Hey Guys,
Here are another few thoughts.
We were originally part of Littelfuse. I spent about 17 years there and led the development of ISIS. In early 2009, I led a team of investors to break of business off to manage it independently. Littelfuse it still a critical part of our business. They are part of our supply chain and we work together on specific market opportunities.
ISIS was originally developed for the off-highway, agriculture and military markets. We stumbled into the restoration, racing and performance markets literally by accident. The exact same hardware that has been powering the One Lap Camaro since day one, is used in busses, RV's, limousines, military trucks and command vehicles. Here's a good example.
This is one of our customers that builds high-end recreational vehicles. Their typical install has 1 MASTERCELL and 6 POWERCELLS. Check out the video at about the 1:15 point. You will see the front part of their install in the coach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvU1v...geDecA&index=5
Littelfuse is the industry leader in automotive circuit protection. As such, our cells are filled with components to protect the system and the users from short circuits, resistive overloads, electrostatic discharges, load dumps, EMI and other nasty things that can happen in the automotive environment. The system was tested and qualified to General Motors' 3172 underhood specification. This battery of tests covers includes things like mechanical shock, vibration, thermal shocks, heat soaks, cold soaks, chemical exposure, salt-spray and salt-fog, immersion testing and electrical overstress.
That being said, we have had failures in field. Both James and John have examples of this. In both of their cars, they had issues because of the circuit protection components that exist in the system. In John's case, there is a fuse on the MASTERCELL that protects the power feed in the CAN cable. In James' case, a diode that is intended to protect the processor from high-voltage did its job.
The system was originally designed of commercial applications, which have pretty specific convetions on how to wire vehicles. Since most of these applications are pretty regulated, the circuit protection schemes were tailored tightly.
We have learned a lot about how guys have been applying the system in our aftermarket applications over the past few years and we have adjusted the levels of circuit protection to the overall system in all of the systems that we are shipping now. For example, the simple change of a fuse rating on the MASTERCELL from 0.375 amps to 0.500 amps eliminates what John Parsons saw in his car.
I hope that this gives you more detail.
Jay
