Case study
SeaRebbel: A Marine Autopilot Navigation App
SeaRebbel's routing logic existed but no app could use it — it needed to reach a skipper on a moving boat. We bridged two different native SDKs into one React Native app, built draw-to-route in under three seconds, and sent routes to the autopilot over Bluetooth LE with no network dependency.
Marine hardware & navigation · SeaRebbel builds proprietary marine autopilot hardware. Its routing logic was written in MATLAB and compiled into native iOS and Android SDKs.
The brief
The routing intelligence existed but no app could use it. It needed to reach a skipper on a moving boat — one app on both platforms, with a finger on a chart instead of a waypoint table.
What was built
- The bridge: a layer that makes two different native SDKs (iOS and Android) look like one routing interface to a React Native app
- Draw-to-route: the skipper sketches a rough path with a finger; the app checks it against land and reefs, corrects it, and produces a clean, sailable course in under three seconds
- Skipper confirms first: nothing reaches the hardware until the skipper accepts the route
- Bluetooth LE to the device: routes go to the autopilot with no network or cloud dependency; position streams back so the app shows the boat against the route, and the connection survives screen locks and backgrounding
- A hidden telemetry screen streaming raw device data, so faults can be diagnosed offshore by asking the skipper to read it out
The hard part
This is a forward deployed story, not a generic app-building one. The work was getting existing technology working inside a customer's real environment: their hardware, their SDKs, their users' conditions. Two different native SDKs for iOS and Android had to look like one interface to a React Native app, a hand-drawn line had to become a safe, sailable course in close to real time, and the hardware connection had to survive the things that happen on a real boat — screen locks, backgrounding, someone moving around the deck — with no network to fall back on.
Outcome
Routing logic only an engineer could previously reach is now a product a customer operates with a finger. Published on the App Store and Google Play, and used on real boats.
Credit
Delivered by Abdullah Amir, before founding Bridge Innovate. [TBD: confirm agency credit with The DaaS Labs before publishing]