Project Details
Home/Project Details
BridgeDrop
Project description
Sending a file between your own two devices should not need the internet
The Challenge
Moving a file between your own laptop and your own phone still means a cloud service, an account and an upload, for a transfer between two machines that are usually sitting in the same room. The bytes go out to a data centre and come back to the desk they started on.
The two devices may or may not be on the same network, and the user will not know or care which. So the product has to detect that and choose the path, rather than asking a question the person cannot answer.
The Solution
Try the local network first and fall back to a relay only when there is no path — with the same interface either way, so the transfer is one action rather than two workflows. Local transfers never leave the LAN; the relay exists for the cases where there is no shared network, which is a fallback rather than the architecture.
Skills and deliverables
Features delivered
The hard part
Discovery without configuration. Finding the other device has to work on a network the user does not administer, without a manual address, and degrade to the relay rather than failing when it cannot.
The Impact
A working cross-platform transfer over LAN with a relay path behind it. Because a public instance would mean running a relay and a stranger's data through it, it is a repository build and the cover says so.
