Project Description

Light has long been allied with comfort, due to its strong influence on a person’s emotions: warm colours can induce passion; cold colours can bring calm. Moreover, light has an ever-increasing role to play in the communication of information.

Consequently, there is a growing trend towards increased static lighting, multi-colour ambient lighting, and more complex animated lighting in cars, all of which could be grouped under the description “smart lighting.”

Capabilities of the current CAN and LIN communication protocols are insufficient. CAN is the Controller Area Network; the bus that allows components in an automobile to talk to each other seamlessly. LIN is the Local Interconnect Network; a supplement to CAN which allows for further expansion to peripheral devices. To put it simply, tomorrow’s cars are likely to contain too many LEDs changing colour too rapidly and too frequently for the current CAN and LIN technologies to control efficiently.

Melexis already has considerable experience in the development of LIN-based LED automotive systems. To address the challenges of smart lighting, Melexis has developed the Melexis Light Bus (MeLiBu®). As a UART-over-CAN protocol, it combines the best of LIN and CAN: the easily usable, extendable protocol and hardware architecture of LIN with the speed and robust communication system of CAN.

SMH Technologies is excited to announce to be a recommended third-party ISP (In-System Programming) solution for Melexis LED drivers product range (single channel and multi-channel), being able to support respective communication protocols such as LIN, FastLIN, MeLiBu® and PPM.

So far, many Customers have chosen our programming solution for stability and efficiency reasons and we are sure that they will continue doing so, considering FlashRunner the high-volume production alternative to MUM (Melexis Universal Master).