This power supply designed for mobile plant to resolve issues encountered in a battery charger in original equipment.
The battery charger was bypassed, replaced by this circuit.
Category Archives: Development
Contract PCB Design
Recent contract PCB Layout Design example
New PCB for the LED Matrix Display
This is the PCB for the new Led Matrix Enclosure 
Isolated Power Supply, 2 Isolated RS485 ports, Micro SD Card slot, USB Host, Ambient Light interface, and buffers for the LED Matrix.
Uses a Haoyu LPC1788 module (NXP ARM Cortex M3 with more memory than you can poke a stick at).
We will design a version with Ethernet later this year.
New Display Enclosure – Led Matrix Display
A few views of our new Led Matrix Display Enclosure design
300mm x 180mm x 50mm
The side slides are for simple insertion into and extraction from a mounting cradle.
IP rated connector and ambient light sensor for auto dimming.
From the top –
- Window
- Led Matrix and Supports
- Led Matrix and PCB Mounting Sheet
- PCB
- Enclosure Bottom
Looking inside with the bottom cover removed
Temperature Monitoring System on Mobile Machine
Starting on a new project.
A Temperature Monitoring System, on a mobile machine (a civil engineering machine in this case), with a LED Matrix display for the operators, and hand held control device for the owner / supervisor.
The system will be developed in phases…
- Phase 1 monitor 5 Temperature Points (PT100 sensors) and display colour bars and top temperature
- Phase 2 addition of a hand held monitoring / setup device for the machine supervisor / owner
- Phase 3 data logging (download through handheld device or by PC connection)
- Phase 4 addition of flow and pressure sensors
- Phase 5 valve control and process control decreasing the operator load
To shorten the development cycle we will be buying in RS485 modbus modules for the IO.
The Controller (Modbus Master with 3 RS485 ports, Ethernet with internal switch, CAN port) and the display controller are being developed in house.
We will put up some more information as the parts come in and the system develops.
Bezel for the Led Matrix Display
CC430F6137 433MHz CC1101 Radio Networking
Hi All
I have been using the CC430F6137 for 433MHz network development lately
The boards I found to develop with are from AliExpress (search for CC430F5137 development board, look for the seller King Lei, and ask for the CC430F6137 433MHz demo board with the prototyping pads and footprints under the board, as shown below)
Making it an easy start into CC430 development.
Led Matrix Display
I picked up some colour LED modules for daylight readable displays.
From Aliexpress Store Shenzhen LCCL Opto-Electronic Science & Technology Co., Ltd.
Shown below driven by a LPC1768. (The normal commercial application uses FPGA to handle an array of these display to build a large screen)
The displays use a serial -> parallel led drive, data in is 6 bits wide (2 rows clocked in at once, RGB), and uses two 74HC138s to select 2/32 rows. This appears to be a fairly typical arrangement for this type of display. (the smaller displays only clock in a single row, but the principle is the same)
The display shown is a P4 (4mm pitch between pixels), P3 is also readily available.
I intend to enclose this in an IP rated box with a few basic IO and RS485 and CAN ports.
There will be a single screen and a 3 screen version (That would be a LPC1768 for each display) giving a 96 pixel x 64 pixel display.
Please contact me if you would like any further information.