- Client
- iControl Networks
- Industry
- Smart home & security
- Where
- United States
- Year
- 2009–2011
- Our role
- The iPhone and iPad apps and their ADT Pulse, Xfinity Home and CenturyLink versions, built by a one-person team
- Platforms
- iPhone and iPad, on the US App Store
- Services
- Mobile app development · Native iOS development
iControl Networks was a Silicon Valley company, founded in 2003 in Redwood City, California, whose platform ran connected home security for some of the biggest names in the US: ADT Pulse, Comcast's Xfinity Home, Time Warner Cable's IntelligentHome and others. In 2016 and 2017, Comcast and Alarm.com split the company between them.
Our founder built iControl's iPhone and iPad apps as a one-person team, while working for another company at the time. At their centre is the orb: one round button that shows the state of the whole security system at a glance (armed, disarmed, in alarm, a sensor open) and arms or disarms it with a tap. Around it: live cameras, lights, locks and thermostats, the event history, and Home View, a live floor plan of the house. The same apps also shipped under partner brands: ADT Pulse, Comcast's Xfinity Home and CenturyLink. The apps were on the US App Store from 2009 to 2011; in 2009, Kleiner Perkins' iFund, the venture fund for iPhone apps, invested in iControl.
Home View
Your house, live
Home View turned the security app into a map of your home. You draw a rough floor plan with your finger, label the rooms, then drag each sensor, camera, light, lock and thermostat to where it really is. From then on the plan is live: icons change colour as doors open and lights go on, and a tap opens a camera's video, locks a door or switches a light.
It handled several floors, with hints when something was happening on another one, and the same layout showed up on the iPhone, the iPad, the web portal and the touchscreen panel. In 2012, ADT rolled Home View out to every ADT Pulse customer as a free upgrade.
iPad screenshots from 2011, shared by David Klein of iControl's design team.
ADT Pulse
Shipped under big names
The same apps reached American homes under partner brands. ADT Pulse, one of them, grew to more than 1.6 million subscribers. These screens come from the ADT Pulse listing on the US App Store in 2012 and 2013: the orb, which changes with the state of the system, Home View, cameras, lights and thermostats, on iPhone and iPad.
Screens from the ADT Pulse App Store listing, 2012–2013 (archived page).
iControl
What we built
- The orb: the whole system's state at a glance, armed, disarmed, in alarm or a sensor open
- Arm and disarm the security system
- Branded versions for ADT Pulse, Xfinity Home and CenturyLink
- Home View: a live floor plan with every device on it
- A floor-plan editor: draw walls, label rooms, drag devices into place
- Live video from home cameras, one tap away
- Lights, locks, thermostats and energy devices
- An event history of everything happening at home
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