OSU RALPH Project: From Concept to Prototypes in 11 Weeks

The RALPH (Research Assignment Learner for the Prehospital Setting) project is a portable reminder device for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to conduct clinical research trials. The device will initially support research studies of paramedic airway management in children. Once in production, the RALPH units will be delivered to 65 EMS agencies in 10 cities in the United States. Each location will receive the units programmed for their specific time zones.

When we first engaged with the lead medical researchers at Ohio State University (OSU), they had what seemed to be a typical timeframe for turning their concept design into a reliable device. Over the weeks that followed, several hurdles were to be overcome. Once the design officially began, we needed to ship 30 working prototypes in 11 weeks. The development work consisted of the following:

Mechanical Design

• Enclosure CAD/CAM design for 1st HW revision (R&D – 5 Qty)
• 3D printing (R&D – 5 Qty)
• Labeling & Validation of 1st HW revision in a 3D printed enclosure
• Enclosure CAD/CAM design for 2nd HW revision (1st Proto)
• Enclosure manufacturing (1st Proto)
• Enclosure labeling & validation (1st Proto)
• Full and final Build (1st Proto – 30 Qty)

Hardware Design

• Product HW architecture selection
• Component selections based on HW architecture
• Schematic designing based on architecture and components
• Component procurement for 1st R&D HW revision
• PCB layout (based on Schematic)
• PCB manufacturing process
• PCB assembly
• Assembled PCB inspection & power-up
• Component procurement for 2nd HW revision
• PCB manufacturing process 1st Proto
• PCB assembly 1st Proto (30 Qty)
• PCB inspection, QC, and Software/Firmware testing

Software/Firmware

• Environment Setup
• OLED Display I2C Bring-up and Lib integration to print strings
• GPIO interrupt on button
• Low Power Mode Configuration & wake up on interrupt event only
• UART Bring up & APIs for Configuration Data
• RTC Bring up and Calendar for leap year and Daylight Logic
• Functional Integration & Verification
• GPIO button base another display: date and time
• Testing developed firmware on 1st HW revision
• Firmware Bring up activity

We are proud to say we completed the OSU RALPH Project design and shipped 30 devices for field testing on time. We are looking forward to making any iterations needed before manufacturing production units.