Insights Archives - Page 3 of 5

What Drives Edge Computing?

by Vivien | Aug 20, 2020 | Edge Computing, Insights, IoT

Data is exploding in every respect: in data volume, data velocity, and data variety (the 3 v’s). One driver of this phenomenon is the growing number of Mobile and IoT devices and thus, data sources. Making this data useful is one of the driving forces behind the adoption of Edge Computing. New use cases don’t only rely on using this data, but also upon the usability and speed of usability of this ever growing data. There are several practical challenges with this growing data volume that drive the adoption of Edge Computing:

New Use Cases Drive Edge Computing

Bandwidth Limitations

The existing network infrastructure cannot support sending all the data to the cloud. Particularly in urban areas there is a concentration of devices and data overburdens existing infrastructure. While 5G promises some relief, it is no hailbringer. First of all, if you want to implement your IoT project now, 5G is not yet available and many questions about 5G remain, e.g. pricing. But moreover, as the number of devices and data is growing ever faster, it is already clear that data volumes will outpace what 5G can support. Edge Computing will be an important technology alongside 5G to enable IoT.

Fast Data Requirements

Response time requirements are growing at the same time as data volumes are increasing. Sending data to the cloud for computation and storage means applications’ response times have a higher latency and depend on the network, which cannot guarantee response rates. Edge computing guarentees significantly faster data. Use cases that need speedy response times or guaranteed responses cannot rely on cloud computing. For example, in driver assistance, where every millisecond counts or in factory floors, where downtimes are too costly.

Sustainability

Sending data to the cloud and storing it there is inefficient and therefore costly – not only in plain €, but with regards to CO2 emissions too. The distance the data needs to travel needs hardware, connectivity and electric power. Therefore, sending data unnecessarily back and forth is wasteful beaviour and burdens the environment unnecessarily. With growing data volumes, that burden is growing. In fact, analysts predict that cloud computing data centers will consume as much as 21% of the total global energy by 2030. [1]

To scale your prototype, you need to move to the edge

At the start of IoT projects, quick prototyping, testing and piloting on early iterations of an application’s functionalities, can effectively be done in the cloud. However, in productive environments when applications scale it is often hard or impossible to keep cloud costs at scale, making the business not viable. Then it is time to move to the edge.

At the same time, decreasing hardware costs and hardware sizes are enabling more complex local computing, meaning there is less need for additional cloud usage. E.g. increasingly AI and ML is done at the edge, including model training.

data-volume-edge-computing-solution-iot-mobile

Data accessibility and Smart Syncing

Today’s successful businesses require a smarter approach to data management and integration. Data synchronization increases operational efficiencies, saving time and resources by eliminating redundant data transfer. With data synchronization, only predefined, useful parts of a data set are sent to a central instance. This means that while large volumes of data can be collected and analyzed locally, not all of this data is sent to and saved in the cloud. This reduces the impact on bandwidth, utilizes the local hardware resources for fast guaranteed response times, and keeps project cloud costs low – ultimately creating a more sustainable and efficient model of data architecture, enabling long term project scalability.

ObjectBox’ current database technology is enabling companies to persist and use data on edge devices, faster than any alternative on the market. It enables networks of edge devices working without a central instance, enabling even more new use cases.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06610-y

How Building Green IoT Solutions on the Edge Can Help Save Energy and CO2

by Alyssa | Jul 23, 2020 | Edge Computing, Insights, IoT, Sync

The internet of things (IoT) has a huge potential to reduce carbon emissions, as it enables new ways of operating, living, and working [1] that are more efficient and sustainable. However, IoT’s huge and growing electricity demands are a challenge. This demand is due primarily to the transmission and storage of data in cloud data centers. [2] While data center efficiency and the use of green energy will reduce the CO2 emissions needed for this practice, it is not addressing the problem directly. [3]

With ObjectBox, we address this unseen and fast-growing CO2 source at the root: ObjectBox empowers edge computing, reducing the volume of data transmitted to central data storage, while at the same time, heightening data transmission and storage efficiency. [4] We’ve talked before about how edge computing is necessary for a sustainable future, below we dive into the numbers a bit deeper. TLRD: ObjectBox enables companies to cut the power consumption of their IoT applications, and thus their emissions, by 50 – 90%. For 2025, the potential impact of ObjectBox is a carbon emission reduction of 594 million metric tons (see calculations below).

