The current Optical CAN transceiver, known as the OPTOCAN, includes Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries to power the device. The product comes with a wall charger that can be used to charge the batteries and perform a periodic discharge to preserve the full battery capacity.
The charger provided with the product fails to meet the desired performance requirements for the user. Specifically, it does not include charge level indication, the discharge feature does not always function, and the charger occasionally needs to reset.
The primary group impacted is the electrical magnetic compatibility (EMC) validation engineers who use the product to perform testing. This problem is primarily within the Kokomo Technical Center (KTC) Engineering Lab Building (ELB), but it could reach further to other BorgWarner facilities that use the same OPTOCAN. An estimate of immediately impacted people is about 15-20 people.
The societal impact of solving this problem would include other EMC testing groups which require the OPTOCAN device, both internal to BorgWarner and other companies in the automotive industry. Solving the problem would improve the overall charging quality, discharging functionality, battery protection, and capability of charging more than one battery at the same time.
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