BCS Innovations

‘InfoLithium’ Batteries: Genuine .v. After-market

Mac — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 05:30:50 +0000

Have you ever had to choose between brand name authentic batteries and apparently identical after-market alternatives? We recently designed a product that is compatible with the Info-Lithium protocol that the Sony Video Camera batteries use – so as part of product validation we reviewed the functionality with several alternative batteries.

The results were quite a surprise.

We compared the product functionality with the Sony NP-QM91D (about $300 from the official local distributor and $30 from other sources) and cheaper after-market alternatives (about $10). All had allegedly identical specifications, and all used the Info-Lithium protocol. This protocol permits the battery to communicate with its device over I²C to better regulate the charging and power usage. It also reports back additional information, such as internal temperature, which is useful for hazard reduction as the charger can stop charging when the battery starts overheating.

We found that some cheap after-market batteries are semi-compatible with the Info-Lithium technology. While they appear to work with Sony video cameras and chargers, they don’t report their status like remaining capacity and internal temperature correctly. We monitored the reported capacity of a few types of after-market batteries versus Sony authentic batteries during full charge and discharge cycles. The official Sony battery reported capacity drops quite linearly when discharging at a constant current while the after-market ones drops sharply after a certain point.

Another surprise was that some cheap after-market batteries simply faked the reporting of their internal temperature as they lacked a temperature sensor at all.
This meant that our product’s hazards analysis couldn’t rely on this feature being present – we had to take other precautions.

When it comes to the mechanical strengths, the genuine Sony batteries also had better quality than the after-market ones we bought for test purposes. On one batch of after-market batteries the capacity indicator label fell off within a couple of weeks. We also disassembled a few after-market and genuine batteries to find out the differences inside the enclosure. We found that after-market batteries use glue and foams to hold the cells together while genuine ones have a plastic frame for this purpose which obviously can stand wider range of temperature change.

As a consumer, it is always up to you to decide on whether you will go with the more expensive choice of a genuine battery or risk an after-market battery.

As designers though, we need to be careful because no matter what warnings we put in the manual some users will put in incorrect batteries – and our products need to remain safe in those circumstances.

Analysis and Design of an Exoskeleton Arm — Dec 21, 2011

jpouladi — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:56:07 +0000

The analysis and design of an exoskeleton arm with a non captive rotary joint. I looked at the range or motion for different exoskeleton configurations and based on my analysis, designed an elbow and rotary shoulder joint to prevent any restrictions to the user’s normal range of motion.

Presentation by Trevor Sunderland

When December 21, 2011, 12:45PM
Location Unit 4, Level One, 2-6 Orion Road, Lane Cove NSW 2066 Australia

Test Systems: The Intelligent Distributed Approach — Nov 30, 2011

jpouladi — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:59:15 +0000

My experience with “Intelligent Distributed Test Systems” in the Medical Device Industry – using NI PXI, CVS, LabView & TestStand.

Presentation by Ralph Dick – General Manager (NVSI)

When November 30, 2011, 12:45PM – 30 minute quick seminar
Location Unit 4, Level One, 2-6 Orion Road, Lane Cove NSW 2066 Australia

When Field Firmware upgrades go bad …

Mac — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:00:51 +0000

The ability to update the firmware of an embedded device in the field has made a big difference to devices.

New functions, bug corrections, improved functionality – it all can be done without having to rebuild the hardware or be on site to plug in a programming cable.

If the device is on a network the customer doesn’t even need to be aware of the update – it can happen automatically without anyone even touching the device.

But what happens when one of those automatic field firmware upgrades goes bad?

Precision Tracking recently had this happen to them. They have a tracking & security system for vehicles – if you want to see how much these systems have developed in the past few years just see the beauty of their web interface here:

http://interface.precisiontracking.com.au/?uid=ils

The data on that web interface is deliberately public – these are real vehicles set to make the data publicly available to demonstrate how truly impressive these kinds of systems are.

The hardware is fairly straight forward – it used well characterised GPS modules that provide live updates via Telstra’s Next G network. The hardware was chosen for reliability after a great deal of searching and comparison.

During the initial hardware evaluation a minor timing bug in the module was spotted – the signal lines to the engine immobiliser had a delay of 1 second – which prevented the proper operation of the immobilizer. This was resolved by a simple hardware correction – wiring that signal into a different part of the circuit.

