Revolutionary smart-meter software reduces hardware cost and development time

Nürnberg, Germany 21 Feb 2014 – HCC Embedded today announced that it has developed an advanced file system, custom designed for the needs of smart-energy and smart-meter applications. HCC’s approach maximizes the life of flash, significantly reduces power consumption, and provides a deterministic ‘emergency write’ function, which reduces cost by allowing the on-board capacitor to be as small as possible. Collectively the file-system features can result in savings of many ‘cents’ for each meter, a highly significant cost reduction in high volume manufacture.
 
The software is developed using high quality development methodology and is rigorously compliant with the MISRA C:2004 coding standard.  The HCC ‘Smart-meter File System (SMFS) requires less than 15kB program memory and less than 1.5kB of RAM on most 32-bit MCUs.
 
Metering applications work with well-defined records that are more suited to a database approach. General-purpose file systems do not have any cyclic buffer logic for storing records and this adds complexity to applications. SMFS uses a structured database to reduce complexity of the application and improve the performance of the system in almost every way—speed, power consumption, and flash life.
 
Key features:
• Fail-safe data storage for guaranteed system recovery.
• Persistent data storage for 15 years or more.
• Minimal power consumption to preserve battery life.
• Minimum number of flash operations to preserve both the flash and the battery.
• Deterministic behavior in the event of unexpected reset.
 
SMFS is available immediately for a range of 16 and 32-bit MCUs and SOCs, and thanks to HCC’s Advanced Embedded Framework, can easily integrate with any RTOS, toolchain or development board.

For any further enquiries regarding this topic, please contact Glenn Moloney at Indes - IDS B.V.

21-02-2014