Introduction

Safety and reliability are important and critical topics in many applications. Imagine if the buttons of a stovetop, that are controlled by a microcontroller, suddenly break. In this scenario, it is very important for the controller to detect the issue and safely turn the stovetop OFF to avoid potential danger. The safety and robustness features of the AVR® microcontrollers, in conjunction with the Class B firmware library, are valuable tools in handling robustness issues.

The Functional Safety Field Engagement Board demonstrates various features of an AVR microcontroller, such as Watchdog Timer (WDT), Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC), Brown-out Detection (BOD), Voltage Level Monitoring (VLM), Power-on Reset (POR), and Timer/Counter type D (TCD) fault detection. In addition, Class B self-tests are designed to detect various faults on start-up or during program execution and shut down the application safely in case of a fault.