How ObjectBox’ Technology Reduces Overall Data Transmission

ObjectBox reduces data transmission in two ways: 1. ObjectBox reduces the need for data transmission, 2. ObjectBox makes data transmission more efficient. ObjectBox’ database solution allows companies to build products that store and process data on edge devices and work with that data offline (as well as online). This

not only improves performance and customer experience, it also reduces the overall volume of data that is being sent to the cloud, and thus the energy needed to transfer the data as well as store it in the cloud. ObjectBox’ Synchronization solution makes it easy for companies to transmit only the data that needs to be transmitted through 1) selective two-way syncing and 2) differential delta syncing. Synchronizing select data reduces the energy required for unnecessarily transmitting all data to the cloud.

We have demonstrated in exemplary case studies that ObjectBox can reduce total data transmissions by 70-90%, depending on the case. There will, however, typically be value in transmitting some parts of data to a central data center (cloud); ObjectBox Sync combines efficient compression based on standard and proprietary edge compression methods to keep this data small. ObjectBox also has very little overhead. Comparing the transmission of the same data sets, ObjectBox saves 40-60% on transmission data volume through the delta syncing and compression, and thus saves equivalent CO2 emissions for data transmissions. Additional studies support these results, and have shown that moving from a centralized to a distributed data structure, saves between 32 and 93% of transmission data. [5]

Calculations: How Does ObjectBox Save CO2?

Physically using a device consumes little energy directly; it is the wireless cloud infrastructure in the backend (data center storage and data transmission) that is responsible for the high carbon footprint of mobile phones [6] and IoT devices. Estimates say that IoT devices will produce around 2,8 ZB of data in 2020 (or 2,823,000,000,000 GB), globally. [7] Only a small portion of that data actually gets stored and used; we chose to use a conservative estimate of 5% [8] (141,150,000,000 GB) and of that portion, 90% is transferred to the cloud [9] (127,035,000,000 GB). Transferring 1 GB of data to the cloud and storing it there costs between 3 and 7 kWh. [10] Assuming an average of 5 kWh this means a 127,035,000,000 GB multiplied by 5kWh, resulting in a total energy expenditure of 635,175,000,000 kWh. Depending on the energy generation used, CO2 emissions vary. We are using a global average of 0,475 kgCO2 / 1 kwH. [11] In total this means that there will be 301,708,125,000 KG of CO2, or roughly 301 million metric tons of CO2 produced to transfer data to the cloud and store it there in 2020.

Projections for 2025 have data volumes as high as 79.4 ZB. [12] Following the same calculations as above, IoT devices would be responsible for 8 billion metric tons of CO2 in 2025.* We estimate that using ObjectBox can cut CO2 caused by data transmission and data centers by 50-90%, by keeping the majority of data on the device, and transmitting data efficiently. It will take time for ObjectBox to enter the market, so assuming a 10% market saturation by 2025 and an average energy reduction of 70%, using ObjectBox could cut projected CO2 emissions by 594 million metric tons in 2025.

ObjectBox is on a mission to reduce digital waste which unnecessarily burdens bandwidth infrastructure and fills cloud servers, forcing the expansion of cloud farms and in turn, contributing to the pollution of the environment. As our digital world grows, we all need to give some thought to how we should structure our digital environments to optimize and support useful, beneficial solutions, while also keeping them efficient and sustainable.

*Of course, in that time, the technologies will all be more efficient and thus use less electricity while at the same time CO2 emissions / kWh will have dropped too. Thus, we are aware that this projection is an oversimplification of a highly complex and constantly changing system.

