Tula Labs
Introduction
Tula Labs, a part of the Procme group, is one of our standing-out clients whose key areas of expertise are manufacturing electronics, robotics and software solutions for smart cities, mobility and telecommunications in Portugal. Apart from that, Industrial monitoring, Artificial vision, product development and infrastructure services are also some of the other services they specialize in.
Challenge
As the client discussed the functional specification with us, it was understood that they wanted a sophisticated web application that allows the client to integrate with their existing systems, so we had to make sure we were familiar with some of their processes. We also needed to ensure that the Tula Labs’ cards or any generic card is seamlessly syncing across their existing platforms, which enables the user to monitor real-time activity. We also had to consider the localization of the system being unique to each enterprise customer who uses this system, their brand had to be reflected throughout the system. This includes handling multiple languages and the translation throughout the system. So the system was ready to hit the international market with ease of use. The CI/CD pipeline was strictly defined and set to test regressions and check functionality automatically when deployment was done. We had to process and render graphs that had thousands of records and calculations done which would have a direct impact on the performance of the system. This also meant that we had to handle the real-time changes in data, for which the team integrated WebSockets.
Solution
We built a fully functional Electric Vehicle Charging (EVC) management platform for Tula Labs available in a static website hosting provider where the content will be obtained using the REST APIs and WebSocket connections to the back-end. Any user of the system is required to sign up by updating their location, billing plans, and their unique generic ID or TULA card. Upon logging in, the dashboard represents the main page of the application where the client has access to useful information and helps to navigate through. The graphs graphically represent information such as: Energy consumption per day, Overall revenues per day, Number of transactions per day, Usage percentage. Using this platform, our client can allow its end users to register new EVCs, manage who has access to each EVC and which Near Field Communication (NFC) tags are associated with each person. For instance, Tula can issue new NFC cards to their employees or configure office ID’s and directly link them to the EVC station. This way our client benefits from automating the entire process manually assigning or allocating an EVC station for a certain staff member. Now that they have eliminated a lot of time-consuming stages, they can also monitor and track who is using which EVC station in real-time.
Impact
We Built an effortlessly scalable, centralized system that manages any number of EVC stations for either their employees or the public, helped our client to demonstrate the environmental commitment and support towards brand value. We also enabled our client to provide their end customers with convenience in terms of availability, pricing plans and real-time monitoring and helped our client export data directly from the website in order to compare and track energy consumption, transactions, revenue, and overall usage. Furthermore, we gave our clients the autonomy of editing certain information according to their choice. E.g. Billing plans, EVC station access, Generic cards, or Tula cards linked to the EVC’s)