Every time you are making some circuit or more complex system, you always do some testing to make sure that your electronic “baby” is working properly and you can expose it to publicity. Lets say you are constructing some kind of robot. Then typical list of testing task may be as follows:

• Stability tests using various working modes and critical supply voltages (like 4,75 and 5,25V);

• Start up testing – purpose is to check system readiness to accept commands after power up;

• Checking correctness of executed commands;

• Checking correctness of sensors;

sometimes you will need to prepare good documentation where every node reliability is calculated. Also testing methods of each nodes may be included in documentation. Of course many devices may work in wider range of supply voltages, but there are always some electronic components that needs more than 5% stability.

If your system is bigger and may be dangerous to your health or to itself. For instance if it is a robotic system, then you should know, that it can brake itself in some obstacles. In this case should include some blockage of tires in case if you loose control of your robot.

When testing electronic circuit there is always good to have logic probe and oscilloscope. First thing you should test is signal levels on each device to make sure that all peripherals respond correctly. While it is embedded system always think of two mistake sources – hardware and software. If signal level is suspicious it doesn’t mean that there is hardware bug, but it can be caused by software bug as well.

As I mentioned very important part of your project is documentation. Especially if your project is more complex. It may reduce your testing time and it is much easer to repeat in the future by you or other. Documenting should be done in widely accepted formats like HTML or PDF.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Embedded General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.