Isolation adapters prevent injury during debug
Developing and testing embedded systems means working with a live target system which can be dangerous. For embedded designs which feature high-voltage circuits, such as automotive battery management systems, iSystem offers a series of galvanic isolation adapters which prevent personal injury to developers and electrical damage to equipment without affecting signal integrity.
Galvanic isolation is required where two or more electric circuits communicate with each other, but their grounds may be at different potentials. It is an effective method of breaking ground loops between the different circuits, preventing unwanted current from flowing between two units sharing a ground conductor. Galvanic isolation is also important for safety reasons, preventing accidental current from reaching ground through a person’s body.
The iSystem galvanic isolation adapters are being interposed as electrical isolation between development equipment, for example a development PC on one side and on the other side a iC5700 BlueBox debugger and the target microcontroller. The BlueBox and the embedded target are separately powered and isolated from each other. The Galvanic isolation adapters are powered separately via a USB-C power supply adapter. A grounding wire connected to the BlueBox and the embedded target circuit wires out the ground potential – which can exceed over 1000V even before any of the devices are powered up – between the two components.
iSystem has been developing and manufacturing tools and solutions for embedded software development and testing since 1986. The privately held company has a team of over 80 employees in five locations in Europe and the US. It also advises its customers on solving challenges in proving that the software inside a microcontroller or microprocessor will do what it was built to do. iSystem tools can detect software errors and help to correct them to make embedded systems safer to use in a wide range of applications in different industries.