Then in April of 2011 disaster struck. A firmware upgrade sent out over the Telstra network corrected the minor timing bug. That meant that the hardware correction was now compensating for a bug that no longer existed – so the engine immobiliser function was disabled.

A single invisible firmware update had broken the product for over 50 vehicles spread across NSW and the ACT – about 802,000 km².

What can be done in cases like this? Well, in the case of Precision Tracking, they did the only thing they could – visit every single affected unit and physically modify the hardware.

It took them 2 weeks to work through every installation to correct the issue, so I though I’d find out what they learned from this.

I spoke with Nathan Parrott (one of the founders of the company and an ex-BCS employee) and asked him a few questions about the experience :Question: What lessons did you learn from this?

Answer:

#1 – Don’t ever try to fix someone else’s problem with a work around. When they get around to fixing their problem it could conflict with your ‘fix’

#2 – Acknowledge the fact that no Beta release will ever be problem free and it should take 6 months of solid testing for any piece of hardware

If you need a shorter turnaround to land a sale – make sure that it’s with worth the pain. If you are going to do this – make sure the customer is in easy to access & that they are aware that it is a Beta .. that there may be teething problems. When things do go wrong, they will be more understanding.

#3 – Budget enough to sort out these issues out in the Beta release of your product

Question: What did you feel Precision Tracking did right for this issue?

Answer:

#1 -Don’t try and cover up problems – the moment you become aware of it you need to inform the affected customers.

#2 – Consider the ways a product can fail and ensure that it fails safe. It is tempting in vehicle security systems to have the product fail ‘secure’ rather than fail ‘safe’. If a product fails ‘secure’ then a firmware failure could lock all the car doors and turn off the engine while you are barrelling down the freeway at 110 km/hr. We made sure our product would fail ‘safe’ – so when the firmware upgrade caused problems then people still had use of their cars – that reduced the impact and made customers a lot more patient.

#3 – Have fall-back options. In this case the fall-back option was to roll back the firmware fix and then incrementally update the firmware only on units as we correct the hardware. This wasn’t necessary, though, as the system failure still meant customers had use of their vehicles – and so were willing to be patient and have the real update rolled out to them.

I think the main thing I learned from this discussion is how much work we need to be prepared for issues in initial Beta releases of products.Even after beta testing is complete the initial rollout can cause major headaches simply because the beta testers weren’t representative of a major group of users. For example – one iPad application with hundreds of happy beta users had a major issue that was never noticed – simply because all the Beta users were in the USA and so the software had never been used with the page size set to A4 paper.

This blogpost can be freely republished under the CC Sharealike license, with appropriate credit to BCS Innovations.

PLC Systems — Nov 2, 2011

jpouladi — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 04:09:48 +0000

My experience with PLCs and what I’ve learned about them, and why I like Omron over Allen-Bradley systems.

Presentation by Trevor Sunderland

When November 2, 2011, 12:45PM
Location Unit 4, Level One, 2-6 Orion Road, Lane Cove NSW 2066 Australia

PCB Encapsulation — Oct 20, 2011

jpouladi — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 05:35:10 +0000

Making waterproof prototypes: Pattern making, moulding, and encapsulation of PCBs.

Presentation by Valerie Kuo

When October 20, 2011, 12:45PM
Location Unit 4, Level One, 2-6 Orion Road, Lane Cove NSW 2066 Australia

Updating Operating Systems on Medical Devices

Mac — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:00:27 +0000

Operating systems have made a big difference to embedded devices – they improve the sharing of data and add substantial functionality.

But medical devices have very strict validation & verification systems – so when we find issues with our medical device we have to ensure that the updates are suitably validated before being released to the clinical settings.

That’s fine for the firmware we create – but what about the operating system?

Every operating system has a list of patches that are continually being updated. It isn’t just Microsoft Windows – Ubuntu, OS-X and Android all have a continual stream of updates. It also applies to support software that is running on the device – including Antivirus software and database updates.

How much validation needs to be done on those updates?

This isn’t just a theoretical risk – one supermarket here in Australia had 1100 of their cash registers shutdown because of an automatic update to the antivirus program. What if, instead of cash registers, they had been patient monitoring equipment at a hospital?

The obvious solution is for the medical equipment manufacturer to lock down the operating system entirely and prevent any updates from being made. All updates (including Operating system hotfixes, updated virus patterns etc) would then be validated by the medical equipment manufacturer before being released.

