Specialists Kaluga Experimental Instrumentation Plant (KZOP) do not sit idly by even in the face of the economic crisis. Besides one of the best car alarms on the market, Pandorathey are also working on brand new projects including unique car clock and individual search beacon. We will talk about this and other novelties of KZOP in this article.

Innovators from Kaluga

For the first time I visited the Kaluga Experimental Instrumentation Plant in 2012, and the reason for this was the test of a car alarm Pandora DXL 5000. Why all these difficulties with a trip to another city for the sake of some kind of signaling? Firstly, it could interact with the iPhone and provided some truly fabulous opportunities for that time, judging by the description of the KZOP representative who invited me Mikhail Taranyuk. Secondly, I could not believe that this high-tech thing was produced in Kaluga. It seemed that it was only about the basic assembly, like «boards and cases were sent from China, and at the factory they were simply put together«. Mikhail assured me that I would be able to verify everything on my own and that I would be allowed not only to see the production with my own eyes, but also to record all the details on photos and videos without restriction. You could see the result on the iPhones.ru pages in our long review and report.

In 2013, I was again invited to Kaluga to test the next generation of the Pandora DXL 5000New (DXL 5100) flagship alarm system, and also demonstrated a new line of work — LED production. It would seem that such innovative things can be added to industrial and street lighting, how to modernize lampposts and what to develop there? But Kaluga enthusiasts have achieved impressive success in this direction too, having created both energy-efficient (automation of the work cycle due to GPS, which determines the time of sunrise and sunset), and inexpensive solutions compared to competitors with extensive control over them. For example, lamps were controlled via mobile devices.

A little more than a year and a half later, I again came to Kaluga and, as it turned out, even in a crisis, KZOP is growing and developing, actively modernizing already studied areas and even entering new markets for itself. In particular, he tries his hand in consumer electronics (car clocks, GPS beacons) and even in greenhouse economy (which is now very important against the background of the import substitution policy). Moreover, the production capacity of the organization is also growing. We will talk about all this below and start with the most interesting innovation — with watches. pandora rwwhich in the future will be able to save you from annoying car key fobs and not only

Automotive and in the future and smart watch Pandora RW

Idea to release car clock appeared at the end of 2012, and the initiator was the CEO of the Pandora group of companies Andrey Petrunin. He liked sports Nike SportWatch, plus the first talk about «smart» watches began in the industry. By the way, the Pandora RW car watch project was launched before the sensational advertisement of smart watches for motorists. Nissan NISMO.

The development of Nissan never got out of the concept stage, but the Kaluga car clock turned into a real commercial product with interesting prospects. Still, wearable electronics and smart watches in particular are the trend of today. And the fact that KZOP originally produced car alarms influenced the choice of gadget specialization — car watches, which in the future may acquire smart functions similar to those in Pebble. But we’ll talk about this a little later, but for now let’s take a closer look at the Pandora RW.

Design

The design of the device was based on the SportWatch mentioned above, but with a number of original modifications. In particular, the Nike solution turned out to have a very fragile strap with an integrated USB cable — many users complain that it breaks at the base (this happened to a copy of one of the KZOP employees too). In addition, the presence of a built-in cable does not allow you to change the strap. In Pandora RW watches, this element is replaceable, and the width of the strap is 32 mm.

For recharging, a microUSB port is used, hidden behind a magnetic door on the rear panel. By the way, the company’s specialists spied on such a solution from Polar:

The watch is made of practical matte plastic, the strap is made of a polymer, reminiscent of that in the Japanese anti-shock G-Shock. As for the length, it fits me snugly with a wrist girth of 19.5 cm (for example, the largest, Jawbone UP24 size L, also fits me snugly and tightly wraps around my wrist).

The device is quite large in size, comparable to the Nike SportWatch (but thinner than them) and the plastic Pebble model:

The watch sits well on the wrist, although it feels more rigid than the same Pebble, so to speak. But the latter have a softer and narrower strap.

Control

The gadget contains four physical buttons, of which three are the main controls, and the fourth is a button SOS.

It allows you to make an automatic call to a previously entered mobile number with one click and at the same time send a message to it with the current GPS coordinates of the owner of the watch. A very useful feature for critical situations. How it works, as well as other car functions of the watch, are demonstrated in the video below:

pay attention to the ability to expand the automotive functionality of Pandora RWwhich is implemented through the software. In the video, this is shown using the example of electronic gate control. But a similar chip can be implemented to control the electric door of your garage. You don’t need a separate remote control, just press the button on the clock and the garage opens — conveniently!

3-button control is intuitive and simple. It is enough to hold down the button on the left side to go to the menu or return to the main screen, and a short click on it is a choice or confirmation of an action.

