should move, you should thank Steve Jobs, who introduced the first iPhone in January 2007. He reached Nizhny Tagil only a year later, in February 2008, when he was presented with a gift for Sergei Korolev. The high-quality touch screen, ease of operation and a well-thought-out, with many excellent solutions interface made a huge impression on the employees of “Square” - including Marat.
It was decided: the company needs its own version of the AMX protocol, which allows controlling the company's controllers from other devices. And the first such device was supposed to be the iPhone.
The development of the protocol began in March 2008. Then the name iRidium (Iridium) arose for the first time: the metallurgical environment affected it, which was impossible not to notice, working in Nizhny Tagil. Already leading to that time, the programmer Marat had a habit of calling his projects names of metals - in his other works he already used the names Aurum, Argentum and even Tantalum (that project died). The feeling that the new project will surpass them all was immediately. Therefore, the name Marat chose the appropriate one: Iridium is higher in the periodic table and surpasses all these materials in density. For the time being, Iridium remained an internal name that became a brand only in 2010 - but more on that later.
In July 2008, Apple, under pressure from developers who had already begun to hack into the device so that they could develop and install their own programs on the iPhone, released an SDK for iOS. In January 2009, in “Square” they acquired a license for development for iOS, and started creating their own version of the protocol, which would allow controlling AMX controllers from other devices, “pretending” to be control panels of the same brand.
To do this, Marat had to pick out the originally closed AMX protocol - and in March 2009 the prototype was already ready. The first object on which Kvadrat applied its version of the AMX control protocol was the demo stand in Yekaterinburg, which imitated a one-room apartment with control of lights, heating, a fireplace, motion sensors and a camera at the entrance.
The AMX interface on the native console and the converted AMX interface on the iPhone 3G
iPhone 3G, AMX and Samsung on Windows mobile
Then it was planned to use this solution simply as a competitive advantage in the integration business, but the third factor intervened: the 2008 crisis. By the spring of 2009, the smart home market collapsed - it was not time for luxury. Iridium then never managed to find a single client in Yekaterinburg.
Such a bizarre fate line: the high cost of AMX solutions prompted the decision to develop its own version of the controller-controlling protocol, the iPhone invention gave the idea to develop for it, and the crisis finally pushed the company out of the field of integrators, prompting the decision to go on sale of its own implementation of the AMX-protocol to other integrators . And in the autumn of that year, iRidium added the implementation of another KNX protocol, popular and in demand in Europe.
Yekaterinburg installers were not very happy about this. One of them was so upset that he even told Square: “You are killing our business.” The fact is that with bulk purchase, AMX gave a discount of up to 60%, allowing integrators to earn excellent money on hardware.
But everything worked out: that integrator not only did not die, but from the last year he himself began to buy iRidium solutions.
What do AMX think about this?
In short - AMX don't mind. A similar protocol, neither in Russia nor in Europe, is an object of intellectual property - unlike the USA. But even in the United States, a manufacturer could, in the worst case, only prohibit trading them in some states. Nevertheless, attempts to tell AMX about their development were made - but to no avail, the Americans ignored all attempts by Russian developers to get in touch. You could even say that they were just not interested, because they earned mostly on hardware (remember the price of each remote, yes).
But that all changed with the advent of the iPad.
2010: access to the world market
The next, third turn, in the fate of the company was again accompanied by a combination of factors.
At the end of 2009, iRidium brought its decision to an exhibition in Moscow. The reaction of the market was disappointingly cautious: firstly, the integrators so far did not know much and had little trust in the iPhone. Secondly, they were confused by the age of the company. I must say that the installation business in the field of smart homes is not childishly harsh: it happened that companies that took on a project, but did not pull, for example, programming, simply ran away from the objects.
In general, when a couple of months later Steve Jobs introduced the iPad to the world, Korolev decided: go to
This time, no one was waiting for a year. The exhibition was to be held in April 2010. And in January, just as the iPad appeared, iRidium downloaded its SDK and started creating a protocol version for the tablet - without even waiting for them to be able to get it physically. The company even invited an English tutor to make it easier to read the documentation. Of course, this was a risk: the application could simply “not start up”.
