Case study · Textile automation · VLAR Enterprises

eJacq Electronic Jacquard

A jacquard controller that scales from fully offline to fully connected

eJacq operator panel with numeric keypad, body and border controls and an LCD display
Hook capacity
More than 7,000 hooks
Operating speed
More than 120 RPM
Variants
Offline, Bluetooth, IoT
Cloud platform
AWS IoT Core
Firmware updates
OTA on Bluetooth and IoT variants

The challenge

A jacquard mechanism lifts individual warp threads to weave a design into cloth. Doing that at scale means controlling thousands of hooks with precise timing, in step with a loom running at speed — and getting it wrong shows up as a visible defect in the fabric.

VLAR Enterprises needed a controller that could handle high hook counts at production speed, and that could be sold into a market where some customers want a connected machine and others want nothing on their network at all.

Our responsibility

Gandeevan designed and built the eJacq hardware across all three variants, the firmware that drives the hook control and loom synchronisation, the connectivity layers, and the companion mobile application.

One platform, three connectivity options

Basic — fully offline

No connectivity at all. For mills that will not put machinery on a network, or sites where there is no network to join.

Bluetooth

The controller itself never touches the internet. The mobile app is the bridge, so operators get app control and updates without exposing the loom to a network.

IoT

Connected directly through AWS IoT Core for fleet-wide visibility and remote update across multiple machines.

The mobile application

  • Change the running design from the phone
  • Upload new designs directly to the eJacq controller
  • Live status updates from the loom while it runs
  • Loom production statistics
  • Firmware updates delivered over the air

Engineering involved

  • Embedded firmware
  • Real-time hook control
  • Bluetooth Low Energy
  • AWS IoT Core
  • OTA update
  • Mobile application
Panel of populated red eJacq hook driver boards marked ODD RED, with gold-finger edge connectors
Odd-channel driver boards, populated and still in panel. Odd and even are colour-coded so they cannot be swapped on assembly.
Panel of populated green eJacq hook driver boards marked EVEN GREEN, with gold-finger edge connectors
Even-channel driver boards from the same production run
Single eJacq hook driver board seated in its black connector block on the loom
A driver board seated in its connector block
eJacq controller board powered up on the bench, its LCD showing the system boot screen
Controller board on the bench at power-up
3D printed yellow prototype enclosure for the electronic jacquard controller with keypad and display cutout
An early 3D printed enclosure, before the production panel
PCB layout of the eJacq hook driver board with sixteen output connectors and chained data headers
Driver board layout — sixteen output channels, chained data in and outCAD render
PCB layout of the eJacq main controller board showing the microcontroller and peripheral devices
Main controller board layoutCAD render

What it delivered

Same product, three markets

One hardware platform covers customers who refuse connectivity and customers who want a connected fleet, without maintaining separate product lines.

Updates without a site visit

OTA reaches the device directly on IoT units and through the mobile app on Bluetooth units — so even the disconnected-by-design variant stays maintainable.

Production visible from the floor

Live status and statistics on a phone, rather than only at the machine.

Have a machine that needs a controller?

Tell us what it has to do and the constraints around it — connectivity, timing, the environment it runs in — and we will tell you how we would approach it.

Discuss your project