Hi, Its teardown time again and Deja Vu. you may remember this: Cyprus Automatic Activation device for parachuting that I did a teardown of many years ago and I'll link it in at the end of this video and down below if you haven't seen that and that was an older model of this as I said Cyprus Automatic Activation device is called. It's designed for our parachutist and it's a bit of life-saving equipment. hence why this will be in very interesting teardown because the design and qualification of a life-saving product like this is a real big deal.

So what it's designed to do is it's got a pressure sensor in here and altitude sensor effectively and that continuously measures your altitude. And if you're a parachutist and let's say you jumped out of your plane and you went I don't know, unconscious for some reason. I'm sure there's a variety of reasons why you know you could lose consciousness or you're just too busy enjoying the view and you forget to pull the cord. Well, this thing will detect the change in air pressure ie.

your height and it'll detect your rate of fall and all that sort of stuff. and at a predetermined altitude which you can program on this little doodad. Here it will automatically cut your cord, your Eva your reserve or primary's parachute. Not exactly sure how it actually loops in and configures.

True to the system, it comes with a little cord here which interlocks with your chute and there's a pyrotechnic charge in here and a very sharp blade in here that then cuts through your loop which then automatically pulls your parachute. And the stats on this thing is actually very impressive. They've manufactured over 200,000 of these things. There's been a hundred and twenty three million jumps using this thing and it's saved over four thousand lives with zero failures that they're aware of anyway.

So if you believe the marketing department, um, but anyway, that's a lot of life saved. So this is a real critical bit of safety equipment for parachute. Now this is the Cypress expert Unit here and you'll notice that it's very you know as slimline compared to the previous one which I actually are tore down but it, you know it. Basically it has the same looking our controller like this and it looks like exactly the same pyrotechnic charge cutter on here.

but I They do have the Cypress 2 now so I'm not sure if this is the the Cypress one I guess or this or is this is actually the Cypress 2 and the one we tore down previously is the Cypress one I'm not actually quite sure. Anyway, it's the expert model manufactured in oh four so it's quite old and I've got to actually thank Angus Dobby for sending this one in. It's been on my tear down chauffeur. I'm not gonna say how long, but if you have my miscellaneous devices, it was sent into the mailbag for a teardown, so this should be a fascinating look at the progress in engineering design.

I Don't expect spectacular progress but small refinements between the previous generation of this unit which was very interesting tear down: it was potted with a renewable gel and use primary lithium batteries and like a real old-school micro controller that's super rugged and Angus said that this has to meet of course our EMI requirements as well. So yeah, it's gonna be interesting to take this puppy apart. Unfortunately, the battery is dead and I'm not sure what battery it used. I Assume you have to take the end off because it's got a filter on here which is actually replaceable after getting wet.

How wet? Well, I'm assuming if you fall through clouds or something you know, get some moisture or whatever. do you have to replace it every time? I'm not sure anyone out there actually uses is a parachutist and uses one of these things. Let us know Now by the way, they do have a new model specifically for wingsuits because wingsuits descend at a much lower rate than a typical parachutist you know, basically in freefall. Pretty much wingsuits.

you know you can fly around, You stay up there for you know, ages and descend much much slower. So obviously like the rate of change and things like that in your moments are very different and critically different to a parachute model. So they do. Actually, this is the parachute model.

so they do have a specific wingsuit model and also it's important for the pilots of the parachuting planes to actually be aware that these devices are being used. and they actually Cyprus Actually published guidelines for the pilots that they're not to descend faster than a certain rate, not to drop below a certain preset altitude and all that sort of jazz because the last thing you want is a whole bunch of our parachutes going off in the back of the plane or charge has been cut anyway. I'm sure they wouldn't. you know deploy because there's no wind to actually deploy them, but still, it wouldn't be pretty I'm sure if a whole bunch of parachutes went off in the back of the plane.

so if the cords got cut now with the display unit, you can actually preset your like the altitude. you can put in different modes like our expert mode and there's a student model as well or a student mode and a fast freefall mode and you know various other different things and you can preset the altitude that you want it to release it now. I Think the previous model didn't have automatic calibration because a pressure of course atmospheric pressure is going to change all the time as the weather changes and that's how it determines your altitude. so the last thing you want is fear to calibrate in the morning and then you go jump near afternoon and a big low-pressure systems you know or high-pressure system has come through and it's completely changed.

that and you could be off by I Don't know, Haven't ran them back of the envelope numbers? You could be off by hundreds of meters I'm sure so you know it could be a big deal. So this one actually has this new model actually has automatic calibration. It actually measures the air pressure twice per minute and then it takes an average of that. So it's always continually knowing that you're on the ground because you're not falling.

