CA2800104A1 - Personalized dynamic gift box (packaging box) with lcd (led) screen - Google Patents

Abstract

A gift box or a packaging box embedded with a LCD (LED) screen, used for high-end items packaging. It belongs to the field of Packaging Technology. This is to embed a LCD (LED) screen to the cover of a packaging box. LCD (LED) screen can be used to play dynamic content, including flash words, flash pictures, or even video. And the contents can be personalized. This invention will enrich the design and performance of a gift box (packaging box), and bring convenience to end-users and customers.

Description

Personalized Dynamic Gift Box (Packaging Box) with LCD
(LED) Screen Bing Han tiany mind when doing business. I was contacting designer for the packaging design and - - contacting factory for the box producing.
1: Packaging design needs professional designer. Good packaging design costs a few hundreds or even a few thousand dollars. What's more, you can only choose one from the designers' several drafts. If you want all of them, you need to pay more.

2: There is only one design which can be printed on the box. If you want to have several designs to be printed, you need to pay fees for the plate. Each design needs one specific plate for printing. And each printing plate costs a few hundred dollars.

3: The information contained on the traditional package box is limited by its size. Apart from the design, the name, the Logo and slogan, there is no more space to put some other useful information, not mention the product information, the instruction, or the advertisement...etc.

4: For customers (end-users), it will be great if the gift they purchase for their friends or families can be personalized: a special piece of words, a customized carton flash, a beautiful music or song, or even a short video...etc. The only thing they can do with a traditional box is to attach a card and to write some words. Now with this new box, they can do a lot more, which makes their gift so special, so different.
So, why not just put a LCD (LED) screen on the cover of the box? This can not only put more information from the manufacturers, but also make it simple for customers to personalize the contents displayed on the screen. This will make the gift more attractive and unique to senders and receivers. What's more, this will add packaging products more fashionable, trendy, high-end elements, thus greatly increase the value of products.
More important thing is: there is no such analogous product in the world. This is completely a new idea!

The cost of adding this equipment can be as low as 10% to 20% of a high-end packaging box. Mass production will make the cost even lower. Comparing to the overall improvement of the box, cost of adding this equipment is really absolutely acceptable.
The real application of this invention is centralized to liquid crystal display (LCD) and its supporting parts, including chips and circuits which used to drive the display, battery feeding and data interface. Normally, the display screen is embedded into the outside of the box cover, and other parts are put into the inside of the box cover. Here is the schematic diagram:

2, Apg :
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Figure.1: Schematic Diagram Note:
1: Liquid crystal display (LCD, LED or TOLED ) screen.
2: Circuit board.
2A¨ Chip of interface circuit (CPLD) 2B ¨ Chip of LCD controller 2C ¨ Flash memory 2D ¨ Battery 3: USB interface, used as data input and power feeding.

4: Solar panel.
5: Box cover.
Note that this is just a schematic diagram. In a real application, the whole circuit board will be much smaller than the LCD (LED) screen part.
There are two ways for the equipment to embed into the box cover: one is to scatter the screen, the circuit board and other parts into the cover; another is to fix all parts as well as the screen to a hard board, and attach to the inside of the box cover, while leaves the LCD screen facing the outside through a hole. First solution is suitable for thick cover, and second solution is good for covers which are relatively thin.
Following is the description of the screen part.
1: Hardware configuration The liquid crystal display technology has been very mature now. Its working parts are mainly composed of three basic components: LCD Controller, dedicated ASIC chip (CPLD) and liquid crystal display LCD (Figure.2). For these 3 parts, there are corresponding chips which are cheap, well-designed and powerful in the market.

Interface Circuits LCD
LCD
(LED) Controller (CPU)) Screen Figure.2: Hardware Configuration 2: LCD controller chip LCD controller is used to send text, images and other data (transmitted by the logic control unit) from the system's internal data buffer to the external LCD drive to display on the screen. It also provides necessary control messages, to support different types of LCD screen with different resolution. It is the control center of the entire display unit.
There are many chips now in the market which can be used as LCD controller, like Intel Strong ARM
SA1110; LPC2478; PT6524L0; 53C2440A; WT1621; TFT LCD controller SSD1963;
SSD1963...etc.

