Sample Design Solutions
Rackmount Audio Player
Our customer installs large water fountains and came to us to develop a high-end rackmount audio player. The player needed to reproduce ultra-high-quality audio, manage hundreds of audio files, playback triggered by SMPTE timecode, managed remotely, include a front-panel headphone monitor, and only consume 1RU in their audio rack.
Our solution was an 8-channel, network attached, SMPTE LTC triggered, audio player. The MCRX includes a front panel LCD, Web Browser interface, SMPTE LTC input and output, low-jitter clock source, Analog and Digital audio outputs, and a front-panel headphone jack. The MCRX also includes GPIO trigger inputs and GPIO control outputs, all in a 1RU rackmount chassis. The MCRX can be seen HERE.
The design work included all mechanical, hardware, firmware, and web software. The hardware includes multiple CPU’s from ARM and ST Micro, multiple FPGA’s, and 10 PCB designs. The entire development was completed in months, and production shipment followed right after customer acceptance testing. The entire project was developed in-house including mechanical (Fusion 360), electrical (Zuken Cadstar, and Xilinx ISE), and software (STM Cube IDE, Visual Studio, Code Blocks, Dream Weaver) was developed in-house.
Gesture Remote Control
Our customer came to us with the need for a remote control that could easily navigate TV with arrows, but also be able to move around like a computer mouse. Others have built remotes with a mouse pad on them, but the customer wanted to make something that could merely swipe-left and swipe-right. The remote also needed Bluetooth communication with voice to the Set Top Box.
Our solution was a capacitive sensing universal remote with Bluetooth, voice, and accelerometer. The capacitive touch was buried under the remote arrow keys, making the left-swipe and right-swipe gesture simple by sliding your thumb over the keys without pressing anything, and without requiring the space or confusion of a trackpad. The remote was back-lit in 3 dimming zones to save battery, and included an accelerometer to detect movement for movement gestures to swipe-left and swipe-right.
The design included hardware and software using a Cypress CPU with embedded FPGA. All firmware was developed in-house and included a Bluetooth LE communication stack with voice to the STB. The internal FPGA was used for running all the IR protocols at super-low power consumption to save battery for the backlights. We managed the outside remote-control vendor for plastics and high-volume manufacturing.
Custom PCB Design Services
We can design a custom PCB very quickly to make your project a reality
Many of our PCB designs start with just a phone call discussing an idea. Once we understand your idea, a proposal can be made. Give us your requirements, or even just a napkin sketch, we can make it reality and do it very fast.
We can design multi-layer, double-sided, simple, or complex. Our team has done hundreds of PCB designs with 40 years of experience. We have done boards with as many as 24 layers, 18” x 20”, or as small as .75” x 1”. We can make them in panels, or individual depending on your needs.
Gesture Remote Control PCB
This design was a proof-of-concept PCB that inserted directly into the case of an off-the-shelf remote control. This approach enabled the firmware development to begin before full custom plastics cand case could be designed by the customer. The capacitive touch swipe and gesture movements with the on-board accelerometer could be tested and proven without the risk of massive plastic tooling time and costs. Once the design and form-factor were solidified, the production PCB was designed to fit the form-factor the customer had settled on. This saved months off the custom remote-control timeline and allowed the customer to test the prototypes long before production units were available to test.
We can design low-volume prototypes or high-volume production PCB’s for you. We have done hundreds of PCB designs with 40 years of experience. This board was intended as a low-cost, high-volume design, but only 25 prototypes were made to de-risk the project. Mission Accomplished!
Custom PCB Assembly
We have done many PCB designs though over 40 years of technology advancements. We can help you with assembling your designs, or our designs. Give us a parts list, and we can procure the parts. We can also just assemble them with your supplied components. Maybe you need a small volume of boards and the big assembly plants are too busy to take your business. We are here to help. We can build 2, 10, 100, or 1000 boards!
Steel Chassis Design
When your project needs a chassis, we have you covered! We work closely with local and off-shore fabricators to bring you the best of both worlds to your project. Design work is performed in AutoCAD Fusion360 3D modeling, allowing us to provide 3D renderings of your product before they have been fabricated. Some of our designs include rack-mount chassis with welded construction. This makes the chassis very strong and able to withstand the rigors of industrial use.
Custom STB Load Testing System
Our customer asked us to develop a deployment testing system. They wanted to validate the software update process of a multi-device home video delivery platform. Each house consisted of a video gateway and multiple Wi-Fi attached client boxes. When a software update was pushed out, it was imperative that the customer was not watching video on any devices and that no DVR recordings were occurring on the gateway device. Then the client gateway and client devices needed to receive software updates without breaking their network connections to the update server.