[1] https://www.theclimategroup.org/sites/default/files/archive/files/Smart2020Report.pdf
[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/tracking-buildings/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks
[3]“Data centres… have eaten into any progress we made to achieving Ireland’s 40% carbon emissions reduction target.” from https://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/12/11/tsunami-data-consume-one-fifth-global-electricity-2025/
[4] https://medium.com/stanford-magazine/carbon-and-the-cloud-d6f481b79dfe
[5] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323867714_The_carbon_footprint_of_distributed_cloud_storage
[6] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-01-07/the-invisible-and-growing-ecological-footprint-of-digital-technology/
[7] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS45213219, https://priceonomics.com/the-iot-data-explosion-how-big-is-the-iot-data/, https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-11-07-gartner-identifies-top-10-strategic-iot-technologies-and-trends, https://www.iotjournaal.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/white-paper-c11-738085.pdf, ObjectBox research
[8] Forrester (https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/blog/IoT-Agenda/Preventing-IoT-data-waste-with-the-intelligent-edge), Harvard BR (https://hbr.org/2017/05/whats-your-data-strategy), IBM (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg248435.pdf), McKinsey (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-internet-of-things-the-value-of-digitizing-the-physical-world)
[9] https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/what-edge-computing-means-for-infrastructure-and-operations-leaders/
[10] According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy: 5,12 kWh of electricity / GB of transferred data. According to a Carnegie Mellon University study: 7 kWh / GB. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy concluded: 3.1 kWh / GB.
[11] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-2019/emissions
[12] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS45213219

Time Series & Objects: Using Data on the Edge

by Vivien | Jun 30, 2020 | Edge Computing, Insights, IoT, Release, Time Series

Many IoT projects collect, both time series data and other types of data. Typically, this means they will run two databases: A time-series database and a traditional database or key/value store. This creates fracture and overhead, which is why ObjectBox TS brings together the best of both worlds in one database (DB). ObjectBox TS is a hybrid database: an extremely fast object-oriented DB plus a time-series extension, specially optimized for time series data. In combination with its tiny footprint, ObjectBox is a perfect match for IoT applications running on the edge. The out-of-the-box synchronization takes care of synchronizing selected data sets super efficiently and it works offline and online, on-premise, in the cloud.

What is time series data?

There are a lot of different types of data that are used in IoT applications. Time-series is one of the most common data types in analytics, high-frequency inspections, and maintenance applications for IIoT / Industry 4.0 and smart mobility. Time series tracks data points over time, most often taken at equally spaced intervals. Typical data sources are sensor data, events, clicks, temperature – anything that changes over time.

Why use time series data on the edge?

Time-series data sets are usually collected from a lot of sensors, which sample at a high rate – which means that a lot of data is being collected.

For example, if a Raspberry Pi gateway collects 20 data points/second, typically that would mean 1200 entries a minute measuring e.g. 32 degrees. As temperatures rarely change significantly in short time frames, does all of this data need to go to the cloud? Unless you need to know the exact temperature in a central location every millisecond, the answer is no. Sending all data to the cloud is a waste of resources, causing high cloud costs without providing immediate, real-time insights.

The Best of Both Worlds: time series + object oriented data persistence

With ObjectBox you aren’t limited to only using time series data. ObjectBox TS is optimized for time series data, but ObjectBox is a robust object oriented database solution that can store any data type. With ObjectBox, model your world in objects and combine this with the power of time-series data to identify patterns in your data, on the device, in real time. By combining time series data with more complex data types, ObjectBox empowers new use cases on the edge based on a fast and easy all-in-one data persistence solution.

Bring together different data streams for a fusion of data; mix and match sensor data with the ObjectBox time series dashboard and find patterns in your data. On top, ObjectBox takes care of synchronizing selected data between devices (cloud / on-premise) efficiently for you.

time-series-data-visualization-dashboard

Get a complete picture of your data in one place

Use Case: Automotive (Process Optimization)

Most manufacturers, whether they’re producing cars, the food industry, or utilities, have already been optimizing production for a long period of time. However, there are still many cases and reasons why costly manual processes prevail. One such example is automotive varnish. In some cases, while the inspection is automatic and intelligent, a lot of cars need to be touched up by hand, because the factors leading to the errors in the paint are not yet discovered. While there is a lot of internal expert know-how available from the factory workers, their gut feel is typically not enough to adapt production processes.

How can this be improved using time series and object data?

The cars (objects) are typically already persisted including all the mass customization and model information. If now, all data, including sensor data, of the manufacturing site like temperature, humidity, spray speed (all time-series data) is persisted and added to each car object, any kind of correlations between production site variables, individual car properties and varnish quality can be detected. Over time, patterns will emerge. The gut feel of the factory workers would provide a great starting point for analyzing the data to discover Quick Wins before longterm patterns can be detected. Over time, AI and automatic learning kicks in to optimize the factory setup best possible to reduce the need for paint touch ups as much as possible.

