Fuji Heavy Industries' Subaru Technical Research Center in Mitaka city, Tokyo is engaged in R&D in advanced technology for batteries and capacitors used in electric and other environmentally friendly vehicles.

We had a conversation with Mr. Oohori who is in charge of design and development of next-generation batteries for automobiles (lithium ion capacitors). He has chosen the MW100 Data Acquisition Unit for evaluating the reliability of capacitor battery packs, and of battery performance when installed in vehicles.

Mr. Oohori: "We use the MW100 in many different measuring situations including bench, environment, and in-vehicle testing. We can perform measurements in harsh environments such as an in-vehicle test at -20˚C with no problems. And with an Ethernet cable we can monitor data over the Web, or send data as it's being acquired during a driving test directly to an environment test lab, and this increases our efficiency greatly." The MW100 supports a broad range of applications, and can be installed just about anywhere thanks to its environmental worthiness (-20˚C to 60˚C).

Mr. Oohori: "We are using the MW100 CAN Bus module effectively for our in-vehicle tests. Until now, to measure engine revolutions we would rework the engine to install an encoder, and record temperature and revolutions together. This required a lot of time-consuming wiring and measurement setup. Using the CAN Bus module, now we can measure analog signals in synchronization with CAN bus data, or compare temperature data with CAN bus signals to find out if there is a relationship between them, and this has vastly improved the efficiency of our data analyses." The MW100 is ideal for data acquisition applications in which analog signals (temperature, voltage, strain, contact, etc.) and CAN bus communication data are placed on the same time axis.

Mr. Oohori: "The MW100 can use both 12 VDC and 100 VAC, and this has been useful for raising testing efficiency. On the test bench we can run it on 100 VAC, and in vehicles it can run on 12 VDC. Not only that, but it's compact and lightweight as well. To change wiring all you have to do is replace the removable terminal blocks, and you can switch quickly and easily to the next measurement. Moreover, we can now simultaneously acquire CAN bus data and analog data such as temperature and voltage, and have resolved all issues regarding data acquisition in performance evaluation testing." We took the power supply specifications into careful consideration when designing the MW100 so that it could support a wide variety of uses such as in-vehicle, desktop, and device-integrated applications. It will also help developers with many of their measurement needs.