Police Issue Alert Following 19 Robberies Involving Facebook Marketplace and Offer Up

Due to a spate of thefts involving online marketplaces that have been recorded over the past three months, Chicago police are warning locals who routinely use these sites to buy or sell used goods to be extremely vigilant.

Authorities claim that from July to October, 19 robberies in the city's Englewood district included either Facebook Marketplace or Offer Up.

According to officials, at least 17 of the robberies took place in the same spot.

Police said that all 19 incidents involved victims contacting and buying motorcycles or all-terrain vehicles through Facebook Marketplace or Offer Up. Upon the victims' arrival to make the transaction at the seller's designated location, a group of men in ski masks would approach, present

According to officials, at least 17 of the robberies took place in the same spot.

Police said that all 19 incidents involved victims contacting and buying motorcycles or all-terrain vehicles through Facebook Marketplace or Offer Up. A group of men in ski masks would approach the victims when they arrived to make the transaction at the seller's designated location, show a firearm, and seize their belongings. The perpetrators would then take off running.

According to a police community advisory distributed earlier this week, 17 incidences happened in the 6700 block of South Elizabeth Street, close to Englewood's Ogden Park tennis courts.

Officials believe that although the 19 robberies mentioned in the alert were restricted to a single neighborhood, they could happen anywhere, to both dealers and consumers. Additionally, the Better Business Bureau has issued a warning to customers about the growth in fraud involving the buying and selling of goods via an online marketplace using payment services like Zelle.

According to NBC 5 Digital Producer Alex Fisher, who recently listed a piece of furniture on Facebook Marketplace, "I sent them images, I sent them videos of the table." They engaged in a lot of conversation. discussed how their brother, who resides nearby and is likely to come to pick it up, would do so.

The discussion changed after a price was agreed upon, according to Fisher.

Fisher stated, "I received a strange communication from them stating that they have a Business Zelle and that there was a restriction in terms of how much monies they could release at one time and that they needed to send me more money, but only if I agreed to return back the additional." "They stopped talking to me right away when I started to question it."

According to BBB representatives, these strategies are being used more frequently.

According to Steve Bernas, president, and chief executive officer of the BBB of Chicago, "The Better Business Bureau has observed an uptick in complaints about consumers using such cash apps." "If someone sends you money over the agreed-upon amount and requests that you wire them the money back, that is a tip-off to a rip-off and is definitely a fraud."

The Better Business Bureau advises utilizing credit cards since they contain fraud protection that many external financial apps lack when buying or selling online.

Unfortunately, with Zelle and these other cash apps, your prospects of getting the money back are minimal if you send someone money voluntarily, regardless of whether the transaction is false, Bernas added.

Police advise buyers and sellers to arrange the sale in a public, well-lit area and to let a family member or friend know in advance if they are meeting in person to make a purchase.

                              How to market your products on Facebook

Contrary to popular belief, selling on Facebook is a lot more profitable. Learn here how to sell on Marketplace (successfully).

It's really that simple to start your small company selling on Facebook Marketplace; all you need is a Facebook account and access to a mobile device or computer.

Additionally, unlike other online marketplaces like Amazon or eBay, sellers can offer products for free on Facebook Marketplace.

Syncing Facebook Marketplace with your e-commerce site will let you sell your items quickly and without stress. BigCommerce is our top suggestion for retailers looking to sell on Facebook because of our discovery that it is the simplest to integrate with Facebook out of all the market-leading ecommerce products we investigated.

* Continue reading to learn how to successfully sell on Facebook Marketplace, how to sync your e-commerce site and the advantages of doing so.

1 We shall discuss: What is Facebook Marketplace in this article.

2 Why selling on Facebook Marketplace is advantageous

3 What is the operation of Facebook Marketplace?

4 How to successfully sell on Facebook Marketplace

5 Is Facebook Marketplace a successful sales channel for my company?

Facebook Marketplace: What is it?

Facebook, which was initially intended as a medium for sharing beautiful dog photographs or posts about your first home, entered the casual seller industry by establishing an online marketplace.

Users can list goods they want to sell to local customers in a manner similar to eBay. In the beginning, the marketplace served as a venue for any user to sell their used goods or shady secondhand things. Sellers would submit advertising there, and if a buyer was interested in the item, they would visit and make a cash payment.

However, Facebook Marketplace has expanded significantly from its modest beginnings.

