Hybrid Testing of a Solar Tracking Equipment using In-Circuit Testing and JTAG Debugging Strategies

This paper presents a real-time hardware testing design based on a hybrid approach between Flying Probe-Inspired In-Circuit Testing (FPICT) and Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) debugging techniques. The FPICT is used for testing the physical parameter values of our dual-axis solar tracking equipment composed of $1 \times$ Optocoupler, $1 \times$ Arduino UNO board, and $2 \times$ L298N motor drivers. Due to the Arduino UNO board’s inexistent JTAG testing facilities, we replaced it with an STM32 development board. In order to gain access to the internal logic of the STM32 microcontroller, we connected a dedicated and low-cost ST-Link V2 JTAG adapter to the FPICT device. Additionally, in order to make all 5 Circuits Under Tests (CUTs) test points (TPs) more accessible to the FPICT device, we designed a custom modular Printed Circuit Board (PCB). Finally, we present an autonomous design that achieves self-sufficiency regarding energy needs for the proposed hybrid testing method and the entire solar tracking equipment by making use entirely of solar energy. The experimental results show that the proposed non-intrusive hybrid testing approach is efficient regarding global fault coverage (66.35% for all targeted faults), placement accuracy (100% for considered test cases), testing time, and cost points of view.