Uh-huh. It's obviously you know you could use software to detect that obviously. And it auto calibrates your ground level so you don't have to worry about before you take off actually setting this thing so you know I Press once and it switches on and it goes through a self-test routine and then it goes into auto calibration mode. It's always measuring the ground Atmos very pressure level.

so it's Auto calibrators. That's pretty cool now. Obviously this thing's going to be pretty well sealed. so you can see these grommets around here.

and I'm sure we'll see these in the teardown. Looks like we got a little large oak in there and this connector here. Let's take that off. Whoa, look at that.

It's got an o-ring for nice moisture sealing on there. It's a TRS type one, but it's like you know it really is I'm sure it's a carefully designed and engineered to be quite reliable because you need a super reliable contact you don't want. you know vibration and everything else. I'm quite concerned that there's no locking mechanism on there.

Maybe they heat shrink that after it's gone on or something and this one hasn't had that happen. I Don't know if anyone I mean it requires have quite a lot of force to take it off, but still I wouldn't rely on just that oh ring seal to do that. So I'm not sure what the deal is there, but anyway, it's very nicely constructed, all the cable ends are raided, and now all this stuff. I'm not sure if there's any like government regulations for these sorts of things and but basically Cyprus are number one in the business and so they do take like you know, the safety compliance of all this sort of stuff.

extremely seriously. So yeah, I'm sure it's a they probably invented their own standards and if they fall if there are any other regulations and I'm sure they follow that as well. But yeah, it just oozes quality. This thing.

It's a super rugged as you'd expect. Certainly alright, let's get inside this thing. We've got four screws on the end here and four on this end, so hopefully it all just comes apart. I Assume it's going to be potted like the old one, or at least part of it.

There's going to be a problem like a Pride a Lithium primary battery in here because you don't want any of that rechargeable rubbish when you've got a super reliable product like this that you have to ensure works you want the best quality and probably certified batteries as well Lithium primary ones? you know you're probably like Panasonic I Remember when I worked on underwater stuff which used D cell lithium primary cells we would specifically buying them from Panasonic and they'd actually come with a certification certificate that they're actually. You know these batteries have been manufactured 2x compliance and tested and everything else to ensure that we guarantee that we're going to get. you know, the ten, twelve, or fifteen year battery life or whatever it is we're required at the time, and they would still have sufficiently low ESR and capacity to trigger in in our case, a sensor, a heating element which actually burst a flotation bag of something on the ocean surface which then caused it to sink and sink to the bottom of the ocean. Mmm okay, that looks like a T3 talks little self tappers so don't know how often you'd have to replace the battery in this thing.

It was anything like the previous one I think it was. you know, for the compliance life or the service life of the thing the previous one used larged I think they were decels. have to rewatch the rewatch the video I'm not sure what's going on there. how does your filter come out? I Know the filter just unscrew.

Oh yeah, just unscrews like that. There's the port for our pressure sensor. typical like a gauge type port with the extended nose on that. Okay, managed to get that off.

Just got the screwdriver in there and just pulled it off. This is the end bit and they see the O-ring around there. That's really expect to prevent moisture ingress. Oh and we're in like Flynn there's the end of it down there.

We got some sponge. oh that. that's a hard sell. That's a hard sell phone.

Yeah. I'll get that end off. Die there. We go.

There, we go. Yeah, we've got a hard sell foam on there. Like the previous unit, we have a like a soldered shut can for everything. So yep, very similar to the previous one.

So there's your RFI compliance right there. Oh something. Do that. So that's a Milf.

It's a Milf resistor for you Milf resistor fanboys card-carrying There we go. Why there's a resistor on that? Not sure external. hmm would it be the purpose of that? Anyway, this is interesting. Check this out.

They've got a wire sold it onto the can here which goes over to this board here which has a couple of little slot 23's on it. they little transistors or are they diodes or whatnot. But yeah it goes over to here and what is going on there there? they have this external and then three wires going back into. well actually no.

on to that other PCB up the top which has that Milf resistor. so some more hard cell foam in here. No workers so that they keen on their hard cell phone anyway. It certainly doesn't have a user replaceable battery in this thing as you'd expect.

but of course the microcontroller can be ridiculously low power and the LCD takes bugger-all And the pressure sensor I can't offhand. It's been so long since I've dealt with pressure sensors, but to like it only powers up as I said twice a minute or something like that. So presumably when it detects that you've gone up in altitude and then you starting to jump I presume it to the sample faster than are twice per minute. So it goes into sort of like a higher power mode, but even then you know your power consumption from Allah It probably uses Cr123, but not your traditional bump and then contact ones.

you don't want contacts in here. You want a for the utmost and reliability for all these mission-critical applications. you want welded contacts directly on to the primary battery. So looking at the size of this thing I'd say you know probably two Cr123a lithium primary batteries would be the go.

anyway. yeah sure that protection doodad is specially like. it comes out and then like like shield and then goes into there some sort of like some sort of ESD protection or something. Why it's not into white extent or not internal I don't know.

