Custom Display and Control System for a Luxury Car Lift System

Driving Factor

RDS collaborated with a luxury car-lift owner and installer to develop a bespoke, high-end display and control system for use with hydraulic vehicle lists and integrated security systems. The objective was to replace traditional mechanical switches with a modern, intuitive and visually striking modern interface that matched the premium market of the lift product.

Problem

The client operates in the high-value sports and luxury car market, where both functionality and aesthetics are critical. Existing mechanical controls did not reflect the quality of the lift system or the expectations of the end users. The client knows lifts and lift control and safety systems, they needed a partner who can collaborate with their lift experts interface and act as the primary interface for the end user.

Solution

The in-house RDS engineering team custom designed a touchscreen podium with illuminated touch sensitive control buttons all neatly bonded to the rear of black dead front effect (DFE) glass, resulting in a flawless and polished surface for customer interaction.

The parts you do not see are just as premium. The podiums are built with an industrial Kontron SBC, a custom in house designed IO interface PCB handles the capacitive touch buttons and LED illumination, all wrapped up in a compact and secure Linux operating system with remote updates.

Product

RDS delivered multiple parts to this system. An IoT Edge Gateway for local control and communications, an IoT Router for dedicated networking, cable harnesses to rig these into the system, and of course the 10.1" touchscreen podium display. All of these parts are designed and assembled to specification in our UK assembly facility, meaning the customer just needs to order their bespoke part number when they win a new installation job.

Problems / Solutions / FAB

Customisation: What stood out on this project is the level of bespoke services required. The client had a very clear brief on branding and aesthetics, and trusted RDS to deliver something reliable and viable for mass production. Throughout the design cycle RDS kept the customer fully informed, from proof of concept, prototype, pre-production and now regular production runs - RDS delivered on every stage.

RDS has extensive experience working with products that are deployed in customer's homes. Much like industrial environments, physical access can be limited and downtime can be costly and disruptive. To address this, the product was designed with full over-the-air (OTA) update capability.

Using the Mender platform, complete operating system updates can be deployed remotely and securely. If an issue occurs during the update process, the system automatically reverts to the previous stable version, ensuring continuity of service and providing peace of mind or both the provider and end user.

New technology brings new opportunity. The on premise IoT Edge Gateway is collecting lift usage information and basic readings such as temperature and humidity from the podiums, using secured communications, the system reports this back to the RDS SensConnect service, where historical data is viewed and alerts can be triggered to the operations team's desires.

While being a premium product, the systems still have to be realistic and commercially viable. RDS do not just design, we manufacture. From the very beginning of the project, the teams at RDS are making design and component selection choices that balance cost and long term availability. A vehicle lift is not going to get replaced many times in the homes lifetime, so we select from our known and trusted vendors.