" We are happy with our interaction with KritiKal. They have a good team with high delivery capability of cutting edge technologies, which help them deliver complex projects within c..."

Mr. Hemant Chadha
Managing Director, Real Time Systems

" It was after trying two other design houses, we finally found Kritikal Solutions for designing complete product engineering solution for Safety and Data Information Systems for Mat..."

Mr. Khalid Aziz
VP Operations, Wylie Indicators Ltd.

" We are very satisfied and happy to have found KritiKal Solutions as our development partner. They were able to provide solution for an extremely difficult project involving complex..."

Dr. Jharna Majumdar
Ex Scientist, DRDO ; Dean R&D, NMIT

" I believe that traffic conditions in developing countries in general and India in particular are so different from those in the West that we need to develop our own analysis and pl..."

Dr. Dinesh Mohan
TRIPP, IIT Delhi

" "Last two years have been working with KritiKal Solutions in defining a tool which helps in traffic planning for our vehicle mix. The tool delivered by them is helping our team for..."

Dr. Geetam Tiwari
TRIPP, IIT Delhi

" ...by leveraging the vision capabilities and product development experience of KritiKal, we will take our customers’ experience to the next level. We have chosen KritiKal as our..."

Mr. Raj Raheja
CEO, Heartwood Studios

" KritiKal was able to quickly understand the problems & technical issues to efficiently evaluate the enhancements needed for our current product. We were very impressed by the quali..."

Mr. J P Talwar
Vice President (Systems)

Portable Handheld Device

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Verticals:	Custom Product Development
Technologies:	Embedded Software,Embedded Hardware
Tags:	Portable Device, RISC, Linux, ARM9, S3C2410, SmartMedia Card, Uboot, Smart Metering, NAND Flash, WinCE, TFT LCD Touch screen, printer, Li-Ion Battery, Smart Card, GSM, GPRS.

CLIENT Client is a Delhi, India based firm, which provides services in revenue management, consumer mapping, GIS Mapping, billing and collections for the utility sector. OBJECTIVE The client required a portable device to perform mobile data acquisition and payment collection to achieve the following: Reduce the time required for the billing and collections cycle Bridge the gaps in the billing process and plug loopholes to prevent losses Make the entire operation efficient and cost effective considering the scale of operation PROJECT SCOPE The device was going to be used for electric meter reading, billing and collection purposes. In the traditional process, the billing and collection cycle is about 31 days and also per bill cost was high. The idea is to reduce both substantially by doing all activities (reading, billing, distribution) of the cycle at one time. PDEMR (Portable Device for Energy Meter Reading) is a portable terminal designed around a 200MHz RISC processor with the following features Linux platform (WinCE port is currently under development) 64MB RAM 64MB* NAND Flash for storage 320x240 TFT LCD with touch screen 4" Thermal printer (104mm print width) GSM/GPRS module Smart Card Reader USB and Serial ports 48 key membrane keypad Rechargeable Li-ion battery operation * Easily upgradeable as per application requirement (Smart Media Card) Accessories Magnetic Swipe Reader Camera (USB) Ethernet (USB) Memory Stick (USB) CHALLENGES: Total cost of the system being a very tight constraint, an in-depth understanding of available platforms was necessary to select the optimal hardware platform. Interfacing with other partners: It required, KSPL to interface with Enclosure design house, PCB fabrication house, Keypad fabrication house and many part vendors. KRITIKAL'S ROLE KritiKal took up the complete task of developing this device from conceptualization to the final prototype (ready for production) stage. The product was developed from concept using a low power ARM9 based System-on-Chip. The device development required varied skills during various stages of the product development lifecycle ((Mapping the client requirements to technical specifications, Selecting the right processors and controllers, Design of the hardware to porting the Linux kernel and Device drivers and providing the necessary development libraries to the client for application development). Beyond prototype development, support for field trials and identification of the manufacturer for the device were some of the main support functions required after the initial development. Hardware design, till the schematic level was carried out by the hardware design team of the Embedded Group at KritiKal. In tandem, the system software modules were developed using the evaluation boards by the Systems Team of the group. PCB fabrication was outsourced to competent agencies identified by KritiKal. Debugging, testing, bring up of the boards and later integrating the hardware with the necessary software was done by KritiKal. VALUE DELIVERED Two versions of the product were identified to be released in two separate phases to get the initial release of the product out in the market early. Each of these phases would see the release of a product for testing and subsequently manufacturing for in-house use. The product is expected to reduce the operating cost of the client by several orders of magnitude, reduce the "non-technical" losses in the billing and payment cycle and help in expanding the scale of operations of the client.

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Portable Handheld Device

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