// Coulomb.Ctrl //

What is the Coulomb.Ctrl firmware?

The Coulomb.Ctrl firmware is licensable firmware developed by Quicksand for Cortex ARM M0, M3, M33 and M4 architectures and contains 2 innovative concepts:

• bare-metal firmware libraries for ultra low power sensing, controlling and communication
• self-aware adaptation of firmware behavior to manage real-time energy consumption

Why was the Coulomb.Ctrl firmware developed?

Quicksand designs micro-electronics for battery powered smart devices. Examples including smart metering, smart wearables and smart consumer goods. To guarantee maximum battery life in these ‘fire-and-forget’ applications, there was a need for adaptive and self-aware firmware to preserve energy consumption to the utmost.

When was the Coulomb.Ctrl firmware developed?

The initial Coulomb.Ctrl development started in 2014 when Quicksand was contracted to provide microcontroller firmware for a large scale smart metering project. The objective was to keep a smart meter alive for +16 years on a single primary battery. This development led to numerous low power scalable models and libraries for ARM Cortex, including ultra low power sensing, controlling and communication.

In 2016, Quicksand added the first real-time adaptive firmware models to make an electronic device self-aware and controls its own power consumption in order to guarantee the foreseen battery lifetime. Non-deterministic energy behavior, especially in wireless communication, can now be gracefully compensated through real-time behavioral adaptation.

In 2019, Quicksand developed the Power Tower, a deep-probing current profiler with high dynamic range (1nA – 1A) and high sample rate (10kS/s) in order to monitor electronic devices with Coulomb.Ctrl firmware over months and even years. Anomalies in current consumption are instantly reported by the Power Tower and software models can be adapted when necessary.