Some of our most inventive products emerge from solving a specific customer problem. That is exactly what prompted the development of the PGA900 signal conditioner– a product released this week.
In late 2012, a customer came to us with a problem. Their heavy machinery, such as forklifts and bulldozers, required the customer to replace hydraulic pressure measuring equipment, including the signal conditioner, every 10 years. This pressure measurement technology is used when hydraulics are involved, such as when a forklift driver activates a lever to lift the front end of the forklift off the ground.
The customer needed a solution that lasted twice as long and with better performance, accuracy, reliability and integration – all while using less power.
This challenge pushed our engineers to think differently. Traditionally, a signal conditioner is a single analog chip within a much larger chain of analog and digital devices. A pressure signal would come from one sensor, and the signal conditioner would make the data more accurate, before ultimately sending the information to a central processor that would convert the raw information into usable, digital data. But what if the signal conditioner could do much of the “heavy lifting,” processing the information into digital data, so the central processor only needed to read the data?
“The customer wanted best-in-class performance with a really good processor, robust power management and high-performance analog input and output,” said enhanced industrial manager Robert Schreiber. “Before the PGA900, that meant putting the best-in-class in each of those products onto a single board, which results in a large board using lots of power. But this customer wanted more – an all-integrated system that simultaneously reduces power consumption and form factor, which also reduces the cost.”
That’s when Robert was brought in to lead key experts on processors, power management and high-performance analog products – engineers working in different business units all over the world. Robert’s core team reached out to the best engineers in each of these key areas to collaborate on turning the customer’s dream into a reality.
“It was a very technically challenging project,” he said. “Nothing was in place to pursue the project. No design, no verification, no applications, no test, no product engineering. But one of the great strengths of TI is the ability to marshal resources to address a specific problem.”
The team worked closely together, and with the customer, focusing not only on the specifications requested but factoring in how the product would be used in the real world. Two years of hypothesizing, testing and refining resulted in the PGA900– a fully integrated signal conditioner offering high performance and precision without compromising power or size. It is an innovation that only could have happened by bringing experts in their respective fields together.
“Once we had a ‘dream team’ assembled, there was no discussion about whether we could do it. They just said, ‘This is fun and challenging’ and worked until the challenge was overcome. When we came up against a roadblock, we were forced to innovate around it and challenged each other internally,” Robert said.
While the PGA900 was invented for a specific use, the product can now be used in a variety of applications to measure not just pressure but also weight and load, liquid levels, strain on products, humidity, acceleration, temperature and position in factory and building automation equipment, vehicles, intelligent sensor networks, HVAC systems and white good appliances.
“This is what happens when we set our talent free and let the best engineers drive a project,” Robert said. “And it shows what happens with brilliant collaboration.”
For more information on the PGA900, please read our article in the Analog Applications Journal and our Application Report.