ENVIRONMENTAL VERIFICATION
A flight controller that works on the bench at 20°C tells you very little. We verify custom flight controllers across their operating temperature range — powered, with MAVLink telemetry live throughout — and interpret what the data says about the design.
The board stays powered and connected for the entire profile. Nothing is inferred from a cold start afterwards.
IMU sub-board, enclosure surface, and voltage regulator. Placement is a judgement call, not a checklist — the point is to separate ambient temperature from self-heating.
MAVLink streams throughout the profile. IMU bias drift, EKF innovation and convergence behaviour, and rail voltage are logged continuously against measured temperature.
If the EKF diverges or an axis drifts, the question is why. Sensor part-to-part variation, thermal design, or firmware compensation — the three are distinguished, not guessed.
Test houses can run a chamber. Board designers can lay out a PCB. Firmware engineers can read an EKF log. Environmental verification of a flight controller requires all three at once, because the interesting failures sit exactly where those disciplines meet.
A rail that sags 80 mV at −20°C is a regulator problem. An accelerometer bias that walks with case temperature is a placement problem. An EKF that refuses to converge only after a cold soak is usually neither — it is a compensation coefficient that was fitted at room temperature. Telling these apart is the work.
We design and build the flight controllers we test. That is the difference.
Testing is performed using the environmental chamber at a public testing institute in Tokyo. Using an independent public facility rather than in-house equipment means the measurement environment itself is not ours to influence.
| Temperature range | −40°C to +85°C (chamber capability to +100°C) |
|---|---|
| Humidity range | 20–98% RH (control range varies with temperature) |
| Chamber volume | 1000 × 800 × 1000 mm |
| Cable ports | Ø50 mm and Ø120 mm, 2 positions |
| Powered testing | Yes — power and telemetry routed through cable ports |
Chamber size permits testing of a complete airframe, not only the board. Where relevant, we verify the flight controller as installed rather than in isolation — enclosure, harness and mounting all affect thermal behaviour.
Documents are written to be usable in certification discussions, not only as an internal record.
Approaching type or airworthiness certification and wanting design issues found before formal testing.
Deploying flight controllers of unverified provenance and needing to establish how they actually behave outside room temperature.
Operating in conditions where the specification sheet and the field are not the same thing.
Written specifications are sufficient to begin — a call is not required. We reply in writing within 2 business days. We operate from Japan (JST, UTC+9).