End-of-Line Test Setups
Making of a test jig for one of our products
If you plan to mass-produce your device, it’s important to think about testing early in the development process.
Small Production Volumes
For small production volumes (from a few dozen to a few hundred units per year), manual or semi-automated test setups are usually sufficient. These setups are practical for development, validation, and producing marketing samples.
Large Production Volumes
For larger production volumes (tens of thousands of units per year), a more automated test setup is required. Automation ensures fast and repeatable testing and simplifies mounting and removal of boards during production.
Such test setups usually include one or more PCBs used for programming, communication, and automated testing of the device under test.
Typical Steps of an End-of-Line Test
An end-of-line test setup typically performs the following steps:
- Programming the device firmware
- Functional testing of hardware and firmware
- Device configuration
- License activation (if required)
All of these steps can be fully automated so that the operator only needs to place the board into the test fixture and start the test.
Test Firmware
If the device’s memory allows it, we recommend including test functionality directly in the production firmware, as this reduces test time during mass production. In this case, a mechanism is required to activate the test firmware — for example, a dedicated test pin or a flag stored in non-volatile memory.
Licensing
If needed, a licensing mechanism can be implemented to protect your software from unauthorized copying. Without a valid license obtained from your server, the device will remain non-functional.