Sendyne’s new SIM100 isolation monitoring safety device is designed to detect potential electrical hazards in electric and hybrid vehicles. The SIM100 module can unambiguously detect the electrical isolation state of a high-voltage system while the system is operating and experiencing large voltage variations. The SIM100 detects both resistive leakages and capacitively stored energy.

High-voltage battery systems, such as the ones used in EVs, are typically electrically isolated from the chassis. However, this isolation may deteriorate either gradually or suddenly, exposing human operators to dangerous shocks.  Also, capacitances from the power system to the chassis may inadvertently change, accumulating hazardous charges.

Sendyne’s SIM100 can detect these types of potential hazards while the system is operating and voltages are fluctuating as much as 100 V. According to the company, other commercial devices are only able to detect resistive leakages when there are no dynamic fluctuations.

Communications are achieved with the host ECU via an isolated CAN 2.0B interface (500 kbit/s). The range of input voltages is 5 V to 53 V, which can accommodate most vehicle systems.  Operating temperature range is -40° C to +105° C.

The SIM100 module was pre-introduced to select customers and is now commercially available. An evaluation kit, with cables, CAN-to-USB dongle and software is also available.

“It’s a new type of electronic device that takes advantage of the modern stochastic process theory in order to solve a safety problem with very few known parameters,” said John Milios, Sendyne’s CEO. “We were able to achieve them utilizing modeling and computing tools which we have developed for a wide area of IoT analytics applications.”

Source: Sendyne