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Monitoring Technology for PV-Plants

Customer
SunSniffer GmbH & Co. KG

Industry
Solar energy

Project summary
Monitoring of solar plant performance could be the most efficient when measurements taken at the very source of electrical energy – PV module. Development of a sensor for such application poses technically challenging task due to several restrictions:

• Cost of the sensor must be extremely low because it is added to PV-module cost
• Cost of the monitoring equipment and installation efforts must be kept low
• Maintain measurement precision while working in outdoor environment

As a solution, we developed novel DC powerline communication technology which was granted several patents. Complete traceability of every device achieved through automating of production QA process.

Project know-how and IP

1. Patents:
   • “Method for monitoring individual photovoltaic modules in an arrangement that comprises several photovoltaic modules and device for performing said method”, WO 2011000505 A8, CN102473764A, CN102473764B, DE102009031839A1, DE102009031839B4, EP2449643A2, EP2449643B1, US9070281, US20120197569, WO2011000505A2, WO2011000505A3, WO2011000505A4
   • “Method for disconnecting a photovoltaic assembly and photovoltaic assembly”, US 20140311546 A1, DE102010054354A1, EP2652857A1, WO2012079742A1
2. Cost effective hardware for PV-module monitoring through:
   • Original DC power line communication method (patent protected)
   • Cost optimized hardware and firmware design
   • Automation of production QA process
3. Reduction of operational costs through:
   • Remote equipment monitoring and diagnostic (IoT)

Awards
XXV Specialist symposium for Photovoltaic in Bad Staffelstein – 2nd Innovation Award in 2010.

Services rendered
Firmware, Hardware and Software development, Industrial design support, production support.

Technologies involved
Electronics design (digital and analog); Sensor technics; Firmware (C, Assembler), Embedded software (Linux, Node.js, C++, PHP, JavaScript).

Customer testimonial
“We are working with the team for many years now, and for good reasons! Always highly professional, always timely, always great work. Highly appreciated are the contributing good ideas from the team, which push our products further forward. New developments or technologies are instantly adopted, and according to our products adjusted as appropriate. This way our products are always up-to-date and state-of-the-art. Scientific knowledge is applied equally as technological skills, so we benefit with sound, thought out products. Great communication skills, always available when needed. We have great trust and are happy to continue working with the team.”

Ingmar Kruse
CEO
SunSniffer GmbH & Co KG

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Ear Liquid Detector

Customer
Confidential

Industry
Healthcare

Project summary
Develop technology and prototype device for liquid detection behind the eardrum.

Project know-how and IP

• Contactless liquid detection probe
• Sensors fusion
• Services rendered
• Scientific analysis, Technology development and validation. Prototype device and software development

Technologies involved
Sensor design, Electronics design (Analog, RF, DSP), FPGA, VHDL, C, C#

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Micro-robot with Tomography

Customer
Confidential

Industry
Physics, Acoustics, Mechanical engineering

Project summary
Technology of micro robot with piezoelectric drive based on controllable resonance motion. Detection of the surface type that robot moves on by the method of acoustical tomography. The robot can move on flat surfaces including glass and water as well as inside the tubes

Research results

• Controllable resonance technology to drive robot in all directions using single piezo actuator
• No rotation of friction elements used in robot actuator
• Single piezo element needed to drive robot in any direction
• System of acoustical tomography using ultrasound powered micro robots

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USB & CAN Adapters

Customer
Confidential

Industry
Industrial automation

Project summary
Development of dual CAN bus USB adapter

Project know-how & IP
CAN protocol sniffer

Services rendered
Hardware and Firmware development. Implementation of the Firmware update tool for PC

Technologies involved
CAN bus, USB 2.0, Firmware (Assembler, C)

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High Purity Gas Generators

Customer
Leman Instruments SAS, France

Industry
Laboratory equipment involved in the analysis of solids, liquids and gases

Project summary
High technology start-up company in Archamps Technopole (Geneva area) needed engineering and scientific support to develop their product line. The project demanded control of various physical and chemical processes by the means of specially designed hardware and firmware. But the real challenge was to achieve high diversity of the product line at minimal production and maintenance costs. Today Leman Instruments became successful company with over 200 models in their catalog, shipping high-tech products worldwide.

Project know-how and IP

1. Modules to control following physical processes developed:
   
   • Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM)
   • Pressure Swing Absorption (PSA)
   • Catalysis
2. Reduction of maintenance and support costs through:
   
   • Remote equipment monitoring and diagnostic (IoT)
   • Modular concept of the devices structure
3. Achieve high diversity of the product line at minimal production cost:
   
   • Modular hardware design
   • Flexible software

Services rendered
Firmware, Hardware and Software development, Scientific support, Industrial design support, production support

Technologies involved
Electronics design (power, digital and analog); Sensor technics; Firmware (C, Assembler), Embedded software (Linux, C++, QT), SaaS based SCADA web visualization

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Battery Management System

Customer
Confidential

Industry
Energy storage

Project summary
To achieve industrial scale battery storage capacity (up to several megawatts) development of special Battery Management System (BMS) was required. The project focus was on fail safe design, precise control of cells parameters and large scalability

Project know-how & IP

1. Management of modern LiFePo4 cells including: safety of operation; calculation of SoC, SoH and internal impedance; special operation modes to extend battery life time and performance.
2. Management of high voltage battery stacks.
3. Reduction of maintenance costs through: remote equipment monitoring and diagnostic (IoT); modular system design.