Oh no I just noticed those wires don't go on to that PCB they go like that. that's a little bit bit how you doing but of course these things don't move once they're all in place so it's no problems against the light, we're against the fiberglass or anything like that. But yeah, and then the other one just goes. This is the activation the pyrotechnic charge cable and it goes through there as well I'm not sure if you can see that, but it does go through a hole in that PCB there.

so it's really nothing else connected to that board since I'm elf resistor. just don't get it. Oh oh, this is easy to come apart I stood that with my finger. Tada.

Ah, more hard self foam. So if you see the previous video I Highly recommend it then you'll know that that was all our re interval potting gel and it was horrible. horrible stuff. So they've gone for the hard sell foam in this case so that's interesting, but we shouldn't just be able to peel off this can quite easily.

Well, the good thing is is that it's not one continuous wrap. It just has these plates on here like this. so it should be able to get the iron on there and simply remove all these plates. Sweet, chewy, Yeah.

too easy in like. Flynn Cut out for a cap there. Oh, this is much easier to get into than the previous one. I Can assure you my fingers gonna burn before it releases.

Tune in next week. Oh phone's gonna come off. Oh look I know we still got some of the re-entry herbal pot in jail. Hang on I'll show you in a minute.

this is gonna be. this is gonna be an interesting teardown. Well it already is. There's some bloody tab there.

Okay here we are. Alright, that's not a CI one, two three. There you go. Single battery makes sense.

They didn't have enough room for anything else you can see the the re-enter ah ball pot in jail there. It's always fun icky stuff to play with. but I've used this before. It's really good because it means that not only does it prevent moisture in onto your boards, but it means that you can get through you can.

You can stick your screwdriver through it like this and then adjust your pots on your board which I've had to do many times and then when you pull it back out it seals shut again. So it's it's really nice stuff. It's called a reenter more potting gel or Jesus is gonna be. This is not gonna be pretty anyway.

there's wires running all a snake and all over the place. Didn't expect that and as our micro so the hard cell phone that'd be a thermal insulation would be my guess. although why it's not you know on the sides and everything else. I Guess you just need it over those parts and I was on the end just to just to provide some thermal insulation on there.

all the battery just fell out. there. you go. Yep, welded tabs on there.

No worries whatsoever. There you go, that's an ER 1852 87 is that didn't I that's not the date code anyway. I'll measure that see if there's any jute. No, no, absolutely not a sausage left in that puppy.

So Wow completely drained. Didn't expect that. You notice an interesting penetrator system going through what looks like a metal like a metal can on the backside of that of the PCB there. And they've got these penetrators which go through that? where are they gone to a lot of effort there to terminate those wires onto that board.

so that's interesting. Looks like you know the bottom of the board has the pins that stick through. Look at some sort of penetrating system. Hmm.

and that's why this won't peel off because I'm not sure I can see that there's actually a soldered connection down to what looks like from here anyway. requires closer inspection. Looks like a some sort of like SMB SMB package device. but anyway, that's sold it down to there.

It's annoying There it is. Alexi 2 to 6 is it upside down so all the electrons are going to fall out and they've got an SMB package across both of those pins in this little bit of tin copper wire going up. which was then soldered over to the can. Yes, that's pretty how you're doing I think not sure what the deal is there.

Jeez, I'm a bit more engineering thought required in that because you know you don't want to be doing that sort of stuff in in a production environment. That's just silly. and a couple of these are mylar sheets are falling out so they were probably were they for the A I don't know, they were insulating something. Anyway, you can see a second SMB device down there as well between some pins.

so design afterthought. Perhaps they needed some extra protection I assume there's some sort of you know, trans or B type thing. uh-huh the wires going straight through the metal there I thought oh jeez, that's not a good thing to do. What if you are you, you know you're pulling the wires through and they get you know accidentally.

NIC the insulation gets NIC Well, it looks like they've actually got some reinforcing on the edges of that. so they've actually you know that make smooth entry hole there. So nice attention to detail. One thing, we didn't look at these external penetrators here and I can't pull on those wires so they obviously have quite a deal of strain relief.