Two buttons on the right side are responsible for the transition between menu items. But since the clock automotivethen they implement and related control functions. So, with the car ignition on, a short press on top button on the right side will block the central lock. If the ignition is turned off, then a similar action will put the car into armed mode. Holding this button for three seconds will remotely start the engine, after which the watch will display all available telemetry:

A short press on the down button on the main screen disarms:

I also want to draw attention to the fact that the buttons are quite hard and have a short stroke, but due to the shape of the watch case, it is convenient to press them. However, I would like to feel a clearer click.

Functionality

Naturally, to support all these functions, the car must have a Pandora anti-theft system. In particular, all the chips are fully implemented in Pandora 5000 Pro (DXL 5200) and these are:

• All keychain functions:
  • arming and disarming;
  • trunk — opening / closing;
  • autostart (the clock is an immobilizer tag);
  • telemetry screen:
    • the current state of the engine — started or stopped, if it is started, then you can see how long it will work before automatic shutdown;
    • battery voltage
    • remaining fuel in the tank
    • cabin and engine temperature;
    • if the car alarm has GPS and the speed is measured, then it is also transmitted to the watch while driving;
• event history:
  • when put on the alarm;
  • when removed;
  • from what they set (keychain, watch or phone);
  • reason for the alarm.

In the case of using Pandora 39xx, 5000 and 5100, only arming and disarming will be available to you from the watch, plus the gadget works as an immobilizer tag. Although in theory it is possible to implement support for almost all the functions described above in the mentioned systems, plus the company plans to add support for new micro-alarms Pandect X (we’ll talk about them a little later).

Since we have already discussed the functionality of the device as a car clock, it is worth talking about them hardware stuffingwhich is chosen, as they say, for the future:

• display — Sharp Memory LCD 1.28 inches, 128×128 pixels (a similar one is used in solutions from Pebble, Nike, TomTom, Polar and many others);
• battery — lithium-polymer 250 mAh;
• radio module — Nordic NRF-51822 (there is support for BT 4.0 LE);
• processor — ARM Cortex M3 with a frequency of up to 48 MHz;
• protection against dust and water splashes;
• accelerometer;
• magnetometer;
• GPS/GLONASS module;
• microUSB port for charging and flashing.

By the way, the ability to update the internal software of the watch is key in this case. It is quite possible that today it is only a car watch, and tomorrow, due to a software update, it will also acquire smart functions similar to the basic ones in Pebble. Yes, and sports chips can also be implemented, fortunately, there is everything for this in the form of an accelerometer, a magnetometer and a GPS module.

Incidentally, as conventional Pandora RW watches will easily give odds to many electronic counterparts.

For example, if we are talking about a stopwatch, then it is a full-fledged sports one, with circles and history:

The alarm capabilities are also impressive. An alarm clock is set separately for each day of the week, and all this is clearly displayed in the menu. If the signal is set only on weekends, the clock will show this moment in the menu, if on weekdays, they will write like this, they say, “alarm clock set on weekdays”, if on a separate day, then it will be in the menu and displayed. It seems to be a trifle, but there are many such trifles and they are pleasant.

No less wide are the possibilities for setting the time. If you want, you can set it manually, you can use the GPS signal, you can simply specify the time zone, or you can take information from the car alarm.

As you can see, even in its current state, Pandora RW can do a lot, and in the future, their functionality can be seriously expanded.

autonomy

Serious attention is paid to the autonomy of the device. It was from this parameter that the team was repelled when they worked on the hardware and software of the watch.

No matter what they say, they say, «the watch is easy to charge every couple of days; you charge your smartphone every day, and nothing”, but still such a gadget should work for a long time. I felt this especially keenly after a month of active use of the Moto 360 and the transition after them to the Pebble. It would seem that the difference in autonomy is small — two days and 5-6 days, but with Pebble I am much more comfortable.

This moment is clearly understood by the magicians from KZOP, because Pandora RW works without recharging more than 45 days, and this is with the 2.4 GHz proprietary radio interface activated and with the screen active. That is, the watch is constantly in touch with the car and you can find out the current time at any time just by looking at the screen. In the future, it is planned to switch to Bluetooth 4 LE (Pandora RW supports it in hardware), which may slightly reduce autonomy, but only slightly, as experts assured me.

The Pandora team achieved this result with blood and sweat, changing screens, lowering the processor clock speed, rewriting the internal clock software so that even at a low frequency the animation is smooth.

As a result, in the normal watch mode, Pandora RW can work without recharging for up to two months (my copy has been working in this mode for two weeks, and the charge indicator has not even moved). With occasional use of GPS and other advanced features — from a week to a month. In standard mode, when the watch is always connected to the car, it works for about 45 days.

