Automated testing of battery chargers with PCAN-Explorer 6
Industrial charger manufacturer
Manual ECU validation, slow and error-prone
PCAN-Explorer 6, PCAN-USB
The problem
Industrial charging systems must be extensively tested before commissioning, as they control the entire charging process — for example in electric vehicles or industrial battery systems. It is essential to ensure reliable, efficient charging without overload: a charging or communication error could cause power loss, overheating, failures, or even fires. A major international charger manufacturer needed to test its products faster, more accurately, and in larger quantities.
Modern chargers integrate a control unit (ECU) that regulates the power electronics and communicates over the CAN bus. Until now, these parameters were checked manually: messages were sent one by one on the CAN bus, and the ECU's responses logged separately. This error-prone process greatly slowed down testing and was ill-suited to validating several chargers in parallel. What was missing was a way to reproduce communication between the PC test system and the ECUs in an automated, synchronized, and reproducible way.
The solution
The company equipped its test environment with PCAN-Explorer 6, with the charger ECUs connected to the test PC via a PCAN-USB interface. The PC communicates with the charger's ECU via the PCAN-USB adapter: the ECU interprets incoming messages, controls the power electronics, and returns status messages, which are logged and displayed by PCAN-Explorer. The software manages cyclic message sending: two distinct messages are automatically sent to the ECU while responses are logged in synchronization.
Key features used:
- Operation of several CAN buses in parallel;
- Symbolic representation via symbol files;
- Built-in trace and replay functions;
- Automation via macros and VBScript — flexible control of cyclic sequences without developing dedicated test software;
- Structured project management and optional add-on modules (Plotter, Instruments Panel).
The result
With PCAN-Explorer 6, the manufacturer fundamentally improved its quality assurance. Communication between the PC test system and the charger ECUs is now automated, synchronized, and documented reproducibly. Tests that were previously laborious and error-prone when performed manually now run in parallel, efficiently, and in a standardized way.