Use Case: Smart Grids

Utility grid loads shift continually throughout the day, effecting grid efficiency, pricing, and energy delivery. Using Smart Grids, utilities companies can increase efficiency and reliability in real time. In order to get insights from Smart Grids, companies need to collect a large volume of data from existing systems. A huge portion of this data is time series, e.g. usage and load statistics. On top, they incorporate other forms of data, e.g. asset relationship data, weather conditions, and customer profiles. Using visualization and analytical tools, these data types can be brought together to generate business insights and actionable operative goals.

ObjectBox TS: time series with objects

Storing and processing both time series data and objects on the edge, developers can gather complex data sets and get real time insight, even when offline. Combining these data types gives a fuller understanding and context for data – not only what happens over time, but what other factors could be influencing results. Using a fast hybrid edge database allows developers to save resources, while maintaining speed and efficiency. By synchronizing useful data to the cloud, real time data can be used for both immediate action, and post-event analysis.

Get in touch with our team to get a virtual demo of ObjectBox TS, or check out the sample GitHub repo to see more about the code.

Go to ObjectBox TS

What is Edge Computing?

by Vivien | May 23, 2020 | Edge Computing, Insights, IoT

Today, over 90 percent of enterprise data is sent to the cloud. In the next years, this number will drop to just 25 percent according to Gartner. The rest of the data is not going anywhere. It is being stored and used locally, on the device it was created on – e.g. cars, trains, phones, machines, cameras. This is Edge Computing – and since the Corona outbreak it is more relevant than ever. Edge Computing is a topology rather than technology and spans devices as well as industries.

Obviously, this is cutting the discussion short. With edge consortia springing up like mushrooms, there is no lack of overlapping definitions around the terms Edge Computing and Fog Computing.

Benefits of Edge Computing put simply

The benefits of edge computing stem from its underlying paradigm: Edge Computing is a decentralized computing architecture as opposed to a centralized computing model (today typically cloud computing).

Data ownership / privacy: With Edge Computing data can stay where it is produced, used and where it belongs (with the user / on the edge devices)
Networking costs / Cloud costs: Reducing data transferrals and central storage reduces networking and cloud costs significantly
Bandwidth constrains: Bandwidth is limited and the data volumes are growing much faster than the bandwidth can be expanded (e.g. with 5G networks); it therefore puts a hard stop on many applications that can be overcome by building on the edge
Application / Data speed: Processing on the device – instead of sending data to the cloud and waiting for an answer – is way faster (latency)
Offline-capability: With Edge Computing, devices operate independent from a network / cloud connection, so the application always works and data parts that are needed centrally can be synced when convenient, needed, connected
The decentralized edge: Edge devices can communicate between each other directly. This decentralized Edge Computing approach more efficient (usually translating to speed) due to the short distances and because the power and information of several devices can be combined (for more info see: ultra low latency networks, peer-2-peer, M2M actions). On top, it adds resilience.
Security: A central instance with millions of data is more attractive to hack; also the data transferral adds an additional vulnaribility.

From mist to fog to edge to cloud – a short overview

To bring some light into the terminology mess: The terms “mist computing” and “cloud computing” constitute the ends of a continuum. In our definition, the edge covers everything from cloud to any end device, however tiny and limited it may be. In this definition, there really is only the cloud and the edge.

However, some authors additionally use the terms fog computing and mist computing.

Mist covers the computing area that takes place on really tiny, distributed, and outspread devices, e.g. humidity or temperature sensors. To make it a bit more tangible: These devices generally are too small to run an operating system locally. They just generate data and send that data to the network.

As opposed to mist computing, the cloud refers to huge centralized data centers. The terms “fog” and “edge” fall within this continuum and – depending on whose definition you follow – can be used interchangeably.

From edge to cloud and back: History repeating itself

If these terms seem familiar to you, that is probably because edge computing is just another cycle in a series of computing developments.

Computing has seen constant turns between centralized and distributed computing over the decades, and with recent developments in hardware capacity, we’re again entering into a decentralized cycle.

Edge Computing has been around for 20 years, see a quick history here:

Cloud or edge? – one to rule them all?

