Shelf life of assembled electronics

[Berni]

I never specifically mentioned MCUs having there flash firmware rot away.

Yes you will not easily find manufacturers specifying a rated flash data retention rate of 50 years or more. It is generally specified for around 10 to 40 years. But this is just what the manufacturer guarantees. The MCUs generally contain some of the best flash memory because they are forced to use the same fab process to produce the CPU, SRAM and Flash as one single die. This prevents them from implementing the most dense flash technology, so the flash cells are big and is the reason why you generally don't see MCUs with more than 1 or 2 MB of built in flash. Some MCUs (Like the larger ARM chips from ST) even put ECC on that already reliable flash, making it that much more solid. So while manufacturers don't guarantee it and products are not designed for it, it still is likely that most of those MCUs will indeed live 50 years just fine. Tho after that they might indeed start giving up the ghost, but i will likely be dead by then anyway.

Still no reason to call those people morons. A lot of modern products are not designed to last on purpose, because it is bad for business long term  to sell people products that last a lifetime. For example a lot of LED bulbs are crap on purpose. Just as little care is given to the lifetime of a modern mobile phone, it will be obsolete well before the 10 year mark anyway.

However modern products are outgrowing humble microcontrollers these days. So they have SOCs running a full on OS, as a result needing flash memory that reaches into 100s of MB. These capacities are only cost effective on dense NAND flash manufactured on optimized flash specific nodes. So most of these SOCs have external NAND flash in some form (be it raw nand chip or some controlered kind like eMMC and similar) that tends to be the cheep end stuff and placed near the toasty running processor chip. To top it off they tend to place the bootloader and OS filesystem in the same chip. These are the kinds of devices that i am going to constantly see around me bricking themselves well within my lifetime. The particularly annoying part is that often that bootloader inside the rotting flash chip is required to do the manufacturer approved firmware update procedure, so the product can't be fixed without taking it apart. Tho a lot of SOCs and even some MCUs have built in bootloaders in ROM that let you push new firmware into them over USB and such, but the device manufacturers usually do not expose those for the user.

The worrying part is when this awful high density NAND ends up in products that do make sense to last a long time, like an oscilloscope or in a car(I am sure someone else will eventually have a Tesla like moment with there infotainment shitting itself).

[james_s]

I think "infotainment" systems are about the dumbest thing ever to come to cars. Just give me physical switches, knobs, sliders and indicator lights, and a proper DIN slot so I can select the head unit of my choice and upgrade it as needed.

[AndyC_772]

At any rate, your report should prove that investing in a mint condition camera equipment collection may have its hazards.

I'm certainly no longer of the opinion that camera equipment is any kind of investment.

When I originally upgraded from standard consumer lenses to 'L' series, I figured that although they were expensive, they should at least last well. I am, after all, an occasional hobby photographer, and not a working professional.

Unfortunately it appears that this kit was never intended to last a long time. It's certainly robust enough for heavy use, and I don't doubt that occasional servicing will see it give a working pro a good return on investment - but when each item has been superseded, it may be time to seriously consider trading it in before parts become unavailable.

It'll be interesting to see what support is like for DSLRs now the world is clearly going mirrorless. I'm not that keen on Canon's commercial approach here; RF lenses are considerably more costly than their already expensive EF cousins, and I understand that they've sued 3rd party manufacturers who have tried to release RF compatible lenses that might compete with them. That's not an action that consumers should turn a blind eye to, IMHO.

I recently discovered that they also no longer make a RAW conversion SDK available, so if I were to switch to any cameras much newer than the ones I have today, I'll have to change my software workflow too. That's also a backward step commercially - again IMHO.

[tom66]

I think "infotainment" systems are about the dumbest thing ever to come to cars. Just give me physical switches, knobs, sliders and indicator lights, and a proper DIN slot so I can select the head unit of my choice and upgrade it as needed.

It may have changed now, but you can usually get trim kits and adapter cables for your car to allow you to install nearly anything, like an Android head unit. 

Of course, the infotainment systems in these vehicles often control other things, like the HVAC, TPMS, maintenance warnings etc... And there's no common standard for those, so you'll probably lose those.

[jmelson]

I call bullshit about Berni's comments about the flash.

I have an over 20 year old P&P machine.  A fair amount of stuff has gone bad on it.  Last year, one of the main servo amps started causing violent banging moves on occasion.  Then, it finally stopped working at all, powering up with an error display that wasn't in the manual.  A replacement unit fixed it.  Then, the other axis started doing the same thing, and finally failed to power up.  These have some flavor of micro on the control board, and I am pretty sure this was a failure of embedded PROM memory inside the CPU.
Jon

[james_s]

Of course, the infotainment systems in these vehicles often control other things, like the HVAC, TPMS, maintenance warnings etc... And there's no common standard for those, so you'll probably lose those.

