LG Launching New LED Wall Product That Uses Contactless Connectors

June 25, 2020 by Dave Haynes

The Korean business publication Pulse has a post up about a new kind of LED video wall from LG Electronics that connects, shares the signal and syncs between LED cabinets without using physical connectors.

The display modules look pretty normal, but the innovation is how they inter-connect when stacked and tiled to make a video wall.

Normally, there are cables linking each cabinet, or some sort of physical connector that docks them together. This new signage product- LG LED Signage (Model: LSAA) – uses contactless connector technology from a California company, Keyssa.

Steve Venuti, Keyssa’s VP Marketing, explains it this way:

Keyssa designs and manufacturers a high-speed, solid state wireless connector – an embedded piece of silicon that is 3 mm x 3 mm square, and can transfer data at rate of 6 Gigabits per second per chip (you can add more to add more bandwidth).

It’s a near-field device, so you need to bring two products in close proximity (think docking) for them to connect.

The premise of our company is that every single component of a computing product has moved to solid-state technology – so why are we still connecting devices using an antiquated mechanical connector prone to failure and wear and tear?

And in video wall installations, where the RJ45 is 1980’s technology connecting massive walls, failures are more frequent than is acceptable … let alone the cost and time required to manually cable an installation.

The company was at NovaStar’s booth at ISE, and Venuti indicated the tech is getting a lot of traction with LED manufacturers.

You’d think the BIG market here would be with temporary displays (think concerts) and rentals. Connectors are points of potential failure. With fixed installs, once the connectors are seated they should be fine – but displays that get put up and torn down repeatedly would/could be trouble-prone.

Based on the image, the cabinets light up once stacked and sufficiently close to a near field connector. I have seen modules popped out of cabinets that light up when put back in, but I think what’s being done here is very new.