Intel Strong ARM SA1110 is a typical chip with LCD controller. It supports 4, 8, 12 and 16 digits format different types of mono or color LCD display. It also supports 1024x1024 pixel display. This controller has 3 types of display mode:
= Passive color mode: supports 3375 types of color, each frame allows to display 256 colors;
= Active color mode: supports 65536 types of color (16 digits);
= Passive black and white mode: supports 15 classes gray.
NXP Semiconductors LPC2478 is an ARM7 micro-controller based on flash memory.
It provides integrated LCD support function (another micro-controller LPC2470 is without flash memory). It is equipped with a Dual ARM high-speed bus, synchronous operation of multiple high-bandwidth peripherals; significantly reduce the cost, space and power consumption. It is widely used for LCD
controllers. These two microcontrollers both support most static LCD monitor (up to 1024 x 768 pixels, 15-step grayscale monochrome and 24 bits per pixel true color TFT panels).
Controller provides 512KB, high-speed 128-bit embedded flash memory, with built-in error correction function; it only needs single voltage (3.3V) power supply. It has 2KB SRAM with a unique real-time clock and a battery. The microcontroller consumes very little power when hibernates.
This controller supports many peripherals. Besides LCD interface, it also supports Ethernet, USB host /
OTG / equipment, two CAN channels, four UARTs, three I2C bus, dual-input dual output I25, SPI, the SSP, RTC, ADC / DAC, SD / MMC card interface as well as the connection of external SRAM, SDRAM and NOR
Flash interface. It's ideal for debugging and extended functionality.
3: CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Device) is digital integrated circuits which users can construct logic functions according to their specific needs. CPLD is used for the conversion of LCD control signal; coordination and control of RS232 signal; coding of key control signal...etc. Due to the wide variety of liquid crystal display, and different manufacturers adopt different standards, this can cause the mismatch of data format and timing between LCD controller and display.
Through programming to CPLD, we can provide mapping for variety of data interface with different data format, so to get the control of LCD controller to display.
Typical CPLD chips in current market are EPM7128S (PLCC84) from ALTERA;
LC4128V (TQFP100) from LATTICE and XC95108 (PLCC84) from XILINX. Besides, the specific integrated chip - CPLD PZ3128 from PHILIPS is also a good choice.
4: Display module (LCD, LED) In order to reduce the cost to the maximum, we can use something most commonly used in current smartphone market like the 3.9-inch LCD display. In fact, the size of the selected LCD display can be adjusted according the actual need of the packaging design. In practice, the size of the LCD display cannot be too big because for one thing, big display will consume more power, thus reduce the endurance time of the battery; for another, when the display is powered down, or when there is nothing to display on the screen, mostly it becomes black. If the black part takes too much of the packaging area, it will affect the outlook of the whole packaging. Of course this needs the overall coordination from the packaging design.

As far as the LCD screen's 'Black-Out' problem is concerned, besides trying to apply dark color or black color design as the main color for the box, we can adopt TOLED as the display. TOLED (transparent organic light-emitting device) is a display technology being developed by the Universal Display Corporation (UDC) that uses transparent electrodes and light emitting materials in an organic light-emitting device ( OLED ). TOLED embeds OLED technology in thin, transparent glass or plastic substrates that are capable of emitting light from the top or bottom, or both. Because TOLED displays that emit from both top and bottom are 70% transparent when not in use, they could be incorporated into eyeglasses, car windshields, or windows. Optimistic estimation can see the transparent rate goes up to 80% or even 90% in a year or two; and the price will also drop down as it is more widely produced. In this case, if we use this as the display, we can see the original design at its back when it is not powered on, or we can see the inside items if needed. This will not only solve the 'black-out' problem perfectly, but also leaves a large space for designers to make more beautiful, contemporary, trendy gift box. In addition, this type of display consumes less power (thus makes the battery last longer), but gives more fresh and bright displaying effect. Using TOLED as the display can really show the advantage of this idea, and reflect the superiority of this invention.
5: In terms of software programming, there are not a lot of work to do. We only need to program on the LCD controller and CPLD chip to control the LCD display. Mostly this belongs to embedded coding field.

6: Battery and power feeding. Normally the voltage to light up the LCD is 3-3.4V. When displaying a flash, each frame changes with a fixed time span, like a screen saver. The current it consumes is about 20 milli-amperes. That is to say, under this circumstance, a normal cellphone battery (1500mAH) can provide 75 hours of uninterrupted powers. Displaying a video will consume more power.
For any electronic products, the battery endurance is always an issue no matter how strong the battery is. We can adopt two ways to make the power last longer: one is to use a switch button, to switch off the power completely when not using it; another way is to add a solar panel, to re-charge the battery whenever there is light. In this case, the screen display can last long when at home or in a showroom.

7: The system also has an USB interface, used to input the customized data, like Flash, video or any other types of information. At the same time, the USB interface can be used for power feeding or battery re-charging.
SUMMARY: From a practical and market perspective, in order to reduce the cost and try to make it acceptable, the materials we use to make the equipment are all cheap and easy to find. The technology is also well matured, so it is very easy to realize. The core of this invention is the new idea of embedding contemporary display technology into conventional packaging method.
This is a simple idea, but there is no such a thing on the current market. From my experience in doing the business, there will be huge demands in the market, and it will set the trend. This is what is called: small product, big market.
Applications: Tea box; gift box; moon cake box; wine box; health products box;
high-end packaging box; mobile phone packaging; candy box; jewelry box; upscale file folder; upscale slipcase;
calendar; cosmetic box...etc.