Small online retailers may now reach Facebook's almost three billion monthly users by using Marketplace. As internet shops continue to broaden their reach and cast their nets broader, the marketplace is no longer filled with worn-out sofas and shady Ford Focuses but now sells clothes, cosmetics, and technology.

Why selling on Facebook Marketplace is advantageous?

Given that Facebook is primarily a social media playground, you as a small company owner may wonder whether selling on the site is a sustainable source of income.

But there are significant advantages to marketing on Mark Zuckerberg's fictitious front lawn, such as:

Where else can you sell on the internet without paying any fees? Even as a lone seller on sites like Amazon, you are required to pay £0.75 for each item sold. You don't have to pay anything with Marketplace, so all of the profits are yours to keep.

Another fantastic aspect of selling on Facebook is the sheer size of the platform and the abundance of potential customers. You have a large consumer base to sell to because there are three billion people that access the site each month and over one million users who used Facebook's marketplace in only one quarter of 2021.

Integration with your online store - As long as you choose an e-commerce platform that syncs with Facebook without a hitch, like our top pick BigCommerce, you may post items to Facebook Marketplace directly from your store with the press of a button. You no longer need to spend time and effort uploading your products to several marketplaces.

What is the operation of Facebook Marketplace?

Knowing the advantages of selling on Facebook's Marketplace is great, but how does it actually operate?

So long as it doesn't appear on Facebook's list of prohibited things, any Facebook user can virtually offer an item for sale on the platform. Select the "Marketplace" tab on Facebook to do this.

You will then be greeted in the marketplace (isn't Facebook nice?). The Marketplace rules must then be studied and followed. These, in brief, are:

Consider everyone.

Be honest and report any questionable activity

The most crucial guideline for e-commerce companies is to buy and sell properly because listings that violate Facebook's rules will be deleted.

You will be directed to the Marketplace home page once you have clicked "I Understand." You can buy things from here, but listing products for sale is the most significant option. This post covers both of the options: listing on Facebook separately or linking your Facebook account to your current e-commerce platform.

How to post goods for sale

Choose one of the three alternatives when using Facebook on your PC by clicking "make new listing" on the page's left-hand side. You will be making a new listing for "items" for the majority of firms.

*         Ensure the accuracy and currentness of your product inventory. Your products will be pulled through and offered on Facebook's marketplace after it syncs with your store. The last thing you want is to list a product that is currently unavailable or out of stock.

*      Open the "channel management" tab in your BigCommerce store control panel and choose the Facebook icon.

 Review of the DJI Avata: An interface for novice drone operators

The DJI Avata's front-facing camera is wirelessly attached to a set of goggles that give you a first-person perspective of the drone as it soars through the air.

First-person view (FPV) drones, which literally give you a bird's eye perspective of things while in flight, are not new to the Chinese drone manufacturer.

The DJI Avata, which replaced the DJI FPV last year, has made advancements over the earlier model, turning this new drone into one of the most thrilling consumer-friendly drones for novices.

The key selling feature of this device is the ability to record more dramatic video footage by flying close to objects, making fast spins, and doing so.

Due to the weight of last year's FPV drone, flying past obstacles was necessary.

*The new Goggles 2 are more portable because they are lighter and smaller. the author Wilson Wong

*Because of the dioptre modifications, I can fly without my glasses. the author Wilson Wong

*Both controllers have benefits and drawbacks, but the motion controller is more entertaining. the author Wilson Wong

                                                                                         
*Instead of putting emphasis on image quality, the camera system is made to send video footage quickly. the author Wilson Wong

*Literally difficult to access are the MicroSD card and USB Type-C port. the author Wilson Wong

*Two plastic clasps keep the battery in place. the author Wilson Wong

 The TP-Link Deco X50 AX3000 Mesh WiFi 6 Router System provides seamless coverage with no dead spots.

Fast internet speeds and wider coverage are the two most important criteria that can affect a user's purchase decision in today's multi-device households. With each of those features and more, the TP-Link Deco X50 AX3000 Mesh WiFi 6 System, which is intended for homes with greater space and walls, provides an improved Internet experience.

