Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have many advantages over incandescent lamps, compact fluorescent lamp CFLs or halogen lamps. As a refresher, these advantages include higher lumens/watts, much longer lifetimes, insensitivity to vibrations, instant turn on, dimmability, good color rendering and very flexible overall lamp shapes.
Traditional stack lights, tower lights or indicator lights in factories used to have a separate lamp for each color (Figure 1). These lamps can be replaced easily with white LEDs with colored casing or red-, amber- or green-colored LEDs with white casing.
Table 1 lists the standardized color-coding for industrial signal lights to indicate the status of manufacturing equipment or processes.
The TI Designs RGB LED Signal Tower for Industrial Automation Reference Design (TIDA-00979) lets you indicate your processes and manufacturing equipment in a smart and very flexible way. Aside the standardized color-coding shown in Table 1, you can define any other color at any time. Moreover, brightness control, flash lights or level indictors are easy to realize.
On top of common switch control for the different lamps, the reference design’s control scheme enables interfaces for an overall smart factory, like the IO-Link standard and wireless control.
The reference design uses two different Printed Circuit Board PCBs: a power and control PCB (Figure 2) and an LED control PCB (Figure 3). With a nominal input voltage of 24V, the LMZ35003 DC/DC converter module generates (with high efficiency) the required 12V for the three LEDs in series on the LED control board. The MSP430™ controller sets the different modes of the TLC5971 LED driver via the SPI. This 12-channel LED controller can independently set the LED current (maximum 60mA/channel) and brightness.
It is possible to control between one and five LED boards, or even more segments with a higher-power DC/DC converter. With such a flexible approach, you can realize many different styles and colors (Figure 4).
TI PROVIDES TECHNICAL AND RELIABILITY DATA (INCLUDING DATASHEETS), DESIGN RESOURCES (INCLUDING REFERENCE DESIGNS), APPLICATION OR OTHER DESIGN ADVICE, WEB TOOLS, SAFETY INFORMATION, AND OTHER RESOURCES “AS IS” AND WITH ALL FAULTS, AND DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS AND IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS.
These resources are intended for skilled developers designing with TI products. You are solely responsible for (1) selecting the appropriate TI products for your application, (2) designing, validating and testing your application, and (3) ensuring your application meets applicable standards, and any other safety, security, or other requirements. These resources are subject to change without notice. TI grants you permission to use these resources only for development of an application that uses the TI products described in the resource. Other reproduction and display of these resources is prohibited. No license is granted to any other TI intellectual property right or to any third party intellectual property right. TI disclaims responsibility for, and you will fully indemnify TI and its representatives against, any claims, damages, costs, losses, and liabilities arising out of your use of these resources.
TI’s products are provided subject to TI’s Terms of Sale (www.ti.com/legal/termsofsale.html) or other applicable terms available either on ti.com or provided in conjunction with such TI products. TI’s provision of these resources does not expand or otherwise alter TI’s applicable warranties or warranty disclaimers for TI products.
Mailing Address: Texas Instruments, Post Office Box 655303, Dallas, Texas 75265
Copyright © 2023, Texas Instruments Incorporated