• Safety Matters: What are Safety Integrity Levels?

    Safety Matters: What are Safety Integrity Levels?

    In my last Blog I posed the question “What are Safety Integrity levels?”.

    A safety integrity level according to IEC 61508 is “discrete level (one out of a possible four), corresponding to a range of safety integrity values, where….”. Actually, the…

  • Safety Matters: A Sampling of Functional Safety Standards

    Safety Matters: A Sampling of Functional Safety Standards

    In my last Blog, I promised a discussion on the various functional safety standards. As someone once said about standards, the great thing about standards is “that there are so many to choose from”.

    IEC 61508 is what is referred to as an A level or…

  • Functional Safety of 4/20mA Networks

    Functional Safety of 4/20mA Networks

    In my first blog of 2021, I will go back to a purely technical topic and discuss the functional safety of 4/20mA networks. I often make use of 4/20mA examples to explore functional safety questions due to their simplicity and the fact that most industrial…

  • Functional safety isolation

    Hi all,

    We're developing a functional safety product in accordance with IEC 61508 and ISO 13849.

    In our circuit we have a safety-related processor, using an SPI interface to exchange data with a uC non-functional safety.

    According with functional…

  • In the LTC6811 Safety Manual, the period by which the SM7 safety mechanism shall be executed is not mentioned! So, what should be its periodicity of execution?

    Hi all,

    In the safety manual of LTC6811, section  3B.1 ASSUMPTIONS OF USE FOR ASIL C; it is mentioned that the safety mechanisms shall be executed periodically.
    I'm interested in knowing the periodicity of execution for the safety mechanism SM7, as it…

  • Functional Safety & Security

    Functional Safety & Security

    Functional safety concentrates on protecting people, assets and the environment from inadvertent harm caused by non-malicious actors, for instance by bad planning, bad implementation, a bad set of requirements or random failures.

    Cyber security on…

  • Safety in FIRST

    Safety in FIRST

    Build season has started! That means lots of excitement, and it also means lots of opportunities to keep yourself and your teammates safe. We have our Winner and Runners-Up for the 2019 Safety Animation Award sponsored by UL! The winning entry was fr…

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  • (ADuM14x)Functional safety

    Hi !

    I have a question about ADuM14x.

    Our customer is trying to use ADuM14x.

    Target application is EPS.

    So the Functional safety is very important.

    They want to know the failure mode.

    The worst case is insulation breakdown.

    For example if contamination…

  • Terminology & Functional Safety

    Terminology & Functional Safety

    It is very hard to have a serious discussion on any topic if we can’t agree on what words mean. In particular, definitions are important and of course the relevant terminology.

    In an upcoming blog I plan to cover how standards are written, but in…

  • Functional Safety and Networking

    Functional Safety and Networking

    After writing my blog on the functional safety requirements for robots, cobots and mobots I thought it would be interesting to tackle functional safety requirements for networking. The two topics are linked as most robots will be networked as robots…