Business situation
ILR provides specialist expertise in hardware and embedded software engineering to organisations and manufacturers who need to get their projects to market fast and cost efficiently. By identifying the project links and interdependencies, ILR minimises the risk and costs associated with production, distribution, supply and marketing, as opposed to looking at one aspect in isolation. Essentially, they bring the value of an objective perspective and an holistic approach to the hardware and embedded software engineering design table.
Challenge
Many of the projects ILR undertake require a Windows CE computer that interfaces to systems using web services and talk to each other using internet protocols. Many of these are credit card and EFTPOS payment systems which require integration between devices, multiple systems and secure networks over the internet.
In order to design, develop and test systems, Marcus Clyne, hardware and software design director at ILR says that what they needed to do was take a module and put it on a board and know with absolute confidence it would work.
Problem
His experience of Taiwanese, European and US supplied boards, is that what they say it will do is quite different to how it works, or doesn’t work as the case may be.
Marcus discovered, “The support just isn’t there so you’re on your own if something doesn’t work. You just can’t feel confident about buying the board. That wastes a lot of time, money and resource.”
Solution
“We heard about Device Solutions and explained exactly what we wanted to do and asked the question, can your board do this? The short answer is yes.
The following are actual projects ILR has successfully completed using Device Solutions i.MX25 Module. For commercial reasons, the client’s name cannot be disclosed.
Vending Machines
ILR works with a client who specialises in integrated payment solutions for snack and drink vending machines. “Basically, we took Device Solution’s Topaz module and put it in a drinks vending machine to enable payment by credit card. We didn’t have any dramas where something needed to be re-engineered or told “Oh, that functionality is coming out in the next release.” In fact, the board scaled to meet the demands of three diverse product developments subsequent to the initial development, saving the end customer time and money.
Automation Control
Another ILR client needed to undertake complex development and testing as cheaply as possible. Marcus explains, “In this project we were able to make a very inexpensive large low-tech board and use the socketed module to put a very high-tech computing solution in the middle of the board. This saved our client a lot of money because we had a little module that had all the high-tech computing on it along with the big board, which was cheap to make. All the “hard stuff” was done already using the Device Solutions Topaz module. It also meant the company manufacturing the big board didn’t need to be highly skilled, so the costs of production were small.” Typically, this project would require the expensive set-up of a Windows CE computer, an 8 layer PCB, and an extensive test suite.
At a glance
- Dependable product and support from Device Solutions for the Topaz i.MX25 Module is the difference between buying from them and buying from Taiwanese, European and US suppliers.
- Support translates into also having the confidence that client projects can be undertaken with the expectation of success from the outset.
- Cost effective feature set – you don’t pay for a lot of functionality that you don’t need, but the functionality is easily implemented with simple external hardware.
- Easy to integrate into projects; from simple to complex.