Which is precisely the problem I'm complaining about. Critical features of the car are integrated into these silly systems, you can't just remove them and install something else.

[Berni]

Which is precisely the problem I'm complaining about. Critical features of the car are integrated into these silly systems, you can't just remove them and install something else.

It doesn't bother me as much that car infotainment systems can't be swapped out since they have generally caught up in regard to features. If they still have a CD drive they can play MP3 CDs, they can play music from a USB flash drive, they got AUX jacks etc.. They are also getting Google car play in there so you can mirror your phone screen up onto them to use google maps for navigation. So there is a lot less reason to swap one out. As long as they are made reliable to not break and need replacement. We will see how reliable they end up, Tesla certainly was not off to a good start.

However i do hate the new trend of replacing all the physical knobs with a giant touchscreen. You can't do anything anymore by blindly reaching for a knob by feel. You have to actually look all the way down to press a button that you end up missing because a bump in the road made your arm swing over to the next button. If it is illegal to use your phone while you drive, then how is it legal to put these giant touchscreens in cars. If anything using a phone is less distracting since you can hold your phone where your dash gauges would be, letting you see both the road and the screen.

My car from 2013 is a bit of a in between mix. It has an infotainment system, but no touchscreen yet, so all knobs are physical and they even work while the infotainment is still booting up. So id still keep most of my other functionality without it. However the infotainment uses a mechanical hard drive for storage (You can even hear it seeking when you turn the car on) so that likely means no high density flash is needed... but is mechanical so it could wear out. Not sure why the designers went this route, maybe they felt that flash was not up to the job back then.

[james_s]

It doesn't bother me as much that car infotainment systems can't be swapped out since they have generally caught up in regard to features. If they still have a CD drive they can play MP3 CDs, they can play music from a USB flash drive, they got AUX jacks etc.. They are also getting Google car play in there so you can mirror your phone screen up onto them to use google maps for navigation. So there is a lot less reason to swap one out. As long as they are made reliable to not break and need replacement. We will see how reliable they end up, Tesla certainly was not off to a good start.

However i do hate the new trend of replacing all the physical knobs with a giant touchscreen. You can't do anything anymore by blindly reaching for a knob by feel. You have to actually look all the way down to press a button that you end up missing because a bump in the road made your arm swing over to the next button. If it is illegal to use your phone while you drive, then how is it legal to put these giant touchscreens in cars. If anything using a phone is less distracting since you can hold your phone where your dash gauges would be, letting you see both the road and the screen.

My car from 2013 is a bit of a in between mix. It has an infotainment system, but no touchscreen yet, so all knobs are physical and they even work while the infotainment is still booting up. So id still keep most of my other functionality without it. However the infotainment uses a mechanical hard drive for storage (You can even hear it seeking when you turn the car on) so that likely means no high density flash is needed... but is mechanical so it could wear out. Not sure why the designers went this route, maybe they felt that flash was not up to the job back then.

I'm mostly concerned with how well it will age. I've played with a few 5-8 year old tablets and they are pretty useless at this point. My daily driver is 32 years old and still going strong, I can repair virtually any part of it. I don't think we will see a lot of 32 year old cars still on the road 20 years from now, they're all incredibly complex and loaded with technology that becomes obsolete.

[harerod]

Quote from: AndyC_772 on Yesterday at 21:12:53

...RF lenses...software workflow
...

Two great additional points, thank you.
The lenses are the reason that I am with Canon in the first place. I had access to a professional's collection of lenses, which made me buy the 600D. Over time I bought my own collection of L-glass and those couple of fullframe bodies. Since Canon is obsoleting the EF-bayonet and degrading performance of EF-lenses that use an EF-RF-adapter by firmware (not first hand experience, but reported from different people), there is no reason to stay with them to protect the investment.

Therefore firmware controlled obsolescence is another item that could weigh heavier than the shelf life of the electronics.

Also thank you for reminding us about the RAW-converter problem. I am still using an old Lightroom 6 permanent license. At least for the time being, alternatives to Adobe are available, at a quite reasonable cost (looking at Capture One permanent license).

I think the main problem that drives users crazy, is that we have to worry about planned artificial obsolescense on top of any real hardware issues.
Most recent example is the bullshit design of this water cooker (https://www.braunhousehold.com/de-de/multiquick-5-wasserkocher-wk-500-white/p/WK500WH), where they pipe steam from the kettle into the electric compartment to trigger a bi-metal spring. This thing will just fail after a predermined number of cycles. There are way more subtle tricks to booby trap a camera design.

[tom66]

I'm mostly concerned with how well it will age. I've played with a few 5-8 year old tablets and they are pretty useless at this point. My daily driver is 32 years old and still going strong, I can repair virtually any part of it. I don't think we will see a lot of 32 year old cars still on the road 20 years from now, they're all incredibly complex and loaded with technology that becomes obsolete.

