Media Players

Media players have become almost a necessity of life for the current generation. All of the various MP3 players on the market use an embedded microprocessors with the main players such as the Apple iPod all being based on ARM.

The media player started out initially as a music only device, often without an LCD or much in the way of controls. However they have now progressively developed to include small, high resolution, LCD screens for viewing music videos and even moved outside of the music theme with larger screened electronic book readers and video display units. In this sense the media player and the PDA markets are converging.

Bluewater has a very good understanding of the requirements of modern media players and we are ideally suited to designing anything from a small audio playback device, right through to advanced products that use leading edge technology such as OLED or electronic paper screens. We also have partner companies that can assist with enclosure design and manufacture enabling us to offer a full design service.

PRODUCT SHOWCASE (CARDINAL)

         

PCB                                                         Book Reader Unit

Bluewater has been involved in a number of media player projects. The product shown was developed by Bluewater as a full sized book reader designed to be used for the storage of manuals and technical operation documents (user manuals). The unit has an 8.4” LCD with touch screen and incorporate the same Synaptics ‘touch ring’ technology as used in the Apple iPOD. It runs an embedded Linux operating system and displayed PDF versions of manuals which could be loaded via and external Compact Flash card, USB or over a WiFi link.

The unit was designed to replace the need for specialised tradesmen to carrier large volumes of printed material in their vehicles. By storing important manuals and documents on flash media cards and viewing them on an electronic book reader, a significant amount of space was freed up in their vehicles.