Overview
AstroKit is one of our major in-house projects, born from a hobby we're genuinely passionate about at Feral Pixel — astrophotography. We noticed there wasn't a single app that gave us everything we needed in one place… so we built it.
Our goal was simple: create a tool we'd love to use, and make it available to others. We wanted it to work everywhere — Android, iOS, and the web — so we built it on a proven, modern framework that lets us deliver quickly without compromising on design, UX, or device-level features.
What this means for you: you get a polished, cross-platform app faster, with one shared codebase that keeps costs down and makes ongoing updates simpler.
The Challenges
Weather data. There are plenty of weather models out there, but building our own ingest pipeline would have eaten months. Buying a commercial API was too pricey for an app we want to keep largely free.
Enter Buddy Forecast — our service that pulls data from multiple high-resolution weather models, up to 14 days ahead. We then built our own API layer on top of Buddy Forecast to keep credentials private, trim out unneeded fields, and shift heavy processing to the server. That also unlocked “cloud” features like user accounts, data sync, smarter caching, and request throttling.
What this means for you: faster load times, lower data usage, and a backend that stays snappy during busy periods — plus the flexibility to add premium features without re-architecting.
One codebase, multiple platforms. We chose the Ionic Framework, which pairs nicely with React. It lets us build once and deploy to iOS and Android with a native-feeling UI, while still tapping into GPS, secure storage, and notifications.
What this means for you: a single, consistent app experience across devices, fewer platform quirks, and a shorter path from idea to App Store/Play Store.
Planning For Traffic
Cloudflare for global speed. Our servers live in Germany, but Cloudflare's global edge network keeps responses fast for users anywhere. It also adds security and caches frequently requested data to reduce origin load.
What this means for you: quicker page/API responses for your users worldwide, fewer outages from traffic spikes, and built-in DDoS protection.
Docker and Kubernetes for scaling. The entire backend is containerised, so we can scale services up or down in seconds. If weather requests spike, we add more containers. When traffic dips, we scale down to save resources. We monitor everything with Elastic, Grafana, and friends for real-time visibility from the edge to individual API calls.
What this means for you: capacity on demand without downtime, predictable costs, and early detection of issues before they affect users.
Regular load testing with JMeter. We pressure-test our systems and can do the same for clients to spot bottlenecks and guide whether to optimise code or add resources.
What this means for you: evidence-based performance tuning instead of guesswork — you'll know where each pound is best spent.
The Takeaway
If you're looking for an app for your business, we can deliver it faster and more affordably — without sacrificing quality. You'll get a professional, cross-platform solution, and if you ever switch teams, the codebase is clean and easy to pick up.
Whether it's for internal workflows or a customer-facing product, we'll help you turn your idea into a polished, scalable app that works everywhere.