Project 012 – Major upgrade of functionality and copy protection

High Performance Embedded Software for LED Driver

A manufacturer of LED drivers wanted to extend its portfolio with a more versatile LED driver that could handle different types of input signals. Also, very imporantly, the desire was to add a microcontroller with proprietary embedded software to avoid competitors from just copying the product as had happened many times before.

The manufacturer himself had a lot of experience with analog electronics, but did not have much knowledge about microcontrollers or about embedded software.

Together with this manufacturer, a new design was developed.

The smallest available microcontroller, a 6-pin Microchip PIC10F222, was chosen to keep the costs as low as possible. The small board space and the low energy consumption were other factors for selecting this device.

The embedded software monitored the analog input to check what was connected and used the input level to adjust a PWM output that regulated the current through the attached LEDs. The new LED driver now could to accept either a 0 to 10V voltage, a potentiometer or a switch on its input pins and depending on these input conditions, adjust the output light level.

The extra functionality made this the workhorse amongst the manufacturers LED drivers. Later, several related drivers based on this device were produced.

The microcontroller with protected embedded software could not be copied by the competitors. This helped this manufacturer to regain and even extend his market share.

The embedded software was written in assembly language for the smallest memory footprint. This allowed for use of a very cheap microcontroller which made it really hard for the competition to match the product price level.