Company A

AVR DSP Engine

Lab X Technologies partnered with Company A to design Lab X's Mako(TM) DSP module.  This is an Analog Devices ADSP-21266 SHARC based design.  Lab X implemented client specific custom post processing, integrated Analog Devices available post processing (Reverb, THX, EQ, etc.), and merged these with platform specific low level code.

Company B

AVR Generation 3

Continuing to leverage off of the previous Gen 1 and Gen 2 hardware and code platforms, Lab X collaborated again with Company B to upgrade to a Motorola DSP 56371 signal processor.  With the additional processing bandwidth, additional Room compensation / correction EQ and user EQ post processing was implemented.

Multi Zone

Lab X Technologies next worked with Company B to create the 6 zone multi-room A/V receiver.  These series of products are multi-zone powered A/V receivers with up to 9 A/V inputs, 3 tuners, and 6 stereo zone outputs (or 12 mono zone outputs).

A stricter object oriented design was taken, further encapsulating the hardware drivers from the application. A great deal of design and brainstorming went into the development of concise, consistent operation and terminology for the user interface. The form language was revamped to improve performance and account for newly needed features (to exploit the commonality of the multiple zones). What turned out to be the most complicated Company B product to date was made possible and manageable.

Simultaneously, the additional features and concepts of the multi-room series required extension to the Company B device interface protocol. Company B device interface protocol V2.0 was created while still maintaining backward compatibility with legacy Company B device interface protocol V1.0 applications.

Due to the complexity of such a system, the Control Suite would be the primary mechanism for setup of a multi-room product in an installation. The Suite was updated to support the 6 zone multi-room A/V receiver, as Lab X Technologies worked closely with Company B engineers, marketing, and feedback from installers to fine tune the product's setup interface. Company B now trains installers using the Suite specifically for setup and installation of their multi-room series products.

Control Server

There was a desire to control Company B devices via Ethernet, and thus Company B Server was born. Server runs on a host computer, connects via the host's local Comm. port using Device Investigator to a Company B device, and then provides access to the Company B device via a TCP/IP network.

Lab X Technologies defined the Company B server protocol to allow third party client development for their Server. V2.0 of Company B Suite was updated to function as a network client with Company B Server, in addition to its already existing local comm. port support.

Server implements user accounts with passwords to configure/restrict access of the various users that can simultaneously controlling the same physical unit. It is configured for ease of use "out of the box", but can be tailored by a System Administrator for advanced features and user privileges.

Control Suite

With the inclusion of RS232 control of Company B's devices via the device interface protocol, it was realized that value could be added to Company B devices by the creation of Windows program control Company B devices. This was the birth of the Company B Suite.

The Company B Tool Suite consists of various "tools", which are part of extensible software bus architecture. A common backplane of Visual Basic software base to which these tools are "plugged in". Current tools include: Device Investigator (a software agent that scans the local host computer's COM ports at the various baud rates in search of attached Company B's devices), System Editor (an editor that allows access to all of the device's parameters plus the backup and restoration of these settings to hard disk files), Virtual Front Panel (a "virtual" version of the front panel of the various units), and Terminal (an advanced terminal package used as a training tool and to aid in the development of third party Company B device interface protocol applications).

To reduce the burden of data storage on the Company B's devices, specific data about the various products (such as textual descriptions and formatting) are contained in an extensive database within the Company B Suite. Each product has specific data associated with it. As additional products are added, the database is simply augmented.

Hooks have also been providing for a configuration file to restrict/grant access to various tools within the Suite. This provides the ability to provide a "Lite" version of Company B Suite, then enable advanced features via the generation of a new configuration file (presumably for a fee) from the company website.

AVR Generation 2

The Series II products were an evolution of Series I. In addition to the continued refinement of the UI (which included evolutionary improvements inherited from its Series I and Preamp/ Tuner heritage), the use of the Motorola 56362 DSP provided the capability for writing Company B custom DSP algorithms. Through the use of these algorithms, vast amounts of features were added to further differentiate Company B from their competition.

The Motorola 56362 is a 563xx DSP family member that has Motorola's Software Architecture (SA) in ROM. The SA provides support for decoding PCM, DTS, and Dolby© Digital (AC-3) bit streams. It also provides a Post Processing Phase (PPP) construct. The PPP support is essentially a software buss, which allows custom DSP algorithms (that conform to the PPP conventions) to be added to extend the functionality of the base SA.

Lab X Technologies developed an extensive framework to ease integration of custom PPPs. This included the development of custom tools to preprocess Motorola assembler files (allowing additional information required for dynamic PPP installation to be coupled with the DSP source). Also, C runtime libraries were written to handle the dynamic installation of the custom PPPs (this later proved to be a huge benefit as the underlying available memory map of the SA changed with subsequent Motorola revisions). Company B device interface protocol was also extended to allow DSP access which was used extensively during development.

