Design of Set-Top Box

Executive Summary

Our customer is a global analog and digital semiconductor IC design and manufacturing company.

digital-vedio-recorder

Our customer wanted to diversify by developing a consumer electronics product based on their semiconductor solutions around a central DSP processor by TI and for this they were looking for a company in India. Having expertise in building applications on set top box, eInfochips was selected by the customer to leverage its core understanding of TI DM6446 to develop the set top box for them.
eInfochips has designed and developed the Set-Top box which allows users to record, playback and streaming multimedia with optimized kit. The Set Top box can be used for video surveillance as well.

The Customer

Our customer is a global analog and digital semiconductor IC design and manufacturing company. In addition to analog technologies, digital signal processing (DSP) and microcontroller (MCU) semiconductors, they also design and manufacture semiconductor solutions for analog and digital embedded and application processing.

The Challenge

  • Exact understanding of the project was essential as the Set Top box had to be designed with multiple operational functionality,
  • Hardware and software development had to be done in short time duration as the date of release was announced
  • Limited support from the customer’s side in clarifying the exact requirements.

The Solution

Design & Development

eInfochips is associated with development of Set Top box and eInfochips is responsible for hardware and software development for the set top box.

With the expertise on TI's DM6446 eInfochips has developed Set top box kit optimized for recording/ playback/streaming multimedia.

  • Main board Development
    • eInfochips developed main board which is based on DM6446 with the ability to support video decoding, USB 2.0, audio codec, Ethernet, LCD, HDD-2.5"&3.5",NAND Flash, DDR2, UART, RS485, WLAN, RF remote & IR i/f, RTC
  • Audio/Video board
    • To make Set Top box more demanding in market , eInfochips has developed Audio/Video board which incorporates legacy , connectivity of audio/video, USB, Microphone/headphone
  • Team eInfochips developed RF Remote board with SPI interface
  • eInfochips did Porting U-Boot and Booting Linux Kernel with development & Porting of Linux device drivers. With this Audio device driver, Video I/F, LCD Interface (800 x 480, RGB666 I/F) are also added to make Set Top Box effective.
  • For serial interface support eInfochips added support of RS232 and RS485 interface and apart from this team eInfochips added facilities of keypad I/P and GPO, RTC, IR remote
  • As Root File Sys is critical to make it happen eInfochips team added support for 2.5" & 3.5" HDD, JFFS2 support on NAND Flash

Testing

  • For quality assurance eInfochips developed test board which is with the capability of IR I/F, GPIO, USB, RS 232 & RS 485 C

Technology

  • Linux
  • TI DM6446 Platform

The Benefit

  • eInfochips’ expertise on TI DM6446 along with our amplified offshore engagement model the customer to successfully complete the product development at a 50% lower project cost
  • eInfochips’ expertise made the customer free from constant support from their side and reduced looping/repetition of tasks and reduced the product development cycle duration by 20%.
  • eInfochips’ quick development of Set-Top-Box made the on-time-release successful for customer in adherence to our brand promise of “on time every time” delivery of the market-ready solution with successful development and proper testing