EPN Automotive Electronics Blog

HIS compliant Software

AUTOSAR – you know what that is or you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog. HIS is more difficult, it’s an acronym for the German expression “Herstellerinitiative Software”, an organization consisting of the car manufacturers Audi, BMW, Daimler, Porsche, and Volkswagen. Completely incomprehensible sounds “HIS Recommended Optimization AUTOSAR”, a specification with the goal to implement an AUTOSAR-specification software even in small CPUs of the kind embedded in a simple electronic control unit (ECU). It is a sub-specification of AUTOSAR.

iSystem enlarges Sales Forces

Jens Maletti is the new account manager of iSystem, his job is to push sales: He has joined the iSystem sales team in January 2010 and is very confident to strengthen the perception of the company within the embedded market.

embedded world 2010: That’s how the future will look like

Despite the crisis, the the industry’s international get-together continues its growth: The trade show embedded world 2010 is setting trends and records. Especially within the automotive area there is a lot of movement going on: The amount of electronics, software and control devices installed in motor vehicles is growing dramatically, and the move towards electric cars will only strengthen this trend.

Integration carried to extremes

There are some things that can be combined in a meaningful, even beneficial way – let’s say, a PC mainboard and a hard disk drive -, some that don’t make as much sense – there certainly is no obvious reason to integrate a telephone with a camera – and the other ones. Opinions on that matter may differ, as it might be the case with the integrated remote keyless entry (RKE) and tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) that TRW has introduced a few days ago.

Test myCAR

Is there a reason for the enormous variety of software test solutions for automotive bus communication? There might be a connection to the similarly enormous variety of combinations of test system functions that the particular component supplier provides. Therefore, the required test sequencers are not only rather unique but also quite expensive – a win-win situation for both sides, but someone has to pay the bill. If there is a sinister scheme behind this, it might just come to an end soon. Goepel Electronic has developed an interactive ECU communication for Test and Diagnosis, called myCAR.

Functional safety all over

There is no doubt that safety is one of the main topics of the future automotive market. This might be the reason that in its latest version 6.1, the tool RiskCAT from Hitex Development Tools provides various enhancements and support for ISO 26262 (DIS).

The remains of the bus

These days, remaining CAN bus simulation is nothing too special anymore; however it is usually a step separated from the “standard” design flows. In order to allow for a higher grade of automation, Schleißheimer integrated a special scheduler in version 3.4 of their tool CanEasy which they will be presenting at the embedded world show in Nuremberg on booth 120, Hall 10. Furthermore, it now supports the LIN bus as well as CAN.
The scheduler works table-based, it sends LIN messages and triggers events as well as program and function calls. The tool’s functionality can be extended by the user with plug-ins and VBA programs.

STMicroelectronics: evaluation kits for free

During the trade show embedded world 2010 which is going to take place in Nuremberg from March 2nd to 4th, STMicroelectronics intends to distribute its “STM8S-Discovery Kit”, a quick-start evaluation board. It enables developers to discover the possibilities of ST's 8-bit microcontroller family STM8, which targets automotive, industrial and ultra-low-power applications.

Drive with decency

The times when you more or less unthinkingly used all kinds of swear words to describe the driving style of that old guy with the hat right in front of you, the girl in this small japanese vehicle on the left and, of course, the fat cat smoking a cigar in his Bentley, might be over. Should you already own a navigational system with voice input, you have certainly heard the annoying “beep” when the half-witted system failed to find Four-letter-word-road in !”§$$-ington. A new system has the potential to drive annoyance even further.

Divide et metire

Isolation voltages up to 1000 V in the electrical wiring of hybrid or electrical cars require new approaches toward measurement. A fully isolated high voltage divider may facilitate measurements on automotive batteries and DC power circuits.