Hardware
A redesigned controller board that switches the power supply off through digital control lines instead of relays on the AC input, and selects high or low output voltage with a 0 to 5 V control signal.
All projects
Scientific instruments
Precision thermal controller
A new controller board and firmware for the temperature system inside a scientific instrument, with modern power-supply control, automatic fault recovery and a maintainable codebase.
- Industry
- Scientific instruments
- Our role
- Board design, firmware, integration
- Interfaces
- USB command line, serial chillers
- Cloud
- AWS status and fault logging
Sensors
Temperature readings and power state
Controller
Control loop, watchdog, fault logic
AWS cloud
Status and fault history
Dashboards
Uptime and service view
The challenge
Units in the field were powering off at random and failing in ways that were hard to reproduce. The legacy firmware could no longer be built, and the power supplies the board controlled were changing.
Firmware
Rewritten temperature control logic, main state machine and USB command-line interface, then version 1.2 with a watchdog, fault detection and a bootloader for updates.
Cloud and software
Controller status, faults and recoveries sent to an AWS backend so service teams can see how units behave in the field.
Key decisions
Client name and confidential details are withheld under NDA.
- Recover instead of hangBecause the intermittent failures couldn't be reproduced on demand, a watchdog now resets the controller if it ever stops responding, so the instrument recovers on its own.
- Catch problems earlyLayered checks flag invalid sensor readings, unexpected power behavior and abnormal code execution, and take corrective action before a full failure.
- A codebase that builds againThe legacy firmware was migrated to MPLAB X, with configuration and compatibility fixes, and verified against the old build for identical behavior.
- Talking to lab chillersSerial integration with third-party recirculating chillers was debugged by sniffing the serial lines to find baud-rate and mode-selection faults.
Thermal controller dashboard
Stage temperature tracking its setpoint, heater drive, controller health and the command and fault history a service team would see.
This dashboard is an illustration built for this site. Every value is generated in your browser; no client data is shown.
Building something similar?
Tell us about your product, from the board to the dashboard. We'll reply with next steps and a rough plan.