Description
Tekuchi is a media company that provided architectural visualisation, interactive media, product design and technology solutions to the property market. One of their fields of expertise is the provision of the technology behind many of the interactive models used to aid selling of apartments in large scale construction projects. Tekuchi had used electronic hardware solutions from other companies to provide the computerised control of the many lighting channels required by these models, but came to IBEX with a view to designing a bespoke product exactly suited to their needs.
IBEX provided the complete electronic hardware, embedded software and enclosure design.
Specifications
Advise Tekuchi on the technical possibilities vs production costs at the initial product concept development stage.
Design a high density, surface mount electronic PCB (printed circuit board) module to provide 320 individually controllable output channels. Utilise PWM (pulse width modulation) dimming, ideally suited to driving both high and low power LED’s.
Design the PCB to incorporate the 3 small additional PCB modules required by the product as snap off sections. During assembly the PCB is manufactured as a single item, but is snapped into the separate PCB’s after assembly significantly reducing overall manufacture cost.
Use high current design techniques to provide up to 55 amps total output current from the 320 channels, using built in compact mains power supplies. Design for efficient thermal management so that internal heat is dissipated quickly and quietly using temperature controlled variable speed fan cooling.
Provide high resolution PWM outputs for each LED channel to provide smooth LED dimming down all the way down to low LED intensities. Each output is also capable of driving high LED currents and high LED voltages, allowing multiple LED’s to be connected to a single channel in series if desired.
Design hardware and software to allow Tekuchi Engineers to develop and implement their own embedded firmware for the user functionality of the unit. IBEX provided all of the low level LED software control with multiple fade processing engines, using a powerful 16 bit microcontroller. Using a separate microcontroller which sends commands to the IBEX microcontroller, Tekuchi are able to implement their own high level functionality, giving Tekuchi the flexibility to program the operation of the product exactly as they require without having to use the services of a specialist embedded programmer every time a change is required.
Provide LCD screen, USB slave and host ports (allowing the connection of USB memory sticks) and link connectors to allow multiple units to be connected together.
Designed using low cost embedded technology.
Manufacture prototype unit followed by initial production manufacture with final product shipped fully assembled to client ready for sale.
Provide full manufacture, test and user documentation.
