Developing the Agilent U1177A Wireless Connectivity Solution

Electronic Products: How did the idea for this product come about? When did it happen? Who were the people involved at the very beginning?

See Yung Chan (Agilent Technologies Product Planner for the U1177A): We constantly engage with our customers to keep abreast of their measurement needs and ever changing application challenges. We learned that many of our customers need greater safety and higher efficiency when it comes to measuring in the field. Measuring on live machinery or electrical systems in industrial settings can be challenging and hazardous, but unavoidable. There are several occasions where the maintenance engineers or technicians need to understand the loading conditions of the industrial system, which can only be done when the system is in operation.

During the economic downturn in 2009, many companies were downsizing. The need for higher work efficiency became very urgent. The maintenance engineers or technicians are required to perform more tasks with less; less resources, less time, less people.

The Agilent U1177A Wireless Connectivity Solution development team, from left to right: Sophia Lee, Wai Yean Chan, Larry Tsai, See Yung Chan,Seong Tee Ang, Joo Heng Lee, Seong Ghee Hua. Team members Sook Wai Wong and Lam Hin Lim were not available at the time this picture was taken. 

  We saw the gaps, and our R&D and marketing team started to brainstorm for potential solutions in 2009. In fact, as part of an innovation program within the R&D team, the initial concept discussion started much earlier. The early concept was centered around mobility for handheld meters, to remove constraints due to the need for cables. Going for a wireless solution is then the natural answer to this.

 Electronic Products: When was it decided to go ahead with this project? What was the critical factor in committing to the product’s development?

Chan: The management recognized the benefits of this project and pledged commitment to it in early 2010. It was then determined that Agilent’s industrial handheld instruments solution should have greater usability and flexibility for use in industrial environment, on top of Agilent’s known legacy of high performance and high accuracy for its handhelds.

Electronic Products: What new technologies had to be developed?

Chan: We considered a few wireless communication technologies to make this happen, namely Zigbee, Bluetooth, proprietary wireless protocol, and even WiFi. Considering the factors of power consumption, leveragability, and ease of use and setup, we decided to choose Bluetooth due to its low power consumption, low cost, international open standard and wide available on common computing devices.

The initial design for the U1177A Bluetooth adapter was to enable communication with a PC running on Windows or a laptop, directly without the need of additional proprietary hardware; most laptops or PCs at that time already had built-in Bluetooth capability. Together with our existing complimentary GUI Data Logger software, our customers are able to perform data logging wirelessly with minimal investment.

Inspired by the accelerating smartphone growth (all smartphones have Bluetooth), we then decided to add Android Apps to the project scope as well. Furthermore, the smart devices enable greater portability when working in the field. The Agilent Mobile Meter and Mobile Logger apps have now became the key elements of the Agilent’s Wireless Remote Connectivity (WRC) solution, of which the U1177A Bluetooth adapter is part.

With Android apps development, we redesigned the program architecture to make sure that the WRC solution is compatible across the full range of Agilent handheld DMMs with different capabilities, functions, resolution, and accuracy. This is important, as our customers would want to have the freedom to choose the handheld DMM based on the application, performance needs, and budget availability.

Electronic Products: Who worked on the development?

Chan: R&D and product planning team worked closely from the product definition stage, hardware design, user interface (UI) design, mobile apps development to design validations.

Safety and regulatory team worked extra hours with local field regulatory engineers to determine various countries’ specific RF regulatory requirements and certifications.

Electronic Products: What happened in getting the product from design to manufacturing? Were there changes in the design along the way? If so, why?

Chan: Bluetooth is an open standard that utilizes the 2.4GHz ISM band, which, in principle, is designated to all ITU-R countries. However, most countries require EMC compliance for RF-type approval. There are some slight differences in term of requirements; hence, we needed to fine tune the RF circuits and PCB design.

Electronic Products: What were the manufacturing team’s major contributions to the product’s realization?

Chan: We wanted to keep the U1177A Bluetooth adapter affordable so that almost all our existing and future customers would be able to enjoy the benefits of an innovative WRC solution. It took a lot of negotiation and production process fine tuning from the manufacturing team to keep the cost low.

Electronic Products: How long was the entire design cycle, from concept to shipment?

Chan: It took us less than two years to complete this project.

Electronic Products: What was the market acceptance like? What feedback did you get from the marketplace?

Chan: Our customers and distributors are very excited about the U1177A Bluetooth adapter, the core of the Agilent Wireless Remote Connectivity (WRC) solution for Agilent’s handheld Digital Multimeters (HH DMMs). With this compact yet useful and affordable adapter, our customers get to add wireless connectivity to their current Agilent handheld digital multimeters and turn their Android smartphone into a remote measurement, control, and reporting device. It has exceeded our expectations with more than 5,000 downloads received (for the mobile apps) just after the first month of its launch.

Our customers are telling us that the Agilent WRC solution is helping them improve safety and efficiency. They no longer need to stay in hazardous areas to monitor measurements, but the wireless remote connectivity solution makes data monitoring easier and safer in a wide variety of applications. There are a few occurrences where the tasks required the services of multiple technicians or is just too time consuming; it can now be done by just one technician using three HH DMMs with U1177A attached and placed at different locations.

Electronic Products: What did you learn from the process?

Chan: We initially thought that this is an easy and small accessories product which we would be able to complete within 6 months’ time. However, once we realize the potential of this product, we started to craft a comprehensive solution, which significantly extend the project timeline.

We started small but ended up big. Hence, never underestimate a small project.

Electronic Products: Has this product’s development led to ideas for future products? How do you foresee the product family growing in the future?

Chan: Leveraging on open and common platform like Bluetooth and riding on the wave of increased availability of smart mobile devices, we believe that the possibilities of Agilent WRC solution are limitless. We are committed to the WRC solution and will continue to improve on it in term of capabilities (more features on apps or software) and availability (more products joining WRC). The December 1st update (internally called WRC2, where we added U1210 series clamp meter to the list of handheld test tools compatible with the U1177A Bluetooth adapter and new Voice-out function on mobile apps) is a great example of our commitment. We will continue to listen to our customers and enable new applications that will make their jobs safer and more efficient.