That seems like a tempting option – in theory it gives full control. However there are some major downsides – the device is vulnerable to issues and bugs for much a longer period. One study found that, on average, devices on internal networks took 48 days for half of the threats to be patched.

Given the incredible rate of updates (McAfee has daily virus pattern updates) the burden for validating every single update appears impractical. Some side affects of updates aren’t obvious either – some operating system updates appear to have dramatically decreased battery life.

Another option (used by one manufacturer) is to recommend that the customer applying all critical updates & security patches as soon as they become available.

Which is correct? To find out the answer, it’s probably best to consult an expert – so I spoke with Dr Peter Havel. Peter is Senior Vice President for Medical & Health Services (MHS) at TÜV and is responsible for auditing many medical products.

His response was that it depended entirely on the hazards analysis you have done for the product:

If the product is designed so that the operating system can fail without causing an injury to the patient then you can accept any windows update.

However, if the product is designed so that an operating system failure can endanger the safety of a patient then:

You have to set up safety measures to identify every kind of failure that can significantly affect patient safety. This identification then has to set the system to a state that is safe for the patient within the so-called ‘failure tolerance time’.

In this case you have to validate every windows update to ensure that it doesn’t disable the capability of your safety measure to identify the unsafe state and that it still has the capability to set the system to a safe state.

Alternatively you have to freeze windows in a state that guarantees that your safety measures are still effective and not allow windows update away from that state.

As always, then, it comes down to good system design in the first place – ensuring that the product has been designed with sufficient division of functionality so that an operating system failure does not cause a direct hazard to the patient.

Image credit: Richard Robertson.

Using the Lantronix Matchport — Sept 28, 2011

jpouladi — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:03:30 +0000

Building embedded web server and TCP/IP applications on Lantronix Matchport AR module.

Presentation by Eric Huang

When September 28, 2011, 12:45PM
Location Unit 4, Level One, 2-6 Orion Road, Lane Cove NSW 2066 Australia

Practical RF Issues — July 6, 2011

jpouladi — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 02:35:39 +0000

Practical RF circuit design: the challenges, techniques and pitfalls to avoid.

Presentation by Mike Batty

When July 6, 2011, 12:45PM
Location Unit 4, Level One, 2-6 Orion Road, Lane Cove NSW 2066 Australia

Establishing a Design Gold Standard for your Product

scohen — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:04:56 +0000

When you are in the process of bringing your new electronic design into reality, whether it is related to cars, medical equipment, computers and consumer electronics, and so on, you want to be assured that your creation is of the highest quality, while remaining economical to produce. Making quality products is one of the signs of an ethical, professional business, and it is also a generally prudent move from a practical standpoint as well.

High quality products are useful to your company in a variety of ways. They give you an invaluable edge in reputation, for one thing. Although it has been said that “it doesn’t matter what they say about you, as long as they say it in print”, the power of positive reviews far outweighs that of negative press, and one of the best ways to gain positive exposure is to offer something that is worthy of it.

Part of our mission in offering electronic design services to you is to create a “gold standard” from which all of your subsequent products will be based. This benchmark item will serve as a guideline and parameter for all of the copies of it that will be fabricated and, ultimately, offered for sale either to other companies or to the general public, depending on the type of electronics you are producing.

Our supply network extends to every corner of the globe, meaning that we can draw on sources of electronic components from the manufacturers located in dozens of different countries. With such an array of material at our fingertips, we can easily furnish you with components that will ensure the quality and functionality of your finished product, yet also meet the standards of affordability that you need in order to be able to carry out commercial manufacturing.

Modern communications and the interconnectedness of the global economy make efficient use of scores of different services possible in a way that could not have been dreamed of only a couple of decades ago. You can make use of this potential, through us, in order to establish an electronic design gold standard for your electronics item that will ensure all future examples of the device will meet or exceed the necessary parameters of function, yet remain an economically feasible part of your overall production and business strategy.

Our engineers can also help you develop your product in ways that you might not yet have envisioned, or perhaps thought possible. Whether you need a minimal amount of assistance in clearing a few technical hurdles on the way to full production, or if you have only a hazy inspiration and need it to brought into concrete reality from the top down – from full abstraction all the way down through development, building, testing, refining, and finishing – then our engineers are capable of giving you exactly the help you want. Your product’s gold standard will soon be established and you can move on to producing and marketing your innovation at the soonest convenient moment.