BLE · NFC · Wearables · Smart hardware
IoT & Connected Devices

IoT App Development UK — BLE, NFC, Wearables & Connected Devices

Tackxel is a UK IoT app development team that ships BLE, NFC, wearable, and connected-device mobile apps for hardware-led products. We built LuxeLocker (IoT-enabled storage with cloud lockers) and WearOpal (smart ring with a custom BLE SDK).

One senior team across the hardware integration, the mobile app, and the AWS-based telemetry pipeline. No vendor handoffs, no blame loops, no system that nobody owns end to end.

Free 30-minute scoping call with the founder. NDA on request.
IoT and connected devices architecture illustration
Who this is for

Three shapes of IoT work we keep being asked for

Different starting points, same team across hardware, app, and cloud.

Hardware-integrated startup

Your product is the device and the app, not one or the other.

You're shipping a physical device — locks, sensors, controllers — and the experience has to land on a phone too. We deliver hardware integration, the mobile app, and the cloud as one team so the boundaries between layers don't become handoff problems.

  • Native iOS and Android with BLE / NFC / cellular reliability tuned to your hardware.
  • Cloud telemetry pipeline sized to your unit economics.
  • App Store and Play Store submissions including hardware-permission flows.
Wearables and health-tech

BLE-connected hardware with mobile companion and cloud data.

BLE wearables and health devices stand or fall on connection reliability and data integrity. We build the companion app, the sync layer, and the backend that survives flaky connections and intermittent users.

  • BLE protocol design tuned for reliability under real-world conditions.
  • Offline-first sync with eventual cloud consistency, not just "online or broken".
  • Data integrity and privacy aware — encrypted at rest, scoped by user, auditable.
Industrial and property IoT

Fleet-grade telemetry, access control, and monitoring.

Gate access, climate control, monitoring, fleet telemetry — the workflows behind these are operational, not consumer. We build with the operations team in mind: audit trails, permissioning, and dashboards that actually get used.

  • Permission and access management with guest, vendor, and audit-log scoping.
  • Real-time status surfaces — built for ops dashboards, not just consumer apps.
  • Operations-grade reliability targets, designed in, not bolted on.
What you get

Concrete deliverables, across every layer

Hardware, app, and cloud handled in-house. Every layer engineered alongside the others — no vendor blame circles.

Hardware integration (BLE / NFC / cellular)

Protocol design, pairing flows, command paths, and reliability tuning — across BLE, NFC, and cellular IoT — by engineers who know the failure modes.

Native and cross-platform apps

Native Swift / Kotlin for hardware-heavy paths where platform reliability matters; React Native / Flutter when cross-platform wins. Chosen against your team and product, not religion.

AWS-based telemetry pipeline

IoT Core, MQTT, Kinesis, Lambda, RDS — sized to your device count and message rate. Cost-aware from day one, not after the bill lands.

Access and permission management

Owner, guest, vendor, and admin scoping. Time-bounded access. Audit logs. Designed for the workflows operations teams actually run.

Offline-first sync

Connections drop. Apps go to background. Phones get rebooted. The sync layer handles all of it without losing data or surfacing errors to the user.

App Store + Play Store submission

Provisioning, signing, hardware-permission language for the store reviewers, phased rollouts, and review-cycle handling — we do the whole submission gauntlet.

How we deliver

Discover. Design. Build. Ship.

The same four-phase model adapted to IoT's particular hazards: protocol gotchas, flaky connections, and operational dashboards that have to work for people who aren't engineers.

01
Week 1–2

Discover

Hardware-cloud-app boundary mapping. Where does state live? Where does retry logic sit? What's the security model? We answer these before writing protocol code.

  • Boundary map
  • Security model
  • Reliability targets
02
Week 2–4

Design

Protocol design, telemetry schema, mobile UX, and infrastructure design move together. The hardest part of IoT is the seams — we engineer them deliberately.

  • Protocol spec
  • Telemetry schema
  • Infra architecture
03
Ongoing

Build

Senior engineers ship in two-week sprints across hardware integration, mobile, and cloud — without dropping balls between disciplines.