Note: Dolby and the double-D symbols are trademarks of Dolby Laboratories

Tuner / Preamp 1

The Preamp/ Tuner was a scaled down version of the Series I designs. This encompassed various hardware and UI changes. The Series I code was used as a code base. Conditional compilation support was added, so a common code base would lend itself to easier maintenance. The Zilog Z8 code was augmented to support a relative encoder (these details were transparent to the rest of the system due to the Z8 - host interface). New hardware drivers were written to account for the different hardware, but the majority of the interface code was untouched.

The Preamp/ Tuner was the first Company B product release with support for RS232 control. Lab X Technologies developed and implemented the Company B Components Device Interface Protocol. This allowed custom installers (or end users) of Company B's equipment complete control via a serial connection. Due shared code of the Preamp/ Tuner and the Series I, Company B device interface protocol/RS232 support was added to the Series I V2.xx code.

AVR Generation 1

Company B approached Lab X Technologies, LLC in April of 1997. They were about to start a new series of products (which would later be referred to as "Series I"). Their primary goal was to have a clean, extensible design that could be easily augmented/maintained.

Lab X Technologies achieved this goal through the development of the following: a message based User Interface (UI), a "form" mechanism to allow easy construction of user displays (for both front panel display, and On-Screen display (OSD), separate front panel processor to unburden the host microcontroller, and concise hardware drivers at the lowest level.

First, the message based UI was introduced. This allowed multiple interface mechanisms (front panel, IR remote, RS-232 control) to generate the same internal message. The code that handled these system messages is unaware of the source. This generalization greatly enhanced the extensibility of the UI and localized common functionality.

Company B's new design incorporated an OSD in addition to the existing Vacu-Fluorescent Display (VFD) their previous designs included. A unified method was developed to encapsulate the menu screen development. The display items composed a form (similar in concept to those in Visual Basic). Lab X Technologies created a syntax and tool (known as a form compiler) to preprocess form descriptions into C data structures. This decoupled the visual aspect of the menus from the rest of the code, allowing greater flexibility and easy of modification.

In previous designs, the host processor (a Dallas 8051 derivative) was responsible for servicing front panel events and decoding IR messages. A separate small 8-bit processor was added to handle these tasks. The Zilog Z8 microcontroller is responsible for scanning the front panel switches, and also decoding IR remote messages. This preprocessing greatly unloaded the host processor.

Lastly, interfacing with the various hardware elements was carefully encapsulated. This hid the details of the hardware from the higher-level code. This minimized any hardware change impacts on the core code.

Company C

Proprietary intercom to CobraNet (TM) Bridge

Lab X Technologies, LLC was subcontracted by Cirrus Logic, Inc. Commercial Audio Products Group to create the Proprietary intercom to CobraNet (TM) Bridge for Company C. Company C is a leader in audio intercom systems which use their own proprietary analog audio backbone in additional to RS-422 control information. The proprietary intercom to CobraNet (TM) Bridge formed a bridge between Company C intercom stations and mainframes using Peak Audio's CobraNet technology.

Lab X Technologies did the hardware design for the bridge, capturing using Company C's choice of schematic tools, OrCAD. Company C engineers laid out the prototype PCBs, which Lab X then debugged.

Lab X Technologies also worked with Company C marketing to detail the user interface. Motorola 68HC908GP32 host code was designed to these specifications, and to interface with Company C's existing user interface hardware modules. 

Company E

Data / Control Interface Module

Lab X Technologies designed an Analog Device's ADSP-21065L SHARC based module for data input / output and output control signals.  The module provides multi-channel input ADC and output DAC, as well as TTL control output signals.  The SHARC's SPORT was used to implement at software UART for communication with another Company E processor module.

Field Replicable Unit Firmware Upgrade

Lab X Technologies was again enlisted to augment Company E's design resources.  Lab X modified and extended an existing proprietary multitask system to monitor subsystems of this RF generation system.  This firmware allows particular subsystem failures to be isolated and individually replaced, as opposed to the entire system needing removal from a semiconductor fabrication production line for service.

RF voltage/current measurement device Upgrade

When Company E determined an improved RF voltage/current measurement device platform was required, Lab X Technologies was the logical choice given our experience and knowledge of the existing RF voltage/current measurement device. With our experience with audio processing, 96 kHz / 24 bit stereo Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) were used in the new design to replace the existing 48 kHz / 16 bit ADCs. Lab X Technologies did the initial hardware redesign, and then worked in conjunction with Company E PCB designers for the development of the new printed circuit board.

Various software routines had to written/modified to accommodate the new hardware. Various algorithmic improvements of the performance were also integrated at this time.

Support for an HMS Anybus Ethernet card was added which allow customers to access the RF voltage/current measurement device via Ethernet, in addition to the existing RS-232 serial interface. Lab X Technologies worked closely with Company E engineers and Company E's end customers to specify the interface to the Anybus Ethernet card that would lie on top of ModBus/TCP. Lab X Technologies then implemented this protocol.

Lab X Technologies also created the Company E Modbus Client. This program is a window's based application that acts as a Modbus Client for the Advanced RF voltage/current measurement device. This tool allows for production level testing, and was also used extensively during development. A future incarnation of this application may be released to Company E customers.

