Power measurement tool gets global distribution platform

It combines the measurement capabilities of several different test and measurement hardware tools into the Otii Arc, a device that makes it substantially easier for developers to pinpoint which sections of code, associated peripherals, and hardware contribute most to the application’s power consumption.

Powered by a PC’s USB port or an external 7.0 – 9.0V power supply, the Otii Arc provides power to the target application whilst measuring and displaying power consumption from below 1 µA up to 5 A without the need to manually change the settings.

As well as measuring power consumption, the Otii Arc, together with the accompanying Otii software, can also monitor additional analogue and digital signals, allowing application subsystems to be monitored in parallel to the main power input.

Any serial data, from 9600 bps to 4 Mbps, output by the target can also be synchronously captured and time-stamped.

Qoitech’s Otii software, which runs on Windows, macOS and Ubuntu Linux, allows the developer to quickly review power consumption from their development PC and share and compare the results easily with colleagues, customers and suppliers.

The software significantly increases usability when compared to traditional test and measurement tools that require results be displayed on the tool itself, or require them to be exported for later analysis in a spreadsheet without the test settings and related context of the application.

“Our Otii software package is available via our website, enabling developers to trial the user interface with an example project or review measurements made by colleagues,” said Vanja Samuelsson, Founder of Qoitech. “By combining current measurement, voltage measurement and debug logs output by the target’s serial interface, developers acquire a significantly improved view of their IoT application’s power consumption, allowing them to guarantee a battery life of up to 10 years for some applications.”

The Otii solution comes with a standard software license, but with the additional purchase of an Otii Premium License developers can access the battery profiling, simulation and scripting capabilities of the Otii software.

Using the Lua scripting language, the Otii Arc can be used to profile batteries, allowing different batches of the same cell to be compared, or to evaluate their performance under environmental conditions that more closely match that of the application.

The Lua scripting also enables automated testing, allowing longer term tests to be run without human intervention.