"Skybuck Flying" wrote in message
.home.nl...
Hello,

I had an idea how electronics might be diagnosed and repaired more
quickly.

The idea is to add "debug leds" to electronics, and some kind of "debug
circuitry".

The designer knows what kind of inputs and outputs are expected for
certain components.

The designer then adds the debug circuitry to be able to measure if the
inputs and outputs correspond to what is expected.

The debug circuitry could be attached to special power lines or so to be
able to turn them on and off.

So during a repair session an electronics repairman could turn on the
"debug circuitry" and quickly get an idea
of how many components are potentially dead... because the debug leds
don't come on.

All good electronics would have the led on.

All bad electronics would have the led off.

Now the repairman can quickly proceed to the dead electronics and replace
them.

However there might be a problem if certain components depend on the
inputs and outputs of other electronics.

Then a cascade of "false" failures could happen.

To prevent this all electronics would have to be tested seperatedly by the
seperate "debug circuitry"...

As to be able to "debug" all electroncics individually.

So the debug electronics could have two modes:

1. "Cascade mode" where the inputs and outputs are compared to values
which corresponds with a correctly working circuitry.

2. "Individual mode" where the inputs and outputs are compared to
individuel values which correspond with a correctly working component when
it's individually powered on/tested.

Adding this kind of debug electronics would add to the cost so this should
be able to be done cheaply... with some kind of cheap debug electronics.

What do you electronics experts think of this idea, is it feasible or not
feasible ? please motivate your answers !

Bye,
Skybuck.



Many pieces of electronic equipment already have 'debug' modes. Almost
everything from toasters to your car now have anything between 1 and 50
supervisory processor ICs in them, and it is a comparitively simple job for
the programmer to build monitoring and testing routines into his code. The
results of these may be accessible to the service engineer via several
different routes, including some kind of 'standard' serial computer
interface - RS232 or USB etc - or the unit's user display, or in its
simplest form, by different flash sequences of the standby LED.

Yamaha AV amplifiers, for instance, have a very comprehensive monitoring and
diagnostic tool built in, complete with memory to tell you what events have
happened leading up to the failure. Your car also has very comprehensive
monitoring of just about everything electrical and electronic on the car,
and also most if not all of the electromechanical systems, again, complete
with storage to tell the mechanic just exactly what went wrong. Most (decent
makes of) TV sets have had the flashing LED type diagnostics for many years
now.

Doing it by way of the system control processors is cheap for the
manufacturers, as there is only a one-time investment in code writing
overhead. No, or very minimal, additional hardware support, is needed.

Arfa