Mission and Philosophy
OUR MISSION:
To develop and promote user friendly control of increasingly complex and sophisticated machineries, through usage of graphics user interface at low cost, both for home and business / industrial applications.
BACKGROUND:
Increase of networked appliances, smart grid compliance, advanced equipment that require more sophisticated control and adjustments, multiple AV equipment that require own remote control but does not corroborate with other equipment (often even within the same manufacturers brands), … Humans are (or should be) the master of those machineries and not the other way around. It is time to rethink the system control at a user level.
In recent years, sophisticated control of modern equipment were made possible with usage of low cost micro controllers (such as PIC) replacing many mechanical and analog controls which traditionally had long term reliability and maintenance problems. While those low cost electronics had good enough processing capabilities for most home and many industrial equipment controls, it lacked sufficient power to create a graphic based friendly, flexible user interface.
While applications and usage of small computer systems advanced at an amazing rate, user interface for general appliances seriously lagged such digital revolutions, and study of the subjects has not been there. As a result, many appliance controls are coldly logical but not obvious to many users who are not expert on the function the appliance performs. For example, there are garden variety of thermostat control, sprinkler scheduling, even TV program recording functions, etc., that we cannot perform without referring to manuals. There are, of course, a few models succeeded in building a reasonably intuitive general control panels, but there are limitations how far you can do with 8-bit controllers. This is a stark contrast to many sophisticated software applications on your PCs that you can use without ever touching the manuals.
Add on top of that, the ad-hoc control panel design basically forces the manufacturers to redesign the panel each time model change occurs, which result in long term higher cost of operation.
OPPORTUNITY:
As stated above, one of the problems is not investing specifically for more intuitive, friendly controls that can evolve over long term. Fortunately, two circumstances come to rescue:
- Availability of very sophisticated CPU with integrated peripherals to facilitate very sophisticated control / management AND user interface at a low cost.
- Availability of very sophisticated, flexible, robust operating system / graphic user interface in the name of ANDROID. This is a free, open source licensed software that once integrated with a given hardware, is very power base for creating very nice applications.
In other words, with just a few dollar additions to the overall cost of the equipment, it can replace most, if not all, user control panel function. It can take a form of a embedded face panel or a small hand-held unit that might look like a smart phone or an ipod.
Advantage of developing a user control based on ANDROID OS is:
- It is a robust, flexible and secure graphic user environment where many people already know how to use.
- The software license can be obtained free of charge, through Open Source GL.
- Underneath, it is based on Linux kernel 2.6 which is a powerful, sophisticated, secure operating system supported by many, thus widely field tested, and license is free of charge.
- Most application development tools are publicly supported, for free.
- Application developers are readily available.
- Within limitations, a unit can be manufactured at a very low cost.
- OSOTek’s basic reference design is very basic, ARM cpu based design; many peripherals / adaptors can be easily integrated / attached to the design for more specific applications.
WHERE WE COME IN:
Though source license for these operating systems / environment can be had for free, it is another story to port the system to run on your specific hardware platform and to set up the development environment in a timely manner. A great deal of knowledge / skill / experience is called for.
If your company does not have the expertise and/or personnel to harbor this technology, do not despair. We are here to help.
Long time expert on development of ASIC, FPGA designs and verifications, OSOTek now specializes in porting, developing and supporting embedded Linux and ANDROID OS for your custom platform.
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