I made the emphasis on the autonomy of the device for the simple reason that in the future, Pandora RW will become a smart watch. In the gadget itself, everything is already there for this, it’s up to the software implementation. That is, today you buy a car watch, and tomorrow it will turn into a kind of Pebble analogue, only with autonomy of 5-6 weeks instead of 7-10 days. They may well become the longest-lived smartwatch in the world.

Future plans

In particular, immediate plans regarding Pandora RW, the company has the following:

• Implementation of the function of returning to the car and returning to geotags (by one click, a mark is placed to which it is then easy to return using the compass needle in the clock with the distance to the target displayed at the same time).
• Implementation of the mode «Race”(automatic measurement of the acceleration of a car or motorcycle up to 50, 100 km, etc., something like Race Loger, only the latter will cost you around $ 1000 and not the fact that it will be more accurate).

There are also distant planswhich are even more interesting:

• Implementation of Bluetooth 4.0 LE (hardware allows and there are drivers, only the software part is needed).
• Functionality of a smart watch (connection with a smartphone and delivery of notifications, like Pebble).
• Activity tracker features.

Pandora RW took a little bit from all the watches in this photo, although the implementation of Pebble’s capabilities is a matter of the future

Issue price and where to get Pandora RW

The watch is available from the company’s online store and will cost you 8800 rub. For this money, you will receive all the functions described above, which can be significantly expanded in the future. Of course, this feature is of interest primarily to users of Pandora car alarms, but what prevents you from becoming one?

The idea of ​​a car clock is excellent and, most importantly, it turned out to be fully implemented not by foreign colleagues, but here in Russia. After all, all production is concentrated in Kaluga on Experimental Instrumentation Plant, which from year to year develops more and more actively. Was no exception and 2014, as well as the current year. But I will talk about this in a separate report, and below I propose to talk about a couple of other new products from the company.

Personal GPS tracker NAV-07

This is another experiment in the consumer electronics market, in which the company implements its achievements from the automotive field.

The main idea of ​​the project is to create a consumer beacon to track children, pensioners, some cargo, animals. It will also be useful for mushroom pickers, rock climbers, tourists traveling in the wild — there are a lot of options for its use.

The compact device is equipped with a large strap and can be attached almost anywhere: on the arm, on the leg, on the animal’s neck, on some kind of load, on the handle of a suitcase, etc.

Moreover, the belt is rubberized on the reverse side, does not slip and keeps perfectly:

Made in Russia looks very patriotic and, most importantly, the gadget is really completely and completely made at the facilities of KZOP

Particular emphasis in the lighthouse is placed on autonomy. It supports triangulation by mobile base stations and work with GPS. When using satellite navigation, the device should work up to a week without recharging, and if the hybrid mode with triangulation works, then you can count on two weeks, or even a month. At the very least, KZOP specialists will strive to implement just such characteristics in the final product.

Naturally, the gadget will also have excellent software support on current mobile platforms. A special application will allow you to track the beacon, set the boundaries of the safe zone and receive notifications if the device and the subject wearing it leave the zone.

While the device is in development, although working prototypes, one of which you saw in the photo, already exist. Estimated release date — summer-autumn of the current year.

Micro alarms Pandect X

Top Pandora alarms are very functional, but at the same time they are expensive. Previously, they were only allowed by owners of impressive high-end cars or technology fans who want to have remote control over their personal vehicle. But within the current crisis, the price can become a real stumbling block. The company understands this and, following modern trends, it has developed a line of inexpensive car alarms. Pandect Xwhich include almost all the developments of older brothers, packed in a miniature case.

In terms of its size, the novelty slightly exceeds the control key fob and is several times smaller than the previous Pandora solutions. For example, DXL-3700:

At the same time, everything that the mentioned alarm system could do and even more, including support for connecting to the car via digital CAN- and LIN-buses, as well as built-in fuses that eliminate the error of installers, can do everything.

GSM support, a compact key fob, an immobilizer, the ability to remotely control and monitor the state of your car — all this is present, and is available for a very modest amount for such functionality from 17400 rub. You can read more about the new products on the official website.

Crisis is not a hindrance

The economic crisis is a difficult time. The weak leave the market. The strong stay, keeping afloat and just trying to get through this time. Innovators use it to develop, search for new ideas and move forward. And if this movement exists even in such difficult economic conditions, then when they stabilize, the company will make a powerful leap forward.

After another visit Kaluga Experimental Instrumentation Plant I can safely attribute this enterprise and related projects Andrey Petrunin to innovative initiatives that have a great future ahead of them and a lot of new, interesting projects. The company has taken car alarms to the next level, made huge strides in LED lighting, and is now trying its hand at consumer electronics. I’m sure she’ll succeed. But it is especially pleasant that this is a Russian company that does not rely on foreign production, but develops the national one. And he does it successfully, which I will talk about in a thematic report.