Embedded MPU based test bench for communication lines used in industrial electrical and electronics products

Proper validation and verification of electrical and electronics products in the design and development phase is very important. Companies manufacturing these products invest a significant amount of money and effort in verification and validation of their products before starting mass production for market, resulting in an increase of the overall development cost of these products. This paper provides a state diagram based, modular, easy to use and extremely cheap, embedded MPU based alternative for the costly solutions currently used by validation and verification teams in major electrical and electronics companies. The implementation of this alternative is done using an EVALSPEAr320PLC Board (Evaluation board for SPEAr320 embedded MPU), which tests for CAN BUS, MODBUS Serial, TCP/IP, GPIO and Analog IO under two modes (On the Fly mode and Real-Time Test Vector mode) with an accuracy of 1 millisecond. The prototype can be used with Minicom (Linux/Unix), HyperTerminal (Windows) and NI LabVIEW.