Services rendered
Firmware, Hardware and Software development

Technologies involved
Electronics design (power, digital and analog), Digital signal processing (FPGA, VHDL), Firmware (C), Embedded software (Linux, C++, QT, Node.js , JavaScript), SaaS based SCADA web visualization

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Thermostat with Powerline Communication

Customer
Hot Water Control Ltd. (https://hotwatercontrol.com/, Cyprus)

Industry
Home automation

Project summary
Development of remote thermostat with powerline communication

Project know-how & IP
Design according to EMI/EMC and electrical safety regulations

Services rendered
Hardware development

Awards
https://climatelaunchpad.org 2016 Finalist

Customer testimonial
“From the beginning we have been impressed with the professionalism and openness we have received from your side. In particular, we have found that the communication between our development teams has been excellent, allowing us to have almost real-time collaboration in the product development. This allowed us a great deal of flexibility in our own design process, which we found to be extremely useful whilst designing a brand new product. Furthermore, from the start we have always felt fully informed about the development process and the progress of the work during the project; two things that we value highly. We were also impressed by the timely delivery of the services, and we are now looking forwards to continuing our collaboration.”

Andreas Ioannides, Matthew Norton, co-founders

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Medical Device for Autism Treatment

Customer
AAT Medical ltd (https://www.mentetech.com, Malta)
Neurotech International Ltd (https://neurotechinternational.com Australia (ASX:NTI)

Industry
Healthcare

Project summary
Modify the design of portable EEG device to match CE certification requirements. Improve EEG signal processing algorithm

Project know-how and IP
Implementation of the algorithm for Oculus artefacts removal from EEG signal; Hardware design for medical applications

Services rendered
Firmware and Hardware development, Development and validation of signal processing algorithms

Technologies involved
Electronics design (analog, digital, wireless), Firmware (C), MATLAB

Customer testimonial
“We asked you to jump on an ongoing project and the team was very flexible and open to understanding our needs. Always available for our calls and needs. Easy to explain problems. Incredible and fast reply with ingenious solutions. The results were achieved in the timeline proposed. Highly recommendable and we already did.”

Dr. Marco Rotonda, Head, R&D.

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Secure Bootloader for Firmware OTA

Customer
Confidential

Industry
Electrical power distribution

Project summary
Bootloader, server back-end, and related software tools for secure OTA update of ARM based IoT device

Project know-how and IP
Symmetric and asymmetric encryption for ARM Cortex-M0+
Fault tolerant firmware update

Services rendered
Concept development of secure OTA update for IoT device. Development of Bootloader Firmware, Server back-end, and Encryption software tool.

Technologies involved
Firmware (Assembler, C/C++), PHP, C#

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Wireless IoT Infrastructure

Customer
Several customers active in IoT domain

Industry
Home automation/small business automation

Project summary
Several projects that involved design of wireless mesh network infrastructure for IoT, Proximity detection and assets location tracking based on RF measurements of BLE Beacons.

Project know-how and IP

• Proximity measurement for Bluetooth 4.0 devices
• Cost optimized Bluetooth Beacon device technology
• Mobile asset tracking based on wireless technology
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi mesh networking

Services rendered
Firmware, Hardware and Software development, Industrial design support

Technologies involved
Electronics design (low power digital and wireless, consumer devices), Firmware (C, Assembler), Embedded software (Linux, C++, Node.js), Web server/browser software (PHP, SQL, JavaScript)

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High-Precision Regulators

Customer
Confidential

Industry
Laboratory equipment

Project summary
Development of temperature regulation controller with long term stability of ±0.005 K

Project know-how and IP

1. Temperature regulation algorithm with prevention overshoot and oscillation suppression functionality
2. High precision and stability temperature measurement
3. Cooling (with Peltier element) and heating (Oven) operation modes

Services rendered
Firmware, Hardware and Software development

Technologies involved
Electronics design (high precision analog and digital), Firmware (C)

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Di-Twin Model for PV-Plants

Customer
SunSniffer GmbH & Co. KG

Industry
Solar energy

Project summary

• Creation of digital replica (Digital twin) of a solar powerplant through machine learning and mathematical modelling techniques.
• The concept and software for automatic analysis and fault identification of a solar power plant has been developed.
• Usage of Digital twin allows a significant reduction of the amount of data required for analytics and provides direct indicators of the system health and performance.
• Digital replica of every PV module can be examined in a “virtual lab” using standard test conditions (STC) thus allowing to obtain weather independent performance readings.

Project know-how and IP

• Combining machine learning techniques with mathematical modelling of the physical objects.
• Parallel computing with GPU hardware.
• Precise mathematical modelling of PV hardware.

Services rendered
Scientific analysis, software development.

Publications
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325038225_DIGITAL_TWIN_IN_THE_ANALYSIS_OF_A_BIG_DATA

Technologies involved
Digital twin, Mathematical modelling, Machine learning, Big data analytics, Parallel computing, CUDA programming, SaaS.

Customer testimonial
“We are working with the team for many years now, and for good reasons! Always highly professional, always timely, always great work. Highly appreciated are the contributing good ideas from the team, which push our products further forward. New developments or technologies are instantly adopted, and according to our products adjusted as appropriate. This way our products are always up-to-date and state-of-the-art. Scientific knowledge is applied equally as technological skills, so we benefit with sound, thought out products. Great communication skills, always available when needed. We have great trust and are happy to continue working with the team.”

Ingmar Kruse
CEO
SunSniffer GmbH & Co KG