Reference Designs Turning Turnkey
April 27, 2011
From: asmag.com
With rapid technological advances in the security industry, functionality is no longer the only concern for solution providers and end users alike. Getting the right product to market quickly is just as important as meeting customer needs. Reference designs can help significantly reduce development time and cost.
Reference designs are tested and proven products that are fully functional and can go straight to production. “In order to be a true reference design, the board must be fully functional and designed in such a way that it can be manufactured in volume as is,” said Bob Beachler, VP of Marketing, Operations and System Design, Stretch. “This means not only is the feature set of the reference design applicable for the marketplace, but that the board has gone through FCC and CE compliance testing and has completed a Highly Accelerated Life Test.”
Developing a product from scratch can take a significant amount of resources. “The networking functions, video framework, operating systems and all the other basic functionality can each take months or even years to develop and stabilize,” said Cyril Clocher, Video Security Business Unit Manager, DSP Systems, Semiconductor Group at Texas Instruments. “Basing a product on a reference design has the advantage of having all the basic functionality already available and tried and tested for quality, reliability and performance.”
Component suppliers release reference designs as an integrated platform. Their engineers have extensive knowledge of the components used, and they can ensure everything works well together. “The components used in the design are tested extensively by experts in their respective fields to optimize reliability and performance. The result is a rock-solid platform that is fully functional in itself, yet provides the flexibility for solution providers to customize and optimize on their areas of expertise, which can be, among others, the image pipeline, analytics, advanced networking or video compression,” Clocher said.
If the reference design is based on a scalable, programmable solution, there is more flexibility for a manufacturer to differentiate its products, Beachler said. “Some common areas of customization include adding additional chips to increase the channel count, providing optimized GUIs and/ or sophisticated video overlays, building in advanced networking features such as PSIA and ONVIF support, or providing different form factors to cater to different settings such as mobile DVRs for buses, trains, police, or rack-mounted units for large installations. Manufacturers can also provide a mixture of standard definition, HD and network camera support through simple hardware and software changes.”
Analytics and image signal processing (ISP) algorithms can vary widely, depending on a supplier's area of expertise. “Manufacturers can add customized video analytics or analytics provided by third-party vendors,” Beachler said. “Some also add customized ISP algorithms for network and HDcctv cameras.”
A key area for differentiation lies in the software and GUI, said Darron Ma, Marketing Director at Intersil- Techwell. “Even if the design is 90-percent complete, the perceived quality and value of the product can vary widely, depending on how refined the software is.”
There are system integrators and OEMs who open up DVRs from different manufacturers and see the exact same boards inside, Ma continued. “While most modify the hardware and optimize it to fit their needs by adding or removing blocks to customize functionality, some also take it straight to production.”
JACK-IN-THE-BOX
A reference design kit generally consists of a fully functional unit,
software source code, hardware schematics and detailed documentation,
Clocher said. “All the necessary hardware and software are included to
speed up the development process, allowing manufacturers to focus on
tailoring the product according to the targeted end application.”
The software must also be production-worthy, so CODECs for various formats, such as H.264 and MPEG-4, and firmware are all tested for quality and performance, Beachler said. “This leaves the manufacturer with needing only to add its own host application software, GUI and networking software.”
Depending on the level of “readiness” of the reference design, the manufacturer's development and design processes are significantly simplified, Beachler said. “The remaining tasks are generally the following: modifications of hardware to suit specific market needs; manufacture of boards (PCB assembly); design and manufacture of enclosure housings; addition of manufacturer's host application software and interfacing this software with the supplied SDK; and additional value-added software, such as sophisticated networking software or video analytics.”
TURNKEY SOLUTIONS
In most cases, distributors and
value-added resellers (VARs) do not have the engineering and
manufacturing capabilities to carry a reference design into full
production, Beachler said. “Certain reference designs, such as PCIe
add-in cards, are easy to take into production if the VAR or distributor
uses a good contract manufacturer. Taking a camera or stand-alone DVR
reference design into production is more difficult.”
Reference designs are used by manufacturers to embed into complete system products, said John Monti, VP of Marketing and Business Development for Pixim. “They are rarely shared with distributors or VARs who have limited engineering development and manufacturing capabilities.”
Increasingly, smaller companies are turning to turnkey solutions. Previously they were unable to compete with larger companies in terms of DVR manufacturing and development, but can now enter the market and compete without large overheads, Ma said. “They can easily outsource the manufacturing to factories that provide manufacturing services. As a result, most small companies can have a small work force as they do not need to build a huge factory or a huge R&D center.”
SOFT POWERS
Open-source software is available for most operating systems and
entry-level networking functions, Beachler said. “Linux, TCP-IP stacks
and Web server software are now almost entirely open.”
Even the more complex video functions, such as encoding and analytics, have open-source options now, Beachler said. “However, these require significant modifications and optimizations before being deployed in the real world. Since the scope of this work can be quite large, most companies rely on the reference design supplier for the video and audio CODECs, and dedicated video analytics companies to provide the optimized software.”
Using Linux as the operating system has the benefit of providing a consistent and familiar development environment, Clocher said. “Developers are generally familiar with Linux and feel comfortable with it. Porting code across projects takes minimal effort.”
With operating systems and networking, there is a critical mass of people continuously evolving and improving the software with their contributions, Beachler said. “Open-source software for specific video surveillance functions is not viable at this time.”
READY, SET, GO
Moving toward IP-based systems,
there are several features that have become standard in reference
designs. “Many companies are looking to reference design providers to
provide more software solutions,” Beachler said. “Customers are now
looking for reference designs that support ONVIF and PSIA standards.
While most established companies have already created this networking
software, some emerging suppliers might not have it yet.”
The increasing demand for HD also demands specific functionality in reference designs. “Support for HD image sensors for both network cameras and HDcctv cameras is a definite necessity. Also, the ability to accept HDcctv inputs by PCIe add-in cards and stand-alone DVRs is currently in demand,” Beachler said. “Additionally, decoding multimegapixel cameras is difficult for standard x86-based processors. Programmable devices that can decode any network camera stream, regardless of the encoding standard (be it H.264, MPEG-4 or M-JPEG), are in high demand as well.”
While the functions of various end products can often be similar, reliability is a key criterion in selecting a reference design, Ma said. “It doesn't matter if the product is packed with every imaginable function when it crashes every two hours.”
With the advent of complete reference designs, many companies are able to reduce their R&D spending because 90 percent of the work has already been completed, Beachler said. “It also enables them to get competitive bids from multiple contract manufacturers, reducing their costs and obviating the need to have in-house PCB assembly.”
Production-ready reference designs are easing a lot of pains, and allow manufacturers to shift scarce resources to other more appropriate areas, such as software engineering and business development.
