Project 015 – Reverse engineering

Battery Level Indicator and Motor Operating Hours Counter

The manufacturer of the Arjo Sara patient lift needed an alternative of an existing PCBA due to sourcing problems.

To help him I analyzed the original PCB and created a redesign.

The PCBA shows the battery level and the number of hours that the lifting motor has run. When this motor has run for a large number of hours then the spindle needs maintenance so the operator needs to be warned with a sound.

In this redesign, a small Microchip PIC16F676 microcontroller was used with the source code written in assembly language.

Additionally, a very basic programmer/tester was built for the production of the first series of this PCB.