And if we get in there and trying, can we prize that out, perhaps prize that off? Nope, right. that's pretty darn solid. Wow Oh, there's one thing I Just realized and that the pressure port on the back here. um I Thought that would have gone directly to the sensor, but doesn't It just goes inside the unit on the end here and then it just snakes around and bingo there is your precious pressure sensor I'm of course a nothing.

There'll be no reenter Abul gel inside that there. you have it off hand I don't know if that's a custom job' or it's a you know, a Bosch or something. They were big in the pressure sensor market back in when I did it I think for a call correctly. Anyway, and that's it.

Like an SMB ceramic part on the base of that and then with the port on the top. Of course there's no re-enter or gel inside there. Yes, be careful not to get it in there, but there you go. Jesus what bigger ceramic there? don't they? and then a micro which has some sort of our test marking on it.

as in programmed probably. But yeah, and then we've got some pins on top that'll be a test port. Don't seem to have something? I don't know. Wow, they do actually have re an herbal gel inside the pressure port.

I Get I The pressure can be transferred through that I Guess it can I Never gave that a thought I just assumed that they wouldn't have done that. Wow, that's that's. fascinating that there there is three, that's three and herbal chilling there. Hey Sam it's the same stuff as this.

Feels like it. Wow it's one way to keep your moisture out of you pressure sensor that's for sure. Yeah, the part over there is that the same Yeah LX c Two to six the odds of me slicing my finger open on some aspect of this can well confidence is high I Repeat confidence is high. There's another case ground connection there.

they're taking that I know that bug is off I Thought that went down to the PCB so that like internal goes out over to here. Well yeah, sticky business buggers off comes out the red wire. It looks like it goes right up the clacker of the that's probably for the shield I'd say that it'd be for the is that for the shield? No, no, it looks like it goes into this I the braid on that's already connected to their but they've obviously got another internal wire going up the clacker right up inside here so that's interesting. They're really taking all that very seriously.

all the you know a shield in and whatnot. hmm for all you really urban elephant are days that oh that's good stuff. You can see why I said like if you got through there with the screwdriver and you wanted to adjust something and then you pull it back out, you can see it sort of like reseal itself. Oh go for the money shot that Beautiful.

Yeah! re-enter herbal Snot. This is great. Yes it is as fun as it looks and that looks like an Msp430. Sorry about the crudity this.

It's really hard to see that. Yep. I do believe that's an Msp430 so that's not surprising at all because you need a super low power micro in there. you know, relatively.

you know it's like well proven and stuff like that though. I Don't know how long the Msp430 has been around, but it's been around long time so they would have chosen a proven part. that's you know, fully qualified. But the interesting thing about this is that the if you read a lot of data sheets for all pretty much all electronics components not in every one of them, but a lot of the times the manufacturers will put in, this device is not qualified for use in life-saving and all medical devices.

and of course this is a life-saving device. Now it's not that TI I won't show you the part or you can't just buy the part from you know, digi-key or arrow or some other supplier. But it's not qualified. So if you want to have a qualified part from the manufacturer which you know he's likely cypress wood then they would have to actually get a written permission from TI saying that.

Yep, this is used in a life-saving device, you know and they might have extra qualifications for the part and things like that. Do they have the industrial grade in here and you know other things that are. You know, tricky compliance issues when you're talking about that. But anyway.

Yep. Msp430 and really not much else like it's got the internal flash of course, there's no external A-squared prom or anything like that, that's you know, storing any parameters or anything like that. so it's all internal. and there's our sensor down in there offhand.

I don't know the brand or anything from that. So if I can find any details, Oh edit it in. But yeah, nice ceramic base on that, that's for sure. but it's interesting.

There's not much in there is there. Now from the physical looks of this, it appears to be a barometric pressure sensor from tE Connectivity Now they're a big manufacturer of you know, quality pressure sensors, but it's in this 12 pin ceramic package. You can count the pins on there. This is different from their lower range pressure sensors which are basically our eight pin job.

So I found what are their 12 range than one of their 12 pin ones that actually has a microprocessor in there as well. It's got software calibration points, it's got an ADC and it outputs digital words, digital data. So yeah, that's but that one doesn't seem internally, doesn't seem to be the same thing. So I'm not sure what's going on.

so I cannot see the multiple die in there. for example, like is on the datasheet for that one. so I bet it looks for all the world like a tE Connectivity one more searching. So in any case, that's going to use a micro machine silicon piezo resistive sensing element in there.

