While building Renewify, we encountered several challenges that tested our problem-solving skills and technical expertise. Developing two interconnected applications—one for users and another for stakeholders like vendors and installation companies—brought its own set of difficulties.

One significant hurdle was managing the communication between these two apps. Since both apps needed to exchange data seamlessly, such as complaints, installation requests, and their statuses, ensuring reliable and real-time synchronization was complex. We tackled this issue by designing and implementing robust APIs using Flask. Each API endpoint was carefully optimized to minimize latency and ensure data consistency. We also implemented thorough testing to catch edge cases and prevent synchronization issues.

Another major challenge was integrating IoT data into the user app. The system needed to fetch real-time metrics like current, voltage, and battery status from IoT sensors and display them in the Flutter-based app. Initially, we struggled with intermittent data loss and latency while transmitting IoT data to the backend and then to the app. To overcome this, we restructured the data pipeline, ensuring efficient communication between the IoT devices and the backend by using MQTT protocols. We also implemented a caching mechanism to handle situations where data transmission was delayed, ensuring users always had access to accurate and updated metrics.

With multiple API endpoints for different functionalities, managing and maintaining them became challenging. To address this, we adopted a modular approach for the backend, categorizing endpoints based on their functionality and implementing clear documentation. This made debugging and updates more manageable.
Lastly, coordinating between the different technologies—Flutter for the front end, Django for the backend, and Flask for APIs—posed integration challenges.