Neither the cloud nor the edge is a solution for all cases. As always: It depends. There are cases, where the edge makes more sense than the cloud and vice versa. Most cases however, do need both. If you can, putting the bulk of your computational workload on the edge does make sense though from an economic as well as environmental perspective.

Interested in learning more? Read why Android developers should care about Edge Computing or discover Edge IoT use cases.

A last word on “edge consortia”

There is no lack of consortia defining terms around edge computing – it’s a lot like the Judean People’s Front against the People’s Front of Judea. After a year of battle, the most prominent edge consortium emerging currently seem to be EdgeX under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation – fully open source, while also largely supported and driven by Dell, who initiated it. Other notable players trying to get a foothold in this space is the Deutsche Telekom with MobiledgeX and HPE with Edge Worx. A European counterpart, ECCE, formed in spring 2019 and might be worthwhile watching, as it is supported by many industry players like e.g. KUKA, Intel, and Huawei.

Add an Edge to Your Project Today

How EV Charging Benefits from Edge Computing

by Alyssa | Jan 28, 2020 | Case Study, Edge Computing, Insights, IoT

Edge computing allows data to be stored and used on local devices. Integrating Edge Computing directly within electric vehicle charging infrastructure improves station usability and also allows for real-time energy management.

Car charging and electric vehicles

The era of electric vehicles (EV) is coming: Already one in every 250¹ cars on the road is electric. While it is uncertain when electric vehicles will overtake traditional combustion engine vehicles, electric is clearly the future. Car charging infrastructure is critical for electric vehicle expansion – and one of the largest bottlenecks to EV adoption. Range anxiety is still one of the primary concerns for potential EV customers,² and charging station proliferation is still far behind traditional gas stations.

State of the electric vehicle charging Market

The electric vehicle charging infrastructure market is still very divided, with many players vying for this large-growth sector – some predictions forecast over 40% CAGR for the car charging infrastructure market in the coming years.³ Car manufacturers, gas & oil, OEMs, and utilities companies (e.g. Tesla, VW, BMW, Shell, GE, Engie, Siemens, ABB) are actively taking part in the development of the market, recognizing the need to support future EV customers and the huge growth potential. Startups in the space like EcoG, Wirelane, flexEcharge and Elli offer solutions that focus on accessibility, efficiency and improving end user experiences.

Why Car Charging Stations need Offline Capability (Edge Computing)

First, let’s look at the challenges a vehicle charging provider needs to solve from a basic data perspective: Customers interfacing with charging stations require an account linked with basic information and payment methods. In order to charge a car, the user needs to be verified by the charging station, and is often required to have a pre-booked charging slot. Typically, a user would create a new account via a website or mobile phone beforehand, but not on the spot at the car charging station. Also booking slots are handled via a mobile app or website. However, the car charging station needs this information to allow a car to be charged.

This is only the most basic necessity. In the future, charging stations will provide more services to users, e.g. identifying users preference like cost over speed of charging, or choosing to charge with green energy.

Depending on where the car charging station sits, it can be offline more or less often, e.g. in France there are quite many electric car charging stations in the country site, where the connection is typically flaky – and might not be available for days. On the other hand, there are stations that reside within a parking house or hotel and use a fixed land line for connectivity. In the latter case, your uptime can be very consistent, but typically you cannot guarantee the car charging station will be connected.

If the charging station tries to access this data only when it needs it, because a car is trying to charge, it may or may not have an internet connection at the time and thus the likelihood of failure is rather high. Accordingly, any new information should be pushed to the car charging stations when a connection is available and stored on the station. The hardware of a car charging station is capable enough to hold a lightweight database and persist data as is needed and useful.

Choosing a data persistence layer (database) over a simple caching ensures not only that no data is lost, but can also allow more processing to happen on the station and allows for autonomous reactions. In combination with edge synchronization, which enables persistence layers to synchronize between car charging stations (that share a data space), fast data persistence allows for efficient load balancing as well as easily updating the configurations of all car charging stations.

Smart Energy Load Management – the need for fast response on the Edge

Managing energy is one of the greatest challenges for EV infrastructure providers. The difficulty here is less about overall energy consumption increasing – rather managing, predicting and preparing for high-demand peaks. Imagine everyone needs charging during a large public event, or at charging stations during holiday travel times – peak demands like these need to be anticipated and planned for. The future with electric cars needs to balance demand with a combination of smart chargers, efficient energy grid management, Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) solutions, and perhaps even on-site batteries at larger charging stations to improve time-to-charge and optimize for electricity prices.

