So, today I am mostly going to be creating a version of some embedded software to control a particular piece of hardware while its being CE tested. In principle the idea of CE testing is to ensure that bits of hardware are (a) safe and (b) dont interfere with other bits of hardware or let other bits of hardware interfere with them... in practice the idea is to jump through the hoops and get an official seal of approval to allow you to sell the damned thing, whatever it is, while spending as little money as possible. Now, I happen to agree with most of the safety aspects of CE marking. And the ones I dont agree with I disagree with because Im far more cautious than they would allow me to be... so passing the safety requirements is a given. The hard issue to tackle for other designers is generally radiated electrical noise, but I rarely have to worry about that because I write much more efficient code than they do and can therefore use much less powerful processors and run them at much lower frequencies, with all the consequent saving in power consumption and noise in power supplies, etc, etc... throw in that I hand track my boards with an eye to RF noise and the upshot is theyre generally bloody quiet. Far quieter than they need to be. So, that leaves testing for immunity to external noise and impulse... which involves some barbarian zapping the product wherever they feel like zapping it with sparks from a gun intended to reproduce the effects of static discharges... were talking 40,000V here. Dealing with that takes some care, but it can be done; I remember on one amusing occasion we decided to get a bare PCB CE certified. It was a user programmable microcontroller with lots of input and output ports... and the barbarian with the gun laughed at us for even trying to get it through the test without putting it in a box to protect it... and then he was utterly bloody amazed that the unit kept on running perfectly as he zapped his miniature lightning bolts straight into the board... he really tried to destroy it, I almost felt sorry for him afterwards. All of which rather makes a nonsense of this weeks testing, using a test house that are perfectly happy to let us run a custom version of the software during test and decide for ourselves what the unit is going to report and what failure means... its really not terribly sporting. And even more pointless than usual.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 12:40:02 +0000
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