This mesh system ensures a strong network covers the home and the Deco X50 boasts support for over 150 connections, with a four times greater capacity for simultaneous connections. It features AX3000 Dual Band WiFi connectivity, which combines wireless speeds up to 2,402 Mbps over 5 GHz, and 574 Mbps over 2.4 GHz for a huge boost in transmitting and receiving data. Considering how much power that is, TP-Link has

A 1.7 GHz quad-core processor enables the wireless transmission and Ethernet backhaul to work together, resulting in even faster network speeds for coverage up to 2,500 square feet, or between one and three-bedroom spaces. However, blazing speeds are useless if there is intermittent connection, and to reduce interference and interruption. The Deco X50 is essentially more than capable of eradicating WiFi dead zones, which will be useful for high-definition leisure activities like gaming, content streaming, viewing films, and the like. Want additional protection? To expand connectivity, just connect an additional Deco to your main unit, and you're ready to go.

This extra bandwidth also extends outside of a fixed location. The device can give smart WiFi thanks to AI-Driven Mesh.

It's simple to disregard security when using always-on WiFi networks in favor of quicker speeds and more coverage. The Deco X50 has security features like Network Protection, Parental Controls, wireless encryption, a firewall, and the Blacklist feature, so there's no lack of safety or security here.

Parental Controls enable owners to control online time and filter inappropriate content from young children when Network Protection detects cyber risks to privacy settings and linked devices. WPA, WPA2, and WPA3 encryptions are installed on the network, and the firewall guards against external hostile attempts. To increase privacy and security levels, individual devices can be banned to guard the network against unauthorized users.

Parental controls and network protection aren't the only safeguards available.

The Deco X50 has a wide range of capability, which may make the setup or navigation seem challenging, but the system is as user-friendly as they come. After unboxing, all you have to do is download the Deco app to your smartphone, follow the on-screen instructions, and let the program and its capabilities handle the rest. The device's Auto Connection Test, for instance, examines any owned Deco units' internet connections and recommends a location for their placement. Remote Management, meanwhile, provides app control over the Deco network from any smartphone or tablet, even if you're not close by.

It is also intended to be a simple process to change between modes. The Deco X50 can quickly switch between Wireless

The Deco X50 mesh system excels at eliminating dead spots with seamless coverage and providing fast connection rates, but it also performs admirably in other respects. In its quest to provide a dependable, high-performing WiFi 6 system, TP-Link has covered all bases, from security to convenience of use, as the digital world continues to become more and more interconnected.

 Big Tech joins forces to improve speech recognition technology for those with disabilities

The Speech Accessibility Project will utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence to expand the range of speech patterns that speech recognition systems can recognize. Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Google, and Amazon are all involved.

The Speech Accessibility Project is a collaboration between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and non-profit partners. The project's goal is to enhance speech recognition technology so that everyone, including those with disabilities and speakers with a variety of speech patterns, can benefit from it.

According to Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who is leading the project, "the ability to communicate and operate things using speech is vital for anyone working with technology or the digital economy today." Everyone, including those with disabilities, should have access to speech interfaces.

Currently, a variety of speech patterns, including those frequently connected with accents, are not recognized by many speech recognition systems, such as voice assistants and translation tools.

As a result, members of these groups frequently are unable to benefit from what speech recognition software has to offer. The Speech Accessibility Project's objective is to help technology firms increase the inclusivity of their voice recognition software through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

We've assembled a particularly interdisciplinary team with expertise in linguistics, speech, AI, security, and privacy to help us meet this significant challenge because this task requires a lot of infrastructure, ideally the kind that can be supported by leading technology companies, said Hasegawa-Johnson.

By enlisting compensated volunteers to provide recorded samples, the Speech Accessibility Project will gather speech samples from persons reflecting a variety of speech patterns. 

U.S. capital (REUTERS) - On Wednesday, July 27, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requested a court order to prevent Facebook parent Meta Platforms from acquiring VR content producer Within Unlimited.

In a request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction made on Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco, the FTC referred to Facebook as a "global technology behemoth," noting that it is the owner of well-known applications like Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. It also claimed that Facebook's "campaign to conquer VR" began in 2014 when it purchased the maker of VR headsets Oculus.

The FTC contended that the acquisition of Within by Facebook would "tend to create a monopoly" in the market for VR-specific fitness apps, and the FTC's request to seek an injunction was approved by a vote of three to two. inside has

The 2014-founded company Within produces creative VR content. As "the foremost destination for cinematic virtual reality," it describes itself.

According to its website, investors in the company include Temasek of Singapore, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and film studios like Disney, 21st Century Fox, Annapurna Pictures, and Legendary Pictures .

The 2014-founded company Within produces creative VR content. As "the foremost destination for cinematic virtual reality," it describes itself.

