Technology

ZUMI is a single board, embedded system, audio measurement instrument.

The ZUMI solution combines all the components of a measurement system into a compact, standalone instrument, making an easy to use and extremely robust tool for a wide variety of applications.

ZUMI’s core technology is based around harnessing the power of embedded systems and encapsulating all audio measurement components into a single unit. In general ZUMI implementations include microphones, pre-amplifiers, digital sampling, computation, UI display, output amplifiers, mass storage, wireless transmitter etc. in a compact package.

Our measurement tools are built to be use case specific and therefore are able to become highly refined for the specific purpose. Experience in the field of implementing measurement setups for many different products has allowed us to understand what the key measurement setups are and what the essential test behavior is for various product categories.

Traditional audio measurement tool have used PC’s as the primary engine for the measurement system. Although PC’s are great this creates an unnecessary layer of fragility and complexity to the job of measuring audio systems. ZUMI’s tools were designed expressly to take advantage of the modern advancements in microcontrollers (embedded computers), in particular the enormous processing power and speed new chips are capable of. By eliminating the PC from picture we are suddenly unconstrained by the disadvantages of that type of system and become free to realize tools that become much more user friendly, efficient and able to integrate directly with the full range of devices.

Embedded

ZUMI runs on an ARM Core based microprocessor. The processor includes a dedicated floating point unit and all computation is done in 32bit floating point numbers, this hardware accelerated computation provides excellent speed for the heavy calculation demands of FFT’s other spectral related computation. The chip provides communication interfaces for I2C, QSPI, SPI and UART that are available for connecting to DUT’s and other external logic systems. In addition to the communication protocols pins are also available as GPIO lines. The ZUMI board includes an SD card that serves as a mass storage device. The ZUMI equipment however does not require an SD Card to operate. An FTDI FT232 USB-UART interface provides a link between the ZUMI board and PC. The serial port interface can be used to driver the measurement processes. The bluetooth system also operates an SPP interface that can be used in the same fashion as the USB-UART com port for sending commands and receiving data and information.

Code Base

ZUMI’s uses embedded C code and does not use nor need an operating system. The code architecture is designed to facilitate the execution of measurement processes that involve interaction and communication with external devices. The paradigm is pre-action, measurement, check criteria, post-action. With this architecture ZUMI is ideally suited to applications where some form of DUT configuration is needed before a measurement and a DUT is configuration is modified based on measured results.

Standalone

ZUMI measurement tools have been developed with the objective of making completely standalone functional devices. In general ZUMI tools encapsulate the entire chain of components necessary for audio measurements into a single unit.