In parallel, through friends in America, iRidium ordered three iPads. Moreover, given the time pressure, their delivery was ordered immediately to Frankfurt. It turned out that the tablets would arrive right before the exhibition at - so the guys had only one shot: either the application will work or not. There would be virtually no time left to make a significant difference in case of problems.
But it all worked out. The iPad app, dubbed iRidium HD, made a splash in Frankfurt. At that time, not everyone had seen the iPad yet, but some strange Russians brought three at once, went with them around the exhibition and showed everyone an already working product of their own design.
IRidium founder Sergey Korolyov and sales director Nikita Kamaev in Frankfurt
Developed in the emulator, the iRidium HD application launched on the iPad on the first try.
From that moment, Iridium began to be written from abroad. Send and requests to develop something exclusive. For example, a British came and asked to develop a program for managing AMX controllers with an iPad and iPhone for a yacht rental company. He agreed with the shipyard, which added controllers, so that the client could manage household items such as lights and music from his smartphone or tablet during the voyage. At the same time, the developed application made it possible to restrict access to smart systems strictly for the period for which the yacht was rented. Around the same time, an apartment in Burj Khalifa appeared in the iRidium portfolio .
iRidium 2.0
At some point, iRidium outgrew the capabilities of the standard AMX protocol, resting on the limitations of its architecture. AMX developers themselves, forced to develop software crutches, also ran into these limitations. The system was clearly degenerating - and it was necessary to break out of this swamp.
In August 2010, iRidium set about developing its own architecture.
In 2011, iRidium V2.0 prototypes for Android, Mac, iOS and Blackberry appeared (the latter did not go as a result of the low demand for the smartphone itself). Prototype tests began in April 2012, but November 2012 was announced as the official release when the app was accepted on the App Store. However, by that time a sufficient number of integrators had already used it.
In addition to multi-platform, the "deuce" includes more than 40 protocols; it has its own API - iRidium Driver Development Kit, which allows you to write your driver in Javascript for any device and iRidium GUI Editor, which makes it possible to create a beautiful control interface.
An important internal improvement of version 2.0 was a single core: the first version of iRidium was written for some platforms on Objective-c, and for others on C ++. The second version was already entirely in C ++. This made it possible to very quickly make changes to clients for different platforms: if earlier changes made in the client, for example, in C ++, to the client for another platform on Objective-s could be transferred for weeks, then after switching to a single core, the transfer of implemented changes from one platform to another (for example, from iOS to Android) took already a few hours.
In August 2013, iRidium V2.2 for Windows was released (however, according to tradition, the date of the official release of the version is October 2014, when it appeared on the App Store), which, among other changes, added support for the .h264 video codec, which allows reduce the load on the video transmission channel, reduce the volume of stored files and increase the frame rate of video surveillance to 25-30 frames per second against the previously used .mpeg, the transmission speed of which on slow channels could drop to 1-2 frames per second.
Meanwhile...
Today, the company already has 12 programmers. All of them are from Nizhny Tagil, and work in the Tagil office of the company. The first Marat Gilyazetdinov invited three experienced Tagil programmers to his team, whom he knew well personally. In the second wave went programmers with non-core higher education like metal processing, physics, electric drives, gunners, etc. Thanks to the streamlined mechanism of knowledge transfer from person to person, employees grow inside the company, eventually forming a strong professional team.
The company has a lot of work, including tasks for beginners: product testing, writing drivers, internal logic, customization of interfaces in the integrated JavaScript language. The ideal career path at iRidium lies through all stages, starting with the beta test - which opens up great opportunities for students. To attract them, the developer collaborates with local universities: the Ural Federal University and the Mining College, inviting students for internships and giving lectures in the educational institutions themselves. They help iRidium and integrators by creating new drivers for them as an optional programmer.
But the main project that programmers are working on is the development of iRidium 3.0. However, we will talk about this another time. Subscribe to our blog!
Thank you for your attention
with