According to its website, investors in the company include Temasek of Singapore, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and film studios like Disney, 21st Century Fox, Annapurna Pictures, and Legendary Pictures.

In October 2021, Facebook agreed to purchase Within for an unknown fee.

In 2020, the FTC separately sued Facebook for antitrust violations.

Meta said in a statement that it dissented with the FTC's analysis of the request. 

" The FTC's case is grounded on testament and enterprise, not substantiation. The idea that this accession would lead toanti-competitive issues in a dynamic space with as important entry and growth as online and connected fitness is simply not believable," the company said. 

" We're confident that our accession of Within will be good for people, inventors and the VR space," it added. 

 The FTC argued in its complaint that the planned accession was a way for Meta to dominate VR, a new and fast- growing part of the Internet. VR assiduity earnings are anticipated to grow fromUS$ 5 billion(S$6.9 billion) last time to further thanUS$ 12 billion in 2024, the FTC said in its complaint. 

Meta formerly has the best- dealing VR headset, the Quest 2, and controls a Meta Quest Store with hundreds of apps. It has bought game- makers like Beat Games, Sanzaru and Ready At Dawn Studios, among others, the complaint said. 

" Meta formerly owns a best- dealing virtual reality fitness app, and it had the capabilities to contend indeed more nearly with Within's popular Supernatural app," said Mr John Newsman, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition, in a statement. 

" But Meta chose to buy request position rather of earning it on the graces. This is an illegal accession, and we will pursue all applicable relief."

 Speech assistants could "hinder the social and cognitive development of children

Voice-activated smart devices are being used to help rear children nearly from the day they are born, from reminding potty-training toddlers to use the restroom to reciting bedtime stories and being utilized as a "conversation partner."

However, studies believe that the rapid proliferation of voice assistants, such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Apple's Siri, may have long-term effects on children's social and cognitive development, particularly their capacity for empathy, compassion, and critical thought.

According to Anmol Arora, co-author of an article that was published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, "the many repercussions on children include improper responses, inhibiting social development, and impairing learning chances."

Children attributing human traits and behaviors to machines that, in Arora's words, are "just a set of trained words and sounds mashed together to produce a statement," is a major cause for concern.

The devices are anthropomorphized by the kids, who then imitate them by not changing their intonation, volume, emphasis, or tone. Another problem is that the machines don't automatically anticipate kids to say please or thank you.

The kinds of queries that devices can answer are likewise restricted. As a result, according to Arora, a researcher in the department of clinical medicine at Cambridge University, youngsters will acquire very specific types of questions that always take the form of a demand.

Additionally, it can be difficult to distinguish between various accents. He gave the example of a 10-year-old girl who was exposed to an online challenge in which she was instructed to touch a live electric plug with a coin. "If a child is particularly young, they might well not be able to pronounce particular words properly and then there's a risk their words might be misinterpreted and they're exposed to something inappropriate," he said.

He said, "These things don't know what they're saying."

Dr. Dám Miklósi, the author of a recent study demonstrating how children's use of smartphones and tablets "rewires" their brains in ways that have long-term implications, said more needs to be done to persuade businesses to take the problem seriously.

Because the people who create these devices don't worry about human connection or how they affect children's development, he claimed, they are now very basic.

They are aware of how adults use these technologies, but youngsters use them extremely differently and their effects are very different, he continued. We need a lot more study as well as moral standards for kids using them.

However, Dr. Caroline Fitzpatrick, Canada Research Chair in Digital Media Use by Children and Its Implications for Promoting Togetherness: An International Perspective,

Children do, in fact, require rich context and cues in order to acquire and develop language, which they currently cannot obtain through interactions with technology because it only offers very basic information, tools, and context.

"A child who was already shy or who spent too much time on a device might develop social skills and social competence that are lower quality than those of their peers, as well as difficulty using basic politeness formulations and poor non-verbal communication skills, such as interrupting and not making eye contact," the expert warned. "Those kids would be more socially isolated and have poorer interactions with their friends, teachers, and family members.

"However, as long as parents adhere to the suggested guidelines for kids and they receive a healthy amount of engagement,"

 Removal of an obsolete AMD fix makes Linux kernel 6 faster

Since 2002, Linux performance has been suffering as a result of an outdated workaround for power management issues on AMD computers. It's gone now.

Modern silicon processors have the advantage that power control is crucial. Since the 20th century, power conservation and battery life have not been a concern. The only reason that processor manufacturers can continue to make money is by selling us more and more transistors because, despite excellent cooling, most of them are off most of the time.

