The Production Line Tool (PLT) helps increase throughput in volume testing and programming of units centered around Renesas Bluetooth ICs.

In the PLT, the Golden Unit (GU) is a daughterboard mainly used for various purposes, including:

RF transmitter for the RF RSSI DUT test
RF receiver for the device Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) advertisement scan test
Audio tone generator for the audio test
Controlling the complex programmable logic device (CPLD)

The GU uses an SPI Flash memory mounted on the PLT board. The SPI Flash is pre-programmed with a specific production test firmware. If required, there are several methods for upgrading the GU firmware, including via the PLT’s GU JTAG connector or the UART. The latest GU firmware can be found inside the latest PLT software release, under the executables\binaries\GU folder.

Note: PLT v4.1 and onwards requires the latest firmware version of the Golden Unit. If the Golden Unit firmware is not updated, then the PLT applications will not run. The Golden Unit is calibrated during PLT production. It is delivered with a calibration characterization document.