Appliance OEM Solutions

Challenge:

A systems controls team working for an electrical appliance OEM has been asked to develop a system to track the energy usage of their appliance products. The system should have a minimal effect on the appliance price and it has to have a small footprint in order to fit in the existing space dedicated to the equipment controls. The end-user should be able to connect to the appliance wirelessly and have access to pertinent data in a format where it can be fed into any energy management software.

Solution:

The system controls team evaluated Akida’s TARAS card, which would easily plug into a PCB of their design with standard pin connectors and its diminutive 1.5inch square template meant that the final board would fit in the existing space. They could design the PCB to transmit readings from a current transformer and then interrogate the TARAS card at set intervals to get energy readings, which are then transmitted via an on-board wireless module. Since the data packets use a standardized protocol and are in ASCII format, any device connected to the appliance’s wireless module can use it directly (without any further software coding to interpret the readings). The team determined that it would take them very little time to design a PCB to use the TARAS card but they also evaluated Akida’s low voltage ECU. The ECU already had a Zigbee communication module on board and it had a low voltage relay, which the team could connect to the appliance switching hardware and they could now offer the end-user the ability to turn the appliance on and off remotely. Although the ECU needed an external power source, this was not a problem since there was low voltage power available within the appliance for its controls. The team decided that since Zigbee was fast becoming the standard for energy related wireless communication they should commit to that method. The team’s assessment was that the ECU-LV was very close to what they needed and modifying this device would take less time than developing their own PCB based device using the TARAS card.

Results:

Akida’s partnering approach allowed the systems team to negotiate a licensing arrangement with Akida to use a modified version of the ECU-LV. Using Akida’s design documents, they were able to complete their design and go to manufacturing within weeks thus beating their schedule. They were also able to save most of their development budget while delivering an end product that was also within the price constraints.

Conclusion:

Akida’s modular design approach allows easy and cost effective implementation of digital electrical metering into any situation. Any of the company’s designs are available under licensing agreements, which can save many months in development costs.