Software  OSes

Linux kernel 6 runs faster after removing an outdated AMD patch.

After 20 years, a performance-degrading workaround was rediscovered.

Since 2002, Linux performance has been suffering as a result of an outdated workaround for power management issues on AMD computers. It's gone now.

Modern silicon processors have the advantage that power control is crucial. Since the 20th century, power conservation and battery life have not been a concern. Because most transistors in processors are switched off the majority of the time, no matter how well cooled they are, processor vendors must continually sell us more transistors to keep their business afloat.

Around that time, an issue was discovered with some AMD Athlon systems using VIA chipsets, a year after the Linux kernel received ACPI support. The problematic computers waited a while for the STPCLK# signal to switch a CPU core to idle (albeit there was only one core back then), so the kernel developers inserted some dummy I/O read instructions to make sure the processor wouldn't keep running when it was supposed to be shutting. It enhanced power management and compatibility.

The issue is that Linux still executes it on AMD processors, as AMD engineer K Prateek Nayak discovered lately. He discovered the problem when examining the behavior of the kernel using AMD's "Instruction-Based

As a result, Intel's Dave Hansen has rushed out a fix that leaves the workaround in place but only applies to Intel processors, where it shouldn't be a problem because Intel chips use a different mechanism to transition to idle.

Hansen clarifies:

On current platforms, this workaround is rather painful. It may take millions of cycles to run "inl()".

The lowest throughput increases by around 14 times, and the mean throughput by little over half, according to the patch's benchmark statistics.

The patch has already been approved and should be applied, even though kernel 6.0 is scheduled to release on Sunday. It will be fascinating to see how much of a difference it makes in performance in the actual world.

In an era where there are mitigations for current CPU issues

Test challenges and trends for battery management

Battery cell stacks and battery management systems (BMS) are already in use everywhere from power tools, vacuum cleaner robots and drones to micromobility applications like eScooters and eBikes. Less flashy things like uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and renewable energy storage require large numbers of battery cells. Each battery stack must be monitored to ensure that it is charged and discharged safely, and to measure the overall health of the battery. With rechargeable batteries, there are some challenges that require testing for very accurate voltage values. In addition, batteries are tested in a stack, which requires precision measurements at high common mode voltages. The trend is to add more cells to battery stacks to achieve higher voltage systems.

How battery management systems work

A BMS device typically consists of a series of cell sensing probes (12 to 24 or more channels) that feed into a front-end analog-to-digital converter (ADC). This ADC measures cell voltage and provides precise measurement of individual battery cells. There is an additional pair of cell balancing pins per cell that also have ADC inputs. These pins are used to equalize the voltages between cells in the stack. The remaining pins are power supply pins and analog and digital control lines. Each cell stack in a battery requires a BMS, so in some cases there may be six to twelve or more BMS devices in a single electric vehicle, not counting devices that serve redundancy. These devices are typically powered from the lower and upper rails in each cell module, so that each BMS device floats on top of the BMS or cell module below it. This means that all of these devices require digitally isolated, daisy-chained communication with each other and with a main controller, usually a microcontroller unit (MCU).

Electric vehicles will drive BMS advances

The largest future market for battery systems, which is the focus of this article, is automotive applications. These include (see Figure 1) fully battery electric vehicles (BEVs, 400 volts and above) and internal combustion engines (ICE) with start-stop technology (typically 48-volt systems) and both mild-hybrid (48-volt battery-powered) and hybrid EVs. In 2022, less than 5% of new vehicles sold were electric, but many automakers expect the share of electric vehicles to increase to 50% by 2030. With this in mind, electric vehicle technology is one of the fastest growing markets for many semiconductor manufacturers.

  

In order to drive the adoption of electric vehicles, several key requirements must be met. The first of these is the need for a higher quality BMS that impacts range. With a more accurate battery management system, consumers can achieve greater range from the same set of batteries. For example, if the BMS can measure the state of charge with an accuracy of 1% or more, the battery can be charged closer to its maximum capacity. Think of it like a guard band - with a 5% margin of error, the battery should only be used between 15% and 85% of its capacity. When the BMS is more accurate, the usable charge of the battery does not need to be monitored as much. So if you go from 5% error to 1% error, you can use 8% more of the stored charge, resulting in more miles per charge. See Figure 2 for more details.