The solution was a rack system with 100 simulated houses, each with one gateway and multiple client boxes. Each house simulated viewing behavior and ensured there was no disruption to the subscriber experience during any software updates. With all those devices in close proximity, the Wi-Fi was also greatly tested to ensure that no interference from other neighboring houses could cause a software update to fail. We also tested their ability for rolling updates so that millions of devices would not all reboot at the same time, impacting video streaming to other houses in the neighborhood. We can setup testing within your facility or ours.
Wireless Router Evaluation
Sometimes you just need a helping hand… We did a home wireless router evaluation for a cable MSO. They were having troubles with Wi-Fi range at the far reaches inside their customers’ homes. We brought in the cream of the crop Wi-Fi routers and repeaters, ran them through range checks and sustained throughput tests using streaming video. With the information we provided to our customer, they were able to specify requirements to their vendors which helped the end subscribers. Customer satisfaction improved, operations reduced their service calls, and we saved our customer a lot of money.
Is your internal team swamped? Do you need some help with your product evaluation testing? We solve the pain of both of those. We can setup testing within your facility or ours. We all want the same thing, keeping the customers and subscribers happy!
STM32 CubeIDE Software Development
ST Micro calls their software development platform Cube IDE. It is based on the popular Eclipse environment, so the learning curve is reduced for those with Eclipse experience. Cube IDE fosters rapid development by use of a companion application called CubeMX which assists with the pinout muxing and clock configurations of the STM32 line of CPU’s. Clocking can be one of the most challenging parts of developing with modern CPU’s. ST provides a very flexible, but complicated clocking system in their mid to high-end CPU’s. It is common for us to use 32KHz, 16MHz, and 48MHz on-chip clocks all at the same time, and then use an external crystal for specialized frequencies such as 22.5792MHz for audio. Configuring the clock tree and internal PLL’s with all the various clock sources is why you need someone with our extensive experience!
Do you need code developed for an STM32 part? Do you need a custom board support package? We have done many code ports to STM32 from Atmel SAM including BSP, Bootloaders, Firmware Update managers, mostly with fully custom hardware designs. Now that Microchip bought Atmel, the shift from Atmel/Microchip to ST Micro needs to be done to obtain components. Give us a chance to get your code ported over to a new CPU that you can find in supply chain!
Atmel Studio Software Development
When developing software, the toolchain is a big factor in the decision. Sometimes the decision is made easier when the tools are specific to a brand of CPU. We have done firmware for the Atmel line of Mega CPU’s, the AVR32 series, and the ARM based SAM CPU’s. Each toolchain is slightly different, but Atmel Studio is based on Microsoft’s Visual Studio, so that makes things a lot more familiar.
Do you need code developed for an Atmel part? Do you need a custom board support package? We have done many code ports to Atmel from Microchip including BSP, Bootloaders, Firmware Update managers, mostly with fully custom hardware designs. Now that Microchip bought Atmel, the shift from Atmel to Microchip or even porting code to ST Micro needs to be done to obtain components. Give us a chance to get your code ported over to a new CPU that you can find in supply chain!
3D Design and Printing
We can design a custom 3D part for you. Most of our 3D work has been mechanical spacers, brackets, or supports in a chassis design. Sure you could try and find the right aluminum or nylon spacer, but sometime that isn’t enough. We have done full support casings for panel-mount LCD’s, specialized alignment jigs for mounting components, or really anything that saves time during assembly of a product. We use filament printers because of the economy of the prints. Our design is done in AutoCAD Fusion360.
Office LED Lighting Surprise
This was a fun one. When T-Mobile acquired Layer3TV, they wanted a special surprise for the employees of Layer3TV in Denver. The morning of the announcement, the button was pressed, and the magenta LED strips throughout the entire office faded on! The best surprise was that nobody knew the LED strips were even there!
To pull this project off, we had to only work late at night when nobody was in the office. The LED strips had to be out of sight and blend in with the soffits. Power had to be run in the ceiling without anyone knowing it happened. The installation took several late nights and used lots of PRICOM products. Layout Lighting Solution, PNET Power Drivers, Power Supplies, and RGB LED strips. One of the challenges was to get the T-Mobile magenta color just right even when reflecting off the wall colors of the office.
Do you have a strange or interesting lighting project? We have done special lighting designs and installations for weddings, parties, trade shows, church events, and theatrical shows. Need a special lighting design built into a stage set piece? We have done that, and really love building custom set pieces.