INDUSTRY INTERVIEW
detecting Covid variants with its range of sample sealers employing 4.3inch and 7inch display modules. A typical sample tray consists of 225 compartments, which once loaded requires a foil heat seal to be applied to prevent contamination. The latest designs use our modular system solution with stepper motor drive, temperature measurement and heating sub-modules controlled by the display module operating iDevOS via internal serial CAN and I2
C interfaces. The stepper motor module uses
a local AVR CPU and watchdog to monitor safety interlocks, control the motor and enable heating to provide a fail-safe solution. Another customer, Monmouth Scientific,
manufacture Clean Air Cabinets, which guarantee a highly clean environment in which to analyse thousands of swabs from COVID Test Centres. Both 4.3 inch and 7 inch display modules are used across a range of products to set flow rate, filter change and other parameter settings.
performance. The key feature proved to be the speed of development, which allowed specific customer demonstrations to be created in a matter of hours to provide rapid proof of concept within the customer’s organisation. This ability also allowed our website resources to expand rapidly so customers could download complete operating screen images and code for keyboards, interface setup, graphs, menus and animations to plug directly into their application. The ability to create and upload a library of fonts and images in jpg, bmp or png to the 128M/4G byte of onboard storage produced a level of display quality to match more powerful systems. The iDevOS script-based programming language with commands like TEXT, DRAW, IMG, LOAD, SETUP etc made it very accessible to hardware design engineers as well as experienced C++ programmers. Depending on context, the 32 core commands expand up to 300
functional operations and being a “Real Time” operating system, new functions and structures could be created ‘on the fly’ if required. The built in real time syntax check and debug has saved many hours of ‘head scratching’ and made it possible for Itron UK to analyse customer submitted programs not only written in English but also other European languages when help is required. The ‘free to download’ iDevTFT development suite runs on a
Windows PC to provide project control, font editing, program development, syntax checking and full debug. Users can then copy their code to SD card and plug it in or upload to the display via USB. Several customers have now transferred their complete application onto the iDevOS hardware/software platform as our display modules evolved into modular PLCs with isolated digital interfaces, PT100 and Thermocouple inputs and PWM motor drive outputs. Although iDevOS provides the solution for 90% of customer applications, we also supply embedded Linux display modules for those applications already written in C/C++.
During the COVID pandemic, has the company been able to contribute, in anyway, towards the fight against the virus? Our customer, Kbiosystems manufactures equipment used in
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What do you expect to see on the horizon for display technology over the next few years, both industry- wide and for Itron? Modularity will be the key in design, hardware and firmware. The core components (CPU and memory) typically require a 4 or 6 layer PCB design using an area of 6x3cm which would have the same modular footprint for all display sizes and interface requirements. Expanded peripheral capacity can be added without starting from scratch to provide applications with a compact bespoke solution. Many TFT driver ICs have selectable LVDS and RGB interface capability. With the cost of interface flex-cable development at ~US$500, it makes standardising interface pinout a viable proposition. Itron UK has already developed several IPS TFT designs allowing
them to connect to a standard control card which powers the backlight using a programmable constant current power supply. Itron UK’s next generation displays will provide backward compatibility for existing users but expand the display capability to 1920x1080 pixels with the same 24-bit colour on 3.5inch up to 10inch wide-viewing angle and extended temperature products. We plan to support iDevOS and Linux embedded operating systems
while further developing the compatible iDevTFT platform to be a standalone solution for Windows PC. Our core value of supporting the inspired engineer as well as the expert will continue to see our products used in innovative customer solutions.
Itron UK
www.noritake-itron.com
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