Figure 2: Battery charge limits

Second, a precise state of charge (SOC) allows for better battery utilization while maintaining battery safety (avoiding catastrophic failures) and increased range prediction accuracy in terms of safety and reliability. Higher battery utilization and efficiency also enables smaller, lighter battery packs, which reduces vehicle costs.

There are a couple of trends driving changes in electric vehicle batteries. The first, as noted above, is better accuracy, which translates directly into higher mileage between charges and more moderate cell aging. A more accurate "fuel gage" also increases driver safety and confidence.

The second major trend is that battery stacks have increasingly higher voltages, requiring a greater number of cells in a stack, which in turn requires more front-end channels ( ADC ) and cell balancing pins per BMS device. Common battery cells today operate at about 400 volts, with some high-performance electric vehicles already using 800-volt systems. These levels are expected to increase to 1000+ volts in a few years, resulting in faster charging that will help EVs achieve recharge times closer to the time required to refuel an internal combustion engine. These capabilities represent a competitive advantage for semiconductor manufacturers, who can now add value to a battery pack.

However, higher overall voltages mean that more batteries must be packed into the electric car. Currently, manufacturers assemble batteries into modules and then assemble those modules into battery packs. This modularization requires more connections, which drives up the cost and weight of battery packs. The cell-to-pack architecture is a novel approach that places the battery cells directly into the battery pack and avoids the module carrier model. Moving to a cell-to-pack architecture means manufacturers can either fit the same number of cells into a smaller, lighter assembly or fit more cells into the available space. This can lead to more cells in a stack, which in turn leads to more front-end ADC channels on the BMS device.

These trends in battery management systems present new challenges for companies that manufacture automated test equipment (ATE). The first challenge is improved BMS accuracy. When measuring the discharge curve of a battery, most of the usable range is along a very narrow curve. The full Li-ion state-of-charge range (SOC) of 100-0% extends from ~4.3 V (fully charged) down to 2.2 V (discharged). Looking at the full Li-ion range, it seems a simple task to measure the change (~2.1 V voltage range or 21 mV / 1% SOC change).

ATE Testing Challenges

A typical Li-ion discharge ranges from 80-20% or 90-10% of full battery power. In the 80-20% range, the SOC voltage is quite flat at 3.75-3.65 V (~100 mV total or 1.7 mV / 1% SOC change). This explains why BMS vendors aim for measurement accuracy of 100uV or 50uV in the 5-V range. Figure 3 below shows a typical Li-ion discharge voltage curve.

This sub-100uV accuracy level translates directly to the forcing accuracy of the ATE stimulus channel that feeds into the ADC of each cell in a BMS device. While this should be easy to achieve with a low supply voltage, in some test cases this accuracy must be maintained over a range of 5-6V. It is also important to provide this stimulus as a very low noise, very low drift stimulus so that a fixed, known voltage biases the ADC input.

The second challenge is that the BMS device may consist of 16 to 24 or more cells that must be biased with common mode voltages to mimic a stack of battery cells. In some cases, this can exceed 120 volts for some of the top cell pins. This creates a need for dense, high-precision, low-noise floating voltage/current sources (VIs) from ATE. Due to the test nature of these devices, it is usually necessary to multiplex a high-precision measurement system onto all cell pins and the corresponding discharge pins of the device. This may require a large number of relays on the device interface board (DIB) if the ATE system does not have sufficient internal matrices, resulting in the need for a very large application area on the DIB. In most cases, semiconductor manufacturers want to test as many devices as possible in parallel to reduce test costs. For BMS devices, this is also important due to the extremely high volumes that BEVs are expected to require in the near future. The ideal ATE system should have all the matrices and multiplexing already built into the system to allow for the maximum number of sites.

Another challenge is daisy-chain communication between individual BMS devices and the MCU. All BMS devices send data over the bus. Since this bus is located inside the battery cell modules or cell pack, it can create a very noisy environment. This also happens with stacked voltages, and this requires an isolated interface. This isolated communication usually runs asynchronously and requires sufficient capacity of the digital instrument to handle the unique pattern generation. Some key features needed in this case at ATE are format and period switching on the fly, and the ability of the digital instrument to read asynchronous data.

Batteries and BMS devices continue to evolve to meet the demands of the automotive market. These improvements require new test methods. From 1000+ voltage systems to new battery chemistries, there will be many challenges in a short time. The explosive growth in electric vehicles will require new test equipment capabilities with short production cycles, so ATE will need to exceed BMS requirements and provide cost-effective solutions for a high number of sites.