Porting Solar Activity Sensor MCU Firmware to New PCB

Client

A European industrial technology manufacturing company that develops and produces solar activity sensors for many car manufacturers.

Challenge

The customer turned to us for porting an existing firmware version of its solar activity sensors to a new PCB design with ARM MCU. In addition, we were responsible for adapting a generalised port for several vehicle brands. The implementation process had to comply with the brand’s technical requirements.

Solution

During the project, we carried out several stages of software development:

developed a board support package or BSP;
added new low-level functions aimed at the comprehensive utilisation of MCU hardware capabilities;
matched business logic with the new MCU features and BSP;
optimised the power consumption;
prepared the device to pass LIN conformance tests in an external testing service;
generated software versions for different vehicle models from a specific model range;
tested the device by technical requirements of certain vehicle brands.

Business Value

The generated firmware versions successfully passed LIN conformance tests in an independent external laboratory. We achieved impressive power consumption results: each parameter corresponds to the client’s requirements.

Our engineering team helped the client preserve the default production line by making proxy functionalities for the new device revision. They eliminate all differences between MCU-dependent parts, like interaction with memory and others.

We also completed the project in the shortest time possible, as requested by the client. This was made possible thanks to the following:

flexible teamwork both remotely and on-site during the pandemic;
no need to develop the MCU’s firmware with a different architecture from scratch thanks to deep hardware and business logic analysis for porting the firmware as an update;
thinking outside the box for cases where a new generation of MCU had particular undocumented aspects.