Self-Diagnosis Of Electronics With Analog Circuits
- Introductory Concepts
by Dennis L. Feucht
Innovatia Laboratories
The trend in maintenance of electronic consumer devices has been to avoid
the problem. If it breaks, throw it away and buy a new one. While this approach
has not made major in-roads into industrial equipment such as test and measurement
(T&M) or medical instruments or factory automation, it does suggest
that renewed attention might be given the problem of how to diagnose and
repair faulty units once they are in the field. With cheap computing nowadays,
perhaps it is time to revisit the use of embedded artificial intelligence
(AI) applied to diagnostics.
As electronic equipment has become more complicated, component-level repair at the customer site has become awkward, like trying to fix a car under a shade tree instead of in a properly-equipped garage. Consequently, companies have resorted to the policy of board-level replacement at the point of use. The replaced board is brought back to a service center where it is repaired on a test bench. As boards have become surface-mount and more complicated, they are returned to the factory where an elaborate test center fixes them.
Returning a cell phone or calculator to the factory for repair is not cost-effective relative to purchase of a new unit. The result is that the garbage dumps are strewn with otherwise valuable electronics for lack of knowledge of which low-cost part to replace. (The same problem exists for automobiles. A leaking water pump might have a bad seal, but the entire pump assembly is replaced instead because it is not cost-effective for the garage to tear the pump apart to replace it.) This seems suboptimal and bothers those of us who oppose needless waste.
What is the next step in the evolution of field maintenance?
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