  • Production-grade code
  • CI/CD pipelines
  • Test coverage where it counts
04
Launch + ongoing

Ship

Phased rollouts with feature flags. Real-world reliability is monitored, not assumed. We don't hand over and disappear — IoT has long tails.

  • Monitoring & alerting
  • Runbooks
  • Post-launch support
Tech stack

Native where it counts, boring everywhere else

Platform-native for the hardware command paths. Conventional AWS for the backend. The scoping call is where we make the call together.

Swift + Kotlin

Native, for the BLE and cellular command paths where platform reliability is non-negotiable.

React Native + Flutter

Cross-platform, when team economics or feature parity outweigh hardware-path specifics.

AWS IoT Core + MQTT

Pub/sub telemetry, device shadows, and rules engines for fleet-scale messaging.

Docker + CI/CD

Reproducible builds across firmware-adjacent services, app pipelines, and backend.

Case study · Real Estate · IoT

Mobile + IoT + cloud for a US storage operator.

Native iOS and Android apps with IoT-controlled gate access, climate control, and real-time unit status. Paired with an AWS backend (EC2, S3, RDS), Dockerized, with CI/CD pipelines and App Store + Play Store releases handled in-house.

Live on stores
App Store and Google Play
Hardware + app + cloud
All three by one team
In production
Tenants, admins, vendors
Read the case study
Storage IoT case study visual
Related case studies
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Quick answers to the questions buyers ask before a discovery call.

What is BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) app development?+
BLE app development is building iOS and Android apps that talk to Bluetooth Low Energy hardware — sensors, wearables, locks, beacons, medical devices. Unlike classic Bluetooth, BLE is designed for short bursts of data at low power, which is why it's the default for almost every modern battery-powered IoT product. A solid BLE app is more than just a connection — it's pairing UX, reconnection logic, characteristic discovery, OTA firmware flows, and a stable protocol between app and device.
Can you build apps for custom IoT hardware?+
Yes — custom hardware is the case we specialise in. We've built mobile apps for proprietary devices including the WearOpal smart ring (with a custom BLE SDK) and LuxeLocker IoT storage locks. We work directly with your firmware team (or engage one) and design the BLE/NFC/Wi-Fi protocol jointly so the app, device, and cloud all fit cleanly together.
Do you build the firmware side too, or just the app?+
Primarily the app and cloud side. For firmware we either partner with your hardware team or bring in trusted firmware engineers; we co-design the protocol and ensure the app and device evolve together. If your project is a brand-new product without a hardware team yet, we can introduce vetted partners for the firmware portion.
How do you handle real-time data from connected devices?+
Two layers: on-device, BLE characteristics or MQTT for low-latency streams to the phone; in the cloud, AWS IoT Core or a tuned WebSocket gateway for fan-out to dashboards and back-end services. For high-volume telemetry we typically use Kinesis or Timestream for ingestion and storage. Real-time UX in the app uses optimistic state and reconnection logic so latency doesn't break the experience.
What about offline support and sync?+
Offline-first is the default for any serious IoT app. We design a local store that the device can update without a network (BLE works offline), reconcile back to the cloud when connectivity returns, and resolve conflicts predictably. This is how LuxeLocker's app keeps locker control working even when a user is in a basement carpark.
How do you handle IoT security?+
End-to-end. On the device, encrypted pairing and rotating session keys. On the wire, TLS to the cloud and authenticated BLE characteristics for device commands. In the cloud, AWS IoT policies and per-device certificates. We also design OTA firmware updates with signed payloads so a compromised device can't be left in the field. Security planning starts at the protocol design stage, not retrofitted later.
Can you integrate with AWS IoT or similar platforms?+
Yes — AWS IoT Core is our default cloud for connected devices, with Lambda + DynamoDB / Timestream behind it. We also work with Azure IoT Hub or Google Cloud IoT when the project's cloud choice dictates it. Whichever platform, the app/cloud split is designed so device control, telemetry, and OTA updates are independent surfaces that can scale (and be debugged) on their own.
Ready when you are

Got a connected-device project? Let's scope it together.

Discovery calls are for the hard early decisions — protocol, platform, infra, store strategy. Estimates are for when those are settled.

Book a discovery callGet a delivery estimate