Power Failure Testing

If the robustness against sudden power failures is to be tested as part of the product qualification, the provoked failure can be carried out for the entire system or only for the storage medium. It is advisable to start with the storage medium alone, since much faster cycles are possible, in order to make a preselection.

Ready-made hardware for testing power failures is hardly available. There are relays that can be controlled via USB, but most of them have complicated and outdated APIs, which makes it difficult to integrate them into current operating systems. Therefore, this application note provides a simple build proposal as a solution.