Edge computing will play an important role in providing real-time, accurate energy load control, necessary for maintaining grid stability, particularly in emergency situations.⁴ At charging stations where many EVs plug in, smart edge nodes can balance charge schedules in real-time, optimizing based on EV owner requirements without overloading local transformers.⁵ On a larger scale, smart energy meters can use real-time edge computing to shift energy quickly to high-demand locations, cutting energy from low-priority appliances, limiting charge speeds, or pulling excess energy from V2G networks.

Thinking about energy management, the conversation fluidly moves from EV charging infrastructure to thinking about smart mobility, utilities, and smart city infrastructure on a larger scale. Car charging systems will be complex, interconnected and will progress in alignment with other ongoing digitization efforts to create data drive infrastructure across cities and the world. Edge computing, and base technologies like ObjectBox that enable working on the edge, are important enablers to ensure that real-time computing can happen anywhere and digitization is affordable, scalable, and sustainable.

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¹ https://qz.com/1620614/electric-car-forecasts-are-all-over-the-map/
² https://airqualitynews.com/2019/08/27/range-anxiety-still-biggest-ev-turn-off-survey-finds/
³ https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/electric-vehicles-charging-stations-market
⁴ https://www.geirina.net/paper/IoT%20and%20Edge%20Computing%20Based%20Direct%20Load%20Control%20for%20Fast%20Adaptive%20Frequency%20Regulation.pdf
⁵ https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/energyconsortium/files/rwp18-026_lee_1.pdf

MoodSpace Mobile App Use Case

by Alyssa | Jan 20, 2020 | Android, Case Study, Insights, ObjectBox

Ian Alexander

Co-founder, MoodSpace

We speak with Ian Alexander, founder and lead developer at MoodSpace, a beautiful app making mental health exercises accessible to everyone. MoodSpace was released in 2019, and has over 150k+ downloads. The COVID-crises highlights the importance of digital support for wellbeing and saw MoodSpace surge. After trying several databases, Ian settled on ObjectBox because of its high performance and ease of use.

Alyssa: Hi Ian, thank you so much for joining me and for using ObjectBox. Let’s start with the basics about MoodSpace and your role there.

Ian: Hi, Alyssa, thanks for having me. I’m the software developer, founder, and runner of the company – a jack of all trades. MoodSpace is an app that teaches concepts from mental health. There is a massive problem with accessibility to mental health. In the UK, for example, you have something like 1 in 4 people that have some sort of mental health problem, but only 1 in 113 go through therapy and complete it. So our essential goal is to take concepts from therapy and bring them closer to people, teaching them techniques that they can do on an ongoing basis. There’s no end date like in therapy, no waiting list, and it’s a lot easier to use it in places where you wouldn’t necessarily have access to a therapist. In the western world it is much easier to access therapy, still difficult in some ways, but much of the world doesn’t have that benefit. So that’s the goal we’re trying to reach. We started last year, we released the MoodSpace MVP in September, and now we’re going through the next stage of trying to raise our next round of funding – it’s quite exciting.

A: That’s great, congratulations! Can you tell me a bit more about your team?

I: We’re based in the UK, and in terms of the technical side, it’s just me. We also have various other roles: designer, copywriter, and another co-founder who handles much of the business side. But in terms of technical, it is just me for now. Hopefully after we get funding, we’ll be able to expand the technical team..

A: What’s your background, what did you do before MoodSpace?

I: Actually, I was originally a chemical engineer – I worked in oil & gas for a couple of years, but then I taught myself to develop and for the last 5-6 years, I’ve worked across a lot of startups, for example the dating app Once, when they were just starting up, also ITV, and then started on MoodSpace last year. Moodspace has actually existed for quite some time, it started as a hobby project of mine about 5 years ago.

A: There are other mental health apps out there, what makes MoodSpace special?

