H MICRO CASE STUDY HMicro HMicro is a wireless healthcare chip company to enable industry s first fully disposable wireless patches with high reliability, high data integrity, low cost, small form factor HMicro is engaged in the design, manufacture and distribution of advanced Disposable Wireless solutions for the monitoring of vital signs and physiological information in all healthcare settings THE ENGAGEMENT HMicro wanted a cost effective partner for outsourced product development and engaged Gadgeon in November 2011. As part of the Product Engineering service agreement Gadgeon helped HMicro in developing the following projects for them. Wireless ECG monitor Proof of Concept of Wireless ECG Monitor using FPGA board + off-the-shelf ECG patch + Android application Software Development Framework and Hardware Abstraction API for HMicro s System on Chip WLAN MAC porting WiFi supplicant WiFi TDMA Device API + IPC mechanism Boot ROM Electrical and Functional characterization of HMicro s ECG patch Development of Adaptor Hardware and Firmware to integrate HMicro s wireless patch with legacy ECG monitor in hospital environment
Project 1 Business Need Wireless ECG PoC Demonstrate new chip capability and secure next round of funding by: a)developing an Android app to showcase the capabilities of new custom WiFi based ECG sensor chip b) Develop an Android app with control logic to demonstrate real world scenario of Remote Patient Monitoring Technology Wireless Sensors, WiFi, GPRS, Android, Java Gadgeon s Role Designed a custom WiFi packet format and connection mechanism that does not require an entire WiFi protocol stack for performing ECG data transfer to Android Devices Developed 2 Android apps that : *collects ECG data from wireless sensors and plots; *share data to remote Android device and displays at remote end. Integrated the Sensors, Chip and Android apps Generic API release to integrate other type of sensors like Gyroscope and accelerometer and enable OEM to make their own Android app Helped identify the most suitable Android Device for the purpose.
Business Benefits Gadgeon helped customer in crucial phase to demonstrate chip capabilities amidst many technological limitations and helped the customer to realize next round of funding. Customer could focus on their core competency in chip design and ensuring the software development, system integration etc were scaled up with minimal overheads compared to developing an in house team. Parallel development of Software at Gadgeon and Chip at customers end which saved a lot of time Participation at the early stage of a chip design process enables us to develop quick solutions to targeted vertical customers, reducing the cycle time of the overall solution realization.
PROJECT 2 Project 2 Business Need SoC HAL + SDK Firmware Bringing out power efficient cost effective wireless SoC for medical application within the window of opportunity Technology Wireless Sensors, WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, coos, LWIP, Language C Gadgeon s Role Migrated third party WLAN MAC IP from a split architecture to a fully embedded one: Lower MAC in PCI card and higher MAC in windows to a fully embedded MAC running in the SoC
Ported from ARM7 TDMI to ARM Cortex family Modified to take advantage of Hardware acceleration features Implemented a propriety TDMA scheme Added support for propriety dual PHY API specification and Implementation for application programmers of the SoC Reference application software Bootrom development Business Benefits Development of the software on an FPGA platform parallel to HW development by the customer. Customer could focus on their core competency in chip design while ensuring that the software development, system integration etc were scaled up with minimal overheads compared to developing an in house team. By Parallel development Gadgeon-HMicro team could test and verify SoC functionalities as soon as the chip was available.
Project 3 Business Need Adapter: For existing legacy ECG monitors to receive data from H Micro Chips HMicro needed an Adapter to demonstrate the benefit of their disposable wireless ECG Technology with the existing legacy ECG monitors in hospital environment Technology Wireless Sensors, WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n, coos, LWIP, Language C Gadgeon s Role Teaming with HMicro to define functional and usage requirements of the Adapter, Hardware component identification and selection for realizing the Adapter in a production ready form factor Firmware customization and Application software development Testing in laboratory and in hospital environment. Business Benefits Product demonstration of the Adapter, which is an integral part of the wireless patch solution, for fund approvals enabled at very early stage, which is unique to GadgEon. In- house expert testing team and facilities added to the cost savings and ensured timely delivery. This Adapter is an integral part of HMicro s wireless patch solution and Gadgeon helped in accelerating product demonstration to potential customers and investors
About Gadgeon: Gadgeon, an Embedded System Company with special focus on outsourced product development in the area of Internet of Things. Gadgeon specializes in: Contact: Product realization from Specifications to Prototypes Hardware design/ Firmware/ Embedded Application development based on ARM Cortex family and TI s MSP430 Wireless firmware development for low power devices using WiFi, BLE, ZigBee and Simpliciti protocols Embedded OS - Linux, Android, freertos, coos, etc. Embedded Application Development using C/C++ Outsourced Testing Services Anil Pillai VP Sales (North America) Gadgeon Smart Systems Phone: +1-925-596-1554 Email: anil.pillai@gadgeon.com