Light Switch Control - Embedded Software Case Study

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The Company – Intermatic
Intermatic Incorporated Intermatic manufactures electrical and lighting controls. They are famous for their timeswitch "the little grey box with the yellow dial", Malibu landscape lighting, and home automation brands like HomeSettings and InTouch.

Skills – Epson Workbench62 IDE, Assembler Programming, Structured Programming Skills, Application System Design, and a Deep Understanding of Embedded Systems for a low end microprocessor.

The Task – Create an intelligent light switch with adjustable timed turn off of a switched load.

Do you ever forget to turn off your basement or garage light? This switch will turn off the load (in this case a light) after a preprogrammed amount of time. However, the load could be a compressor motor or a ventilation fan. Hence the term switched load.

The SSI Solution – An Intelligent Lighting Control

Intermatic had selected a very low cost processor with extremely limited functionality, and luckily SSI’s embedded skills helped to make this vision a reality. SSI was given no easy task, two engineering teams previous to SSI were unable to complete it.

First, the initial design was broken up into smaller pieces, modularizing function calls and functionality. This increased the products' reliability and reduced the overall complexity of the system, making it easier to maintain.

As the project progressed and hurdles were encountered, SSI and the client worked together to develop a solution that was achievable with the hardware and still meet their requirements. Some specs were relaxed, while others were enhanced. For example, certain features in mode changing and multiple key press combinations were reevaluated.

SSI delivered a final product that exceeded their specifications.

SSI continues to offer their customers, including Intermatic, the best in embedded system development, regardless of the complexity or simplicity of the embedded systems itself.