I: If you look at apps in the space, they’re generally fairly small and limited – they’ll have maybe 4 or 5 exercises. Versus the realm of therapy, which has literally thousands of exercises. Any app that exists at the moment takes just a fraction of a percent of therapy and tries to teach it. Our USP is that we are a very technically minded team, and with new technologies which have come out along with our internal processes, we can make a much bigger app, building something far bigger than what currently exists, much cheaper and far faster. Our USP is strangely, less about the app, and more about our process and the technology that we use to make the app. The tech we will be using is Kotlin Multiplatform, which is a cross platform framework which lets us maintain a single codebase which enables us to build fully native apps with full access to native APIs.

A: It sounds like the app is quite comprehensive – who is your target audience?

I: At the moment, we haven’t hit the product-market-fit stage. We’re still figuring out who the typical user is. We find that the unique art style of our app has helped our growth so far, we often find a lot of people sharing screenshots of the app on social media. So we seem to have hit a niche, but we’re still figuring out what that niche is!

A: Do you have any direct interaction with your users?

I: Mid-last year, I put a survey in the app, so after using it for a certain time users get the survey. There are some questions like who you are, why you are using it, and they gave us way more knowledge about who is using it and what they use it for, which was very helpful. Apart from that though, it is very difficult to know.

A: Yes, it can be very challenging, we’re familiar with that struggle at ObjectBox as well. Switching gears a bit – I’d love to hear a bit more about how and why you ObjectBox.

I: As I mentioned, MoodSpace is about 5 years old, so it’s gone through several databases. One of them was really time consuming to make – it wasn’t ORM based, so you had to write a lot of stuff yourself. Then the next was an ORM called Sugar, but it stopped being developed – it was a side project by someone, so maybe I shouldn’t have used it in the first place (laughs).

I: So then we switched to ObjectBox, and actually the reason we switched was essentially to skip asynchronous code – I’ve always been a frontend developer and what I’ve come across is that asynchronous code makes things very complex, and it means app development takes much longer. Because we had a lot of time constraints and we wanted to develop as much as quickly as possible, I actually wanted to completely skip asynchronous code – which I wouldn’t recommend – but essentially ObjectBox let us do that because it’s very fast. You’d have to have a ton of data in the app, before it would visibly slow it down – and I did a lot of testing around that and it would have needed several years of data before noticeably slowing down the app. So, that was our original reason, perhaps a bit of a strange reason. And we’ve since changed the app so it’s asynchronous, so it won’t slow down any longer, no matter how much data you add in the app. Overall, I like ObjectBox a lot – it’s just simple, very easy to use.

A: What features in your app use the database?

I: Actually everything is in the app, as we don’t have a backend. So we need it to store all the data in the app.

A: Okay, sure. Keeping everything in the app is also practical from a data privacy standpoint. How did you actually find ObjectBox?

I: It was someone I used to work with at Once – they used greenDAO and mentioned that ObjectBox (by the same people) was coming out. I looked into it a little bit and wanted to use it for a while, but it wasn’t I started developing MoodSpace again that I had a chance to.

ObjectBox is very fast, it would have needed several years of data before noticeably slowing down the app. Overall, I like ObjectBox a lot – it’s just simple, very easy to use.

A: Are there any other developer tools that you’re excited about and would want to share with the community?

I: Yes, Kotlin Multiplatform. Having been an Android developer, having used Kotlin for quite some time and having tried cross-platform tools before, I think Kotlin Multiplatform will change the way you make cross platform apps, because it lets you share so much of the code base without sacrificing the native experience. It has the potential of leading to massive cost savings in app development. Maybe in the next year or two I can see it having a huge impact on frontend development across mobile, web, and desktop.

A: What are your big picture goals for MoodSpace? Upcoming milestones? Does ObjectBox help with those at all?

I: Actually, it potentially will, with regards to ObjectBox Sync, which is part of my plan for that app. The app right now is only available on Android, and providing we get our next round of funding, we are going to be adding iOS – where we’ll need some sort of backend. We want to avoid, again, spending much money, and one of ObjectBox Sync, Realm Cloud or Firestore can help us do that – obviously as ObjectBox Sync is nearly ready, we’d want to use that. The main point around that is cost saving because it solves a lot of problems that otherwise we would have to solve ourselves – things like offline access and syncing with an API, that would otherwise be very time intensive.

A: Ian, thank you for your time and sharing more about MoodSpace and working with ObjectBox. We wish you the best of luck with your fundraising round!

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