RF voltage/current measurement device

Company E's RF voltage/current measurement device is a precision measurement device for measuring the voltage (V) and current (I) of high power RF power generators (2 kW - 20+ kW). By accurately measuring V, I, and the phase between them, all other relationships can be calculated (forward power, reflected power, gamma, etc.). The RF voltage/current measurement device is used in conjunction with Company E RF power generators and matching networks to drive plasma chambers, which are used to etch silicon for the semiconductor market.

Lab X Technologies, LLC was enlisted to add features to the existing RF voltage/current measurement device software. These features required modification to the existing Motorola 56002 DSP code. To fully support these features, the RF voltage/current measurement device's Graphical User Interface (GUI) program was also updated. Additionally, the testing procedures for Company E production were updated to reflect the new features.

Lab X Technologies continues to support Company E customers with RF voltage/current measurement device issues.

Company W

Additional I/O boards and support for new feature of Ethernet Audio Snake

Lab X Technologies augmented Company W's CobraNet audio snake I/O board offering by developing the following:

• Designed digital hardware, and updated firmware and PC control software to accommodate an 8 channel AES/EBU Input board with sample rate converter
• Designed digital hardware, and updated firmware and PC control software to accommodate a new high performance 8 channel Transformer Input board
• Designed digital hardware, and updated firmware and PC control software to accommodate an 8 channel AES/EBU Output board
• Modified firmware and PC Control software to support 8 TX and 8 RX in 24 bit mode

32 x 32 Channel CobraNet Ethernet Audio Snake

Lab X Technologies worked in conjunction with Company W to design a modular frame concept.  This solution supports up to four 8 channel input boards and four 8 channel output boards for a total of 32 x 32 audio channels using CobraNet (TM).

Lab X performed the digital hardware design (including FPGA VHDL for the TDM to I2S audio multiplexing interface to the CM-1) and the firmware for the frames.  Lab X also developed an extensive PC control / configuration application using the Microsoft .NET environment and C# utilizing SNMP to control parameters within the frame.

Large numbers of frames may be networked together to provide very high channel count snake solutions (256 x 256, or more limited only by network backbone bandwidth).

PC Graphical User Interface over SNMP

Lab X Technologies also developed an SNMP controller application.  Lab X worked closely with Company W's graphics designers, and integrated their desired look and feel into this PC application.  This application is designed around Cirrus's CobraNet Object Tools (CNOT) and the CM-1's support of SNMP to seamlessly control this CobraNet device from the PC.  Lab X also developed the controller's installation package using Install Shield 7.0.

RS-232 protocol converter for Mic preamp

During the development of the aforementioned serial protocol did the RS-485 Hard Wired Remotes; it became clear that the real-time constraints of the remote network would not allow for a RS-232 connection to the network. Such connections were desirable to allow control via Crestron, AMX, and other popular serial control devices, and thus the RS-232 protocol converter came into being. This protocol translator handles translation from RS-232 to RS-485, but more importantly conforms to the real-time timing constraints of the wired remote network and protocol. This allows slow RS-232 connections to be made transparently to a remote network.

The protocol translator was used extensively during development, and is used throughout the manufacturing testing process. Its firmware is also field updateable.

RS-485 Hard Wired remote for Mic preamp

Lab X Technologies also designed wired remotes to be used in conjunction with the "master" 8 channel digitally controlled CobraNet (TM) Mic preamp unit. The remotes communicate with the master via RS-485 using an asynchronous serial protocol developed by Lab X Technologies. This 115200-baud network can support up to 32 remotes simultaneously per master. A key requirement for the design was that the remotes’ firmware would be upgradeable over the RS-485 network via Ethernet downloads through the master.

8 channel digitally controlled CobraNet (TM) Mic preamp

Lab X Technologies, LLC was contacted by Company W to assist in establishing their digital products team. Lab X's first product with Company W was the implementation the microcontroller portion of the 8 channel digitally controlled CobraNet (TM) Mic preamp digital audio transceiver. This includes the selection of microcontroller (Motorola 68HC908GP32,a HC08 derivative), the interface to the Cirrus Logic, Inc. Commercial Audio Products Group CM-1 Ethernet module, the associated interface logic (include absolute encoders for setting network address and control of a Digital-to-Analog Converter DAC for control voltages), and the implementation of Company W's desired user interface.

Since the 68HC908 is a FLASH based microcontroller, Lab X Technologies implemented methods for production programming and provisions for user update of firmware in the field. This is done via the 8 channel digitally controlled CobraNet (TM) Mic preamp's microcontroller orchestrating a TFTP transfer via the CM-1 module.

Company Z

Portable Digital Audio Mixer / Removable Hard Disk Recorder

Lab X Technologies, LLC augmented the Company Z's Portable Digital Audio Mixer / Removable Hard Disk Recorder by adding a compressor/limiter to the input channels.

Location Recording Console

The Analog Devices' SHARC based digital mixer contained EQ routines to graph frequency response. Lab X Technologies, LLC was enlisted to address the issues of porting these floating point routines from the SHARC to the fixed point Motorola 56309.