Description

An in-home display (IHD) allows utility customers to track their energy usage information such as total energy consumption: pricing: and kilowatt hours in real time. The display can communicate with utility meters and other enabled appliance typically using Low Power RF communication. In entry line IHD: often a segment LCD based solution is enough. It is typically battery operated: needs some intelligence to deal with the various messages and connectivity. The TI low end IHD is featuring a full design articulated around the low power MSP430 micrcontroller. This microcontroller is driving the LCD segment display in very economical way thanks to its intergrated driver and is offering various ultra-low power modes to optimize the battery life-time. The MSP430 also offers standard serial port (SPI: RS232) to interface with the TI Low Power RF solution to address the most popular standard ranging from sub 1GHz to 2.4GHz ZigBee. Hardware and software package enables developer to come up very quickly with a cost optimized and simple IHD that can quickly interact with other smart appliances.