InnoCell achieves smart living with Chevalier’s innovative technology

The firm was recognised with the Smart City - IT Services award at the HKB Technology Excellence Awards 2022.

and monthly rental fees by electronic direct debit authorisation (EDDA) or tokenised autopay. The solution is proven safe and reliable by deploying under those financial institutions’ guidelines and compliances. Residents just need a few steps in the InnoCell Living APP to activate the service and then settle rental fees periodically. Nevertheless, they can use the same way to top-up their E-wallet for daily consumption at InnoCell.

As a co-living space, InnoCell is equipped with ancillary facilities including a function hall, meeting rooms, music rooms, game zones, a yoga place and a BBQ site, etc. Residents are encouraged to use these facilities by making the reservation and payment through the InnoCell Living APP conveniently. The booking system integrates with an access control system, allowing only the resident with a valid reservation to access and control the equipment like AV system, lighting and air-conditioning system on a centralised control pad.

Smart Living is one of the major elements emphasised in the Smart City Blueprint for Hong Kong 2.0 which aims at improving people’s lives through innovation and technology. Chevalier (Network Solutions) Limited, a system integrator with over 30 years of experience specialised in digital solutions and ICT implementation, presented a successful implementation of Smart Living technology at InnoCell – a smart serviced apartment in Hong Kong Science and Technology Park launched in mid-2021.

InnoCell is not only a traditional apartment for staying, but also a co-working and co-living place for people to collaborate, share ideas, and inspire innovation.

It offers a unique smart living experience to the residents, who are mostly IT professionals working in the park, visiting academics, scientists, and technology talents.

Chevalier’s team identified the situation and started to explore how technology can refine IT solutions to achieve the property owner’s goals in early 2019 and was finally awarded as the Smart System Provider of the project in January 2020. It is more than creating a smart living environment for the residents, but also developing an effective facilities management system for the property operator. The scope covered the development of mobile applications and smart system software, as well as the ICT implementation and installation, which included the Hotel Property Management System (PMS), Admission System, E-payment Solution, Facial Recognition Access Control, CCTV system, Home Automation, and IoT integration.

Integrated digital functions

To provide an end-to-end solution to enhance residents’ experience and operation efficiency, Chevalier has to ensure that all these digital functions worked as one integrated.

To add to the challenge, there is usually no common language amongst the mentioned systems, thus application programming interface (API) development is so important and critical in this project. Chevalier developed a “Smart Hub” which supports different programme languages and provides a secure and stable platform for the dataflow amongst those systems.

Fintech is also made a key element in this project. Traditional properties require employees to manually handle rental collections. However, at InnoCell, Chevalier delivered a secure e-payment solution which linked with global financial institutions such as HSBC, Global Payment, Visa and Mastercard. This allows the operator to collect deposits

For the job orders of housekeeping and maintenance placed in the InnoCell Living APP, they will be sent to the Administration Portal in which the duty manager can assign and dispatch the jobs to the frontline workers. Worker who receives the order will perform the job, and then report the status through the Staff APP.

InnoCell has obtained the BEAM Plus certification which encourages an environment-friendly and low-carbon lifestyle. Chevalier contributed to this aspect by installing various IoT sensors and integrating them into a monitoring system. After the one-and-a-half-year development and nursing period, Chevalier rolled out the system successfully in mid-2021. Residents enjoy living in InnoCell with keyless access, cashless payment, and more smart services with the InnoCell Living APP. On the operation side, the E-payment System has processed over 350 EDDA transactions for rental payments every month, the team benefits from saving the workforce with this system automation. In fact, there is only 17 staff serving the apartment with 500-bed spaces. This is not the end but another new start –Chevalier is keen to replicate this successful solution in its future projects and also will continue to enhance the system for the coming smart living era.