It's going to depend on the functionality.  The 7 year old infotainment system in my Golf is still fine, as fast as it ever was (it's not too bad to be honest).  It has bugs, but those bugs have been there since I first got the car.  If it's a device that writes a lot to internal storage (e.g. an Android-based system), then the reliability will be more questionable.  Also, it's worth noting that these systems tend to be built to higher standards than a cheap Android tablet.  Residual value is important for car buyers and it impacts lease costs.

Second what others have said about purely touchscreen interfaces.  Great for a mobile phone but not for a car, not until we get true full self driving!

[PlainName]

Second what others have said about purely touchscreen interfaces.  Great for a mobile phone but not for a car, not until we get true full self driving!

Not even then - there would still be the problem of jolts and random accelerations preventing accurate operation of a purely touch interface.

[ebastler]

Everything stated above makes sense to me, but there are also additional factors like solder, oxidation etc.
[...]
Naturally an assembly of components, like pcb, cannot have longer lifespan or shelf life than the individual components used on it; however it would seem like the assembly should have shorter lifespan than shortest lifespan of individual components, since assembly is an item of higher complexity and may be more prone to faults or additive behavior of faults.

That's why i was curious if anyone did any research into lifespan of assemblies.

Your concern seems to be that the ingredients used to assemble a circuit board (PCB substrate, traces, solder) are shorter-lived than the actual components? I don't think that is an issue in practice, and certainly not if the complete device is stored under conditions which are favorable for precision opto-mechanical assemblies: Moderate temperatures, limited humidity, no permanent vibrations.

A lot of the feedback you received above is based on actual experience -- people do use and repair old computers, test and measurement equipment, audio electronics etc. Some components are more prone to failure than others, as discussed above; but I don't recall ever seeing, or reading about, PCBs disintegrating or traces just corroding away on their own. (Unless a battery or electrolytic capacitor has spilled their corrosive guts...)

Solder joints may deteriorate into "cold joints" or develop cracks if parts run very hot, expand and shrink a lot under temperature cycles, or are subjected to mechanical vibrations without being properly supported. Again, none of these should occur in a precision (and low-power) device like a photography camera.

Cameras for very low-light use, e.g. in astronomy or high-end microscopy, use actively deep-cooled image sensors, and are somewhat likely to suffer from problems in that area sooner or later. The high temperature differences between operation and storage will cause mechanical stress on solder joints, and also on the seal of the (often evacuated) chamber which encloses the sensor.

Edit: Oh, and contact surfaces which are exposed to the environment can be a weak spot of course: IC sockets, connectors to internal or external wiring, contacts inside switches. That's where oxidation can bite... .

[pcm81]

I call bullshit about Berni's comments about the flash.

If the camera designers are not total morons (which they could be, though, in which case I will stand corrected), for the firmware, they use the kind of flash which
1) is NOT unreliable, and does NOT hide the unreliability by ECC. Might not have ECC at all.
2) has data retention of at least 50 years or so guaranteed by manufacturer, and this is at elevated temperature.

This is usually internal to the microcontroller(s), sometimes external, with size in hundreds of kilobytes to maybe a few megabytes.

Read all replies above and wanted to address this one specifically, because it talks about camera gear. Just dropped 3K on lightly used Nikon D5 with 25K shutter actuations. In comparison i have 16K shutter actuations on my D800, which i got in 2013 and it is still in mint condition. D800 is rated by nikon at 200K shutter actuations and D5 at 400K. So naturally came to realization that my cameras will eventually die of old age, not due to me using them beyond their operational lifespan. Hence this thread. Lots of companies do testing for MTBF vs cycles or OP time, but i have not ever seen a spec for electronic assembly shelf life, especially when it is with intermittent use, hence allowing for basic self maintenance to occur such as refreshing charge in non-volatile memory etc.

[james_s]

Second what others have said about purely touchscreen interfaces.  Great for a mobile phone but not for a car, not until we get true full self driving!

Not even then - there would still be the problem of jolts and random accelerations preventing accurate operation of a purely touch interface.

They don't work well in the cold either, I suspect it's when the air is dry. Or if you have gloves on which I sometimes do in the winter. Winter is also a time that I suspect will cause a lot of "self driving" tech to utterly fail. How does a Tesla which uses only cameras tell where the road is when there's a coating of snow over it and the entire road is solid white as happened here the other day? How does any self driving car know that the road is likely to be covered in black ice and slow down preemptively?

[PlainName]

How does a Tesla which uses only cameras tell where the road is when there's a coating of snow over it and the entire road is solid white

Doesn't matter - it's got no choice which ditch it's going to end up in after all