Electronic Lock

Client's Overview:

Our client is 125 years old trusted brand in locking and security solutions and is an India-headquartered group of companies needed to establish and solidify their presence in the digital lock market. Since the brand had substantial experience and multiple decades of market expertise, they had a respected position and acceptability in the market.

Challenges:

In an era where safety and security are one of people’s biggest concerns, the advent of technology has introduced digital safety apparatuses. A popular one amongst these is the electronic lock. Due to its keys that cannot be copied, central access, digital encryptions, and regular updates offer them more security in comparison with mechanical locking systems.

However, due to the limited success so far in the digital lock market and control over the product design roadmap, it was difficult for them to maintain the leadership position in the market. They had a high dependency on traded product portfolios and still had to navigate through the features of their potential product.

Solution & Approach:

The need was to establish a detailed product roadmap for the digital lock portfolio with upgraded versions for the next 3 years

Our team successfully delivered end-to-end product development requirements covering –

  • Hardware platform design & development, potentially delivering upgradable products and technologies
  • Facilitated wireless connectivity
  • Collaborated with client’s mechanical design, engineering, manufacturing and service teams
  • Selected appropriate semiconductor vendors as per the product’s technical requirements
  • Incorporated various access control technologies for intuitive and an easy-to-use user interface
  • Product certifications and compliances with international standards including ATEX

Field installations and service support facilitating future roadmap

Results

  • Increased product relevancy through redesign
  • Improved user experience: facilitating wireless connectivity to enhance product performance and user convenience
  • Hardware & Firmware platform and PC software catering to multiple product variants
  • Developed low power consumption strategy to enhance battery life in the product.

Outcome:

Products are successfully deployed on the field for residential and hospitality markets.

  • Fingerprints-based Secured Access Control
  • Algorithms for secured access
  • Wireless Connectivity with security cameras and key fobs
  • Capacitive buttons based intuitive user interface
  • A total of 5 PCBs – all double-sided PTH
  • Schematics, BOM, Layouts, and Gerbers: PADS from Mentor Graphics
  • Microcontroller: STM32L4 series 32-bit Low Power ARM Cortex M4 core MCU
  • Capacitive buttons: Cypress dedicated controller
  • RF ISM band: Maxim controller
  • Fingerprint sensor module – Imagematch Inc
  • Bare metal programming in C Language
  • IDE: System Workbench for STM32-AC6