FEATURE DISPLAYS & UIS
ENGINEERING DISPLAYS FOR A BETTER USER EXPERIENCE
Andy Board, engineering manager at AndersDX explores how display development kits, along with partnering with an experienced technical specialist is key to optimising display design, to ensure development risks are kept to an absolute mimimum along with simplifying the overall design cycle
T
he user experience is often the dominant metric by which markets
judge products like smart appliances, data loggers, electronic security equipment or medical technology. Some are even born from a great idea to make the device faster, more efficient or easier to use than competing products. Interaction is often through an LCD, which may also be touch enabled. For the product-development team, the
complexity of bringing up the display before they can properly begin honing the user experience, can draw valuable energy and resources from the project; not to mention time. Developing a display is complicated, and
calls for a variety of hardware, software and mechanical engineering skills. Specialised know-how may be needed to ensure the display will behave correctly in the target environment, which may involve extremes of temperature, humidity, moisture, or threat of vandalism. Readability may need to be assured in a range of ambient-lighting conditions, and users will always expect immediate response to their every touch or key press.
FLEXIBLE WAYS TO ENGAGE Display development kits (Figure 1) have become a popular way for OEM teams to begin their projects. They may already have ideas about the kind of display that is required, and if a kit can be identified that closely matches the vision, the engineers can quickly start developing the application to run on the chosen display. AndersDX provides developer kits that allow users to mix and match from a choice of several boards and displays. All the combinations are fully tested, and are integrated with Qt software libraries. This is a great way to focus resources on
developing the application software, and can help refine the final specification for the display subsystem. On the other hand, if a full custom display design is not needed, an effective alternative is to develop the application using a core module or display that will be used in the finished product.
8 NOVEMBER 2017 | ELECTRONICS Figure 2:
AndersDX engineers can help to establish an achievable specification from the outset, ensuring the project follows a proven, efficient design flow
which had previously been used only in benign indoor environments, by upgrading various aspects for greater ruggedness and increasing energy efficiency to extend battery life. Another OEM customer, developing the
Figure 1: Display development kits
EXPERIENCE REMOVES RISK AndersDX engineers (Figure 2) can add value to customers’ projects by helping to establish an achievable specification from the outset, and ensuring the project follows a proven, efficient design flow. This helps drive out risk and enable normal best-practice project management to ensure on-time delivery, meeting the specification, and within the target cost limit. Moreover, years of experience designing displays for all sorts of uses has shown that numerous factors can interfere with correct operation of the screen. Without experience, these can be difficult
to anticipate, and can take time to identify and solve. The company advises it has seen spurious touchscreen responses, for example, caused by a mechanical mount that placed excessive stresses on the display. The company also recently helped an OEM redesign a product for mobile use,
second generation of an existing product, was working with a hardware platform comprising a large carrier board and a 4.3- inch TFT display. AndersDX helped to re- optimise the schematic to allow the PCB layout to be redesigned within the same outer dimensions as the display. This enabled the customer to produce the enclosure using the same tooling as used for the previous product generation and so complete the project more quickly and cost effectively. Redesigning a board for an objective such as achieving a smaller outline can be a demanding task for a small design team.
CHOOSING A SOFTWARE PLATFORM Many companies base their software development strategy on the Qt open application framework. One of the great things about Qt is that it is deigned to be cross-platform and can run on a wide variety of different hardware/software platforms with minimal modification. Anders has applied its Qt know-how to create optimised libraries that are ready to run on any of the developer kits. These optimised libraries also have a
small memory footprint, which relieves pressure on storage and allows the application to load more quickly to ensure fast and efficient launch. Being able to take these libraries and use them directly is a tremendous advantage for any teams that may be unsure how to do the necessary optimisation for their chosen platform. Partnering with an experienced technical
specialist to help with the display design reduces development risks by helping avoid design errors, solving integration challenges quickly and efficiently, and avoiding unexpected complications.
AndersDX
www.andersdx.com T: 0207 388 7171
/ ELECTRONICS
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