Future-Proof Your Fleet: How to Transform Deployed Devices Without Touching Hardware

In this exclusive Blues fireside chat, Croxel’s leadership team joins Blues President Jim Hassman to reveal how they accomplished a remarkable engineering feat: completely transforming an entire deployed fleet’s operating system without touching a single device.

The Challenge: When Quick-to-Market Becomes a Constraint

Every successful startup faces this dilemma: the same decisions that enabled rapid market entry eventually become constraints for growth. Lift AI, an innovative elevator monitoring company, experienced exactly this challenge.

Founded by Rob Wurth from a multi-generational elevator service family, Lift AI disrupted the elevator maintenance industry with IoT devices that provide data to evaluate elevator performance and identify potential issues. To reach market quickly, they built their initial fleet using CircuitPython; a decision that served them well for rapid deployment but created limitations as they scaled.

The “Brain Transplant” Solution

When Lift AI needed to evolve their platform while managing hundreds of deployed devices across the nation, traditional approaches weren’t viable:

• Hardware replacement: Prohibitively expensive with devices installed in elevator shafts nationwide
• Technician visits: Would require significant costs and elevator downtime
• Living with limitations: Would prevent adding new features and capabilities their customers needed

Instead, Croxel and Blues pioneered what they called a “brain transplant”; completely replacing the operating system from CircuitPython to Zephyr RTOS using over-the-air updates.

Key Webinar Highlights

The Technical Achievement

• 100% success rate across the entire deployed fleet
• Zero elevator downtime during the transformation process
• 15-20 minute update time per device, depending on cellular signal strength
• Complete firmware stack replacement, including bootloader; something typically requiring physical access

The Business Impact

• Massive cost savings compared to hardware replacement or technician deployment
• Preserved customer relationships by eliminating service disruptions
• Created a future-proof platform capable of continuous evolution
• Enabled new data collection capabilities for advanced analytics and machine learning applications

The Technology Foundation

The webinar reveals how Blues’s architecture made this transformation possible:

• Isolated note card design that could act as a “surgeon” for the host MCU
• Secure fleet management through Notehub for coordinated updates
• Robust connectivity that handled challenging elevator shaft environments
• Fail-safe mechanisms to prevent device bricking during updates

Featured Speakers

Jim Hassman - President and CRO at Blues, sharing insights on the platform capabilities that enabled this unprecedented fleet transformation.

Albert Garvett - CEO & Co-Founder at Croxel, explaining the technical approach and partnership dynamics that made the project successful.

Carlos Mejia - Director of Strategic Planning at Croxel, detailing the project management and execution strategies for managing fleet-wide updates.

About the Partnership

This webinar showcases the power of strategic partnerships in IoT. Croxel’s deep expertise in Zephyr RTOS and embedded systems, combined with Blues’s innovative connectivity solutions, enabled a transformation that neither company could have achieved alone.

Resources

• Blues Platform
• Read the Full Lift AI Case Study
• Learn More About Zephyr RTOS