And yes, you do actually buy these or you can actually buy them. Gel Transparently gel filled so it's very likely that with the gel we saw in there is different from our reenter, more potting gel from the outside. so it's probably you know, specially designed gel to be pressure transparent I guess is that a thing? Yes it is. Anyway, it helps prevent moisture ingress into the sensor.

and as for tearing down this thing, this looks like it's like potted on the fully potted on the backsides. I Don't like. My chances are getting that apart easily. Anyway, there's probably just a little micro in there driving the LCD and that's it because it would just be like cereal up the clacker here, so nothing terribly interesting in there.

What we're interested in about is all this stuff in here which we saw and that is fascinating. Thank you very much Angus for sending that in and it is a significant advance to the like mostly through hole one we saw previously and it runs on a single Lithium primary cell. They probably get these you know, qualified from a rep. You know you don't just buy these from the Shenzhen market when it's you know, mission critical life critical life-saving device like this.

So yeah, I'm sure there are, you know, properly qualified cells and everything else. So yeah, they want to cover their ass there. And the interconnection system is all like custom-designed and stuff like that. It's all very nice.

They've a lot of thoughts gone into like moisture ingress into this thing and it's got the replaceable external filter thing which is supposed to change if it gets up wet. you know I'm sure that moisture is probably not a problem and with all the hard cellphone they're doing some you know, thermal isolation and things like that I Doubt that there's another temperature sensor in there I Don't know whether or not you'd bother. Maybe another. Maybe you know the little SOT 23 temperature sensor might be in there, but there's nothing special I Don't think this is a combination sensor I think it's just our barometric pressure and that's it.

But apart from a few little hacks on here and stuff like that and some interesting you know, penetrators, but they've put a lot of effort into shielding and stuff like that. And as I said, like qualifying something like this, not sure of the regulations behind it and behind these, if any, if anyone knows, please don't leave it in the comments. But yeah, they've refined this over many years and so even with the few little how you doin' hacks, you know they're supremely confident in these things, as are the people who are use them. And as they said, they, you know save 4,000 lives with Zero recorded failures.

So very, very impressive. And yes, they would test the crap out of this and qualify them. So that's why they basically just make one product or two if you count the wingsuit variant of this. and you know, really, that's their what their R1 product company.

Basically, they just specialize in this. So yeah, I'm sure the design and testing and qualification of this is all the big deal, but yeah, they went to a lot of effort in there to make sure that this thing is as robust and as reliable as possible. I'm not sure what the life span is given like 15 / 5, so maybe it's like 15 years ultimate battery life, five years operational or something like that. I'm not sure what the deal is there, but yeah, and obviously once you once it's past its service life, you throw it out because then the battery is going to be flat like this.

Well, I'm not sure why this is completely flat. would have expected some juice left, maybe, but yeah, zip-a-dee-doo-dah Anyway, thank you very much Angus for sending that in. It's a fascinating look at a bit of life-saving technology and there's more engineering. A lot more engineering and qualification that goes into this then what we can see in the teardown here.

But I hope you found that fascinating if you did, give it a big thumbs up and if you work on, you know if you work at Cyprus Please let us know. Let us know the insights that goes into behind the scenes of something like this that obviously they've designed to be super super reliable. and the software they would pour over every line of code in that software. So yeah, you can bet your bottom dollar there's no bugs in that, that's for sure.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Catch you next time. All right I know you want to see him he blow this pyrotechnics sensor I'm sure it's going to be nothing spectacular at all. it'll just go pop and a blade will come out that I don't know what sort of force and cut a string.

Now there doesn't seem to be any like you know, any boost sort of stuff in there. So I assume that there's just a driver transistor which connects it directly across the battery. I've measured the coil in here or whatever it is to you know, ignite. The pyrotechnic charge is one-and-a-half Ohms.

So I'm just going to hook it up to the power supply here three point six volts and then activate it. Let's go. All right, let's give it a shot. Shall we switch it on? Three amp Current limit? Don't Agusta Current limit Here we go.

Way beautiful. So I guess you can chalk up another a successful activation after all this time. Yeah, it's like more than the decade old still works. I'm not sure if you know exactly how the little pyrotechnic charge works in there.

please let us know. Do they have a spring at the end of it that seems to releases some little mechanism holding it back or something like that, or whether or not it's the force of the charge or whatnot. It's not a very loud pop, it's more of a little crack. You know? I don't know how to.

you can hear it on the video, but it's not very loud actually. check out the back of this. This is interesting. It's sort of like melted.

It's melted the string like yeah, yeah, there it is. anyway. Oh oh, can we see it night? We can't see through there again so you can really see the angle blade on both sides of that. And of course it has to be.

And good. It's got to go to a sharp edge to be able to cut the cord. and I've seen this cut like little steel cable as well, so it's pretty sharp and there's a lot of force behind that. But yeah, it works when you want it to.