Food equipment

Exel can count on a consolidated experience in the field of hardware and software design in the food equipment sector, particularly in the coffee machine sector (vending, Horeca, OCS).

In particular, experience was gained in the design of the 2 families of main boards that are present in this type of machines:

  • Power board: it is the board that controls all the main actuators, manages the sensors and payment systems. Usually it has a microcontroller programmed in C, without an operating system;

  • User interface card: it is the card that manages the interaction with the end user and is generally located on the door of the machine. It usually controls a display, possibly with touch. Depending on the needs of the customer, and depending on the type of display to be controlled, Exel is able to design “lite” boards, with microcontrollers without an operating system (eg STM32) or higher performance solutions (with Cortex-A9, Cortex-A53 ) with Linux operating system and libraries;

Exel has acquired know-how in relation to:

  • Study of “smart” sensors for measurements, machine parts recognition, …

  • Movement of espresso coffee infusion groups, study of parameters that influence the quality of the coffee

  • Custom power supplies, wide range AC / DC specific for coffee machines

  • Solving problems related to machine certification

Exel has recently designed some plug-in devices that are widely used in the food equipment sector:

  • Gateway IoT 2G / 4G. This card allows you to transmit to a cloud the data read by sensors and / or a communication channel with the machine to which it is connected. Features: card with onboard 2G + 4G modem (NB-iot), sim holder, microSD card slot, MDB connector, I / O expansion. Predisposition for optional WiFi module.

  • RFID / NFC reader. It is an RFID / NFC card reader that can be interfaced to a machine (eg vending machines) to be used as a payment system, profiling, etc. It can be used to interface the machine with NFC-equipped smartphones.

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