using programming pods at the in circuit test stage


Posted on Feb 5, 2014

Nowadays using programming pods are commonly accepted and widely used in manufacturing, especially when a new product is introduced and the firmware is in the early development stages. After the completion of all visual and structure tests, the board is ready for full functional test. The in-circuit test station is the best point for programming a


using programming pods at the in circuit test stage
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n electronic board for the following reasons: In a recent project, a customer asked to program a panelized board. Each board has two different programmable devices. Our approach was to use two programming pods (P&E Micro Cyclone Pro programming adapter) with multiplexers. This project presented all four of the difficulties listed above. In order to overcome the panelized board issue, we decided to use two multiplexer boards which were being controlled through the in-circuit test program. Since there were six boards in each panel, each multiplexer was responsible for programming three boards. Cyclone Pro programmers are very easy to use. As soon as the firmware is loaded, the user only needs to press the START  button and monitor SUCCESS  and ERROR  LEDs. In order to automate the process, we decided to wire  the above mentioned control lines (START button, SUCCESS and ERROR LEDs) to the ICT machine, so controlling the process would be through the ICT program and the operator will have no intervention. After sending START  command, the test program monitors two LEDs for the result. If SUCCESS  LED turns on, the test program will send a Programming PASS  message to the screen, otherwise the result is a fail and the screen will show Programming FAIL . In order to be able to upload the latest firmware into the programming pods, the test fixture incorporated 2 USB connectors, each of which was connected to one of the...




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