Case Studies

A Feature Lead Calibration Engineer at well know Motor Company, used Simbuck Signal Parrot for cruise control pre sign-off validation. The tests were undertaken to pre-empt significant issues with supplier derived software and to validate the baseline thresholds for cruise control functionality in order to achieve the expected delivery milestones. “There were no representative vehicles for testing,” The engineer said. “We could have undertaken the work on HiL, but would have needed to persuade management to schedule a time-slot with the Hil team. Otherwise we would have had to wait for a suitable vehicle to become available and then prepared the control system with the updated software and feature set to perform testing.” Instead, the speed of setup and implementation of applicable test stimuli using Simbuck Signal Parrot allowed preliminary testing to proceed without the need to involve other departments or obtain additional resources.

Asked if he thought use of Simbuck Parrot increased his productivity, he replied: “Absolutely. I was able to perform all the tests I needed repeatedly and reliably for all variants in under a week. Normally it would take about 3 to 4 weeks to perform the same set of test tasks on each vehicle variant, for each software configuration. What’s more, the work would have waited until a suitable vehicle became available, therefore delaying the sign-off of the feature set for this project and adding additional pressures to the overall project timing “milestones” for delivery to the Car Line programme.”

OBD Calibration Engineers at the Ford Dunton Technical Centre used a Simbuck Signal Parrot to validate baseline thresholds for PWM Pedals functionality. “We had no available tooling to validate the real feature”, said the, Calibration Supervisor. “If we hadn’t had a Simbuck Signal stimulus Generator we would have need to wait for the tooling of the pedals, obtain a suitable test vehicle, fit the pedals, procure a Power train Control Module with the PWM hardware support for the pedals, fit it to the vehicle and prepare the control system with the updated feature set before performing the testing.

By using Simbuck Signal Parrot to apply test stimuli in preliminary testing we were able to accelerate the project enormously by eliminating the need to procure a specific test vehicle.” Saving many the cost of a vehicle and many manhours

A well-known oscilloscope manufacture wanted to improve their display show capabilities to launch a new product.
The product had multiple channels targeted at a specific working environment. Previously a multitude of un-enclosed electronic bare-boards were used to generate a variety of signals to input into the new product. The oscilloscope sales team thought that this approach led to some confusion in set up as they now had to remember which board and configuration drove the signals the team wanted to demonstrate.

Introducing the Simbuck Signal Parrot ensured that the sales team, did not have to remember which board was required for individual signals for the show demonstration. All the signal types were instantly available from the Signal Parrot and could be easily adjusted throughout the day. The signals from the Simbuck Signal Parrot, which includes a CAN bus meant they were also able to demonstrate the decoding and analysis capabilities easily as the signals needed were always present so they could focus their attention on the presentation of the oscilloscope to interested potential customers.