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DICOM 2007 Continues to Set the Standard for Medical Digital Imaging Standardized Connectors are Music to Many Manufacturers’ Ears |
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Come join us at these upcoming events: July 22-25 July 22-26 Aug. 27-29
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CEA-2017 Offers Portable Media Player Manufacturers a New, Non-Proprietary Connector Choice
More than 100 companies banded together to participate in the effort, and each one brought its own requirements to the table. These various requirements helped shape how the group would define the electrical and mechanical characteristics of the optimum standardized connector, says Dave McLauchlan, chair of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) Portable Device Connector working group, which led development of the standard. He is also a business development manager in Microsoft’s entertainment and devices group. “When we first sat down to design the connector, we looked at what was out there to see if we could just adopt one of the connectors that was out there today and then make that the standard,” McLauchlan explains. But each participant’s unique requirements soon made it clear that existing connectors wouldn’t make the cut. These requirements included high-speed USB capabilities and support for high-current charging. The design the committee ultimately chose supported all these needs, but also was picked because of one other feature: its size. The new connector is no bigger than the most prominent connector on the market, Apple’s iPod connector. The standard specifies a 30-pin connector, with each pin assigned a particular task. Certain pins support USB, and others support functions such as low-current power, high-current power, digital audio output, video output, serial connectivity, and antenna and remote control signals. Besides defining what each pin would be used for, the committee also assigned specific protocols to each pin. “In addition to designing a connector with a standard design and standard pinouts, we also have stated what protocols should go over the pins so there’s consistency and commonality there too,” says McLauchlan. While the committee was able to use existing standards for most of the pins, in one instance, it had to design its own serial protocol for the serial pins. The result of this effort will be published in CEA-2017.1, Serial Communication Protocol for Portable Electronics Devices, which is expected to be released this summer. The new serial protocol is based on a networking protocol known as Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST) that can be found in high-end European cars. But McLauchlan points out that MOST was only a starting point. “We looked at all the serial protocols out there to find what was the closest to what we needed, and MOST was the closest, so we took that and then adapted it to our needs.” While McLauchlan believes most accessories will use USB, providing serial connectivity was still important, particularly for devices which only offer simple functions, such as a speaker dock that has a power button and volume control. In those instances, he says, it is much less complicated for the manufacturer to build in a serial stack than develop a full USB connection. With the new connector, manufacturers can do this while still following the same connector standard. Another important part of the design, says McLauchlan, is the fact that the connector specified in the standard will be able to support future capabilities, such as higher-speed USB. “We had to acknowledge the fact that a lot of connectors in use today had been around for five or more years.” Increasing the amount and rate of data that a connector can support will become increasingly important as high-resolution video content becomes more common and portable. Many of these connectors, he goes on to explain, won’t be able to meet future requirements as connectivity protocols are upgraded. To get around this problem, the committee focused on the mechanical design of the pins. “The throughput problem with current connectors is tied to the actual design of those connectors,” McLauchlan says. Rather than being an electronic problem, it’s actually associated with mechanical details such as the surface area of the connector pins, the material the pins are made out of and the type of cable that can be supported. “This connector has been designed for greater data throughput by taking into consideration the metallic compounds used in the connector, increasing the spacing of the pins and the surface area of each individual pin.” |
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Manufacturers of portable media players now have a new option for ensuring the interconnectivity of their devices with in-home and in-vehicle audio and video systems with the publication of 