1. Who are you, and what does Infinispark do?

I am Hus. I’m the CEO of Infinispark. We design and manufacture training and assessment equipment for electrotechnology and automotive electrical. They’re also called training aids, and most of our equipment are designed around units of competency.

2. What is the purpose behind designing the practical training and assessment equipment?

I used to be a trainer before we started this business for over a decade, and what we found in our experience while training at various TAFEs and RTOs that everyone wants to provide really good training, but we’re always short on time. And the easiest thing to let go of is the practical training because it takes so long to set up, but practical training is the reason why most of the students come to TAFEs for studying in the first place. So that’s why we thought that if we were to make equipment that was so easy to set up and easy to use, that the students would enjoy using it, but the trainers would find it really easy and quick to set up and it won’t take away their precious time.

So that’s why we thought that if we were to put as much as we can in one box, whatever’s required of a unit of competency and make it easier for them, and that’s how the idea sort of started. And then we progressed and made more and more products that were around the unit of competency and tried to keep it all in same place as possible to make it easier for the trainers. Now, the key that we always focus on is maintaining compliance, but then trainer productivity is the second most important thing in this. But also, ultimately what we want is really high learner engagement, and that’s what our training products are trying to solve those three problems.

3. What units does the faultboard cover and to what extent?

So this Faultboard here is designed for EL14 and EL39. Both of these units are part of UEE30820. Now, EL39 being the most important one here because that’s the final unit most of the apprentices will be doing before they go to their licensing. And that unit, even though it’s a shorter unit with their hours, is probably the biggest unit that’s out there. It covers absolutely everything from the first year to their fourth year. Now, you can’t have one equipment that will cover everything but what we have here that covers all the mandatory testing part of that subject. And for EL14, it’s the same thing. It’s the fault-finding side of the installation testing that this equipment covers.

4. Which mandatory tests can the faultboard cover?

According to AS3000, which is the Bible of any electrician in Australia and New Zealand, we have some mandatory tests that all the electricians have to do. Now, this board will cover earth resistance, insulation resistance, polarity, correct circuit connections and fault loop impedance. The only mandatory test that this board doesn’t cover is the verification of operation of RCD because you require power for that or low voltage for that test. But other than that, it covers all the mandatory tests.

5. Does the Faultboard have three phase or just single phase?

So we have two versions. We have a Faultboard version two, which is only single phase, and this one here is Faultboard version three, which has three-phase with the sub-mains board, which is single phase.

6. How does the board cover appliance testing?

So we have a hot plate here, which unlike most of the appliance testing where your appliance that you’re testing is either faulty or not faulty, this particular hot plate can become faulty and not faulty as well. So when you have no faults in the system, this will be a working hot plate. And when you put faults, it will be faulty. So we will have typical faults what an appliance could have in it. We have a fault list that shows which faults will be in the whole installation, including the hot plate.

7. How do you program faults in the installation?

At the back of the board, we have a touch screen, which I’ll turn around and I’ll show you now. So just behind this door, we have a control to turn the faults on and off. When you open the door, you will see this control panel and on the control panel, once you turn the board on from here, you will have this screen presented to you where you will see five buttons, fault level one to fault level five, and inside each level there are 20 fault sets that you can turn on individually.

Now, fault level one will turn on an individual fault, just one fault and fault level five will turn on a set of five faults. So if I go to fault level one and select number 20, for example, that means fault level one, fault 20 activated. There is a single fault somewhere on the system. If I go to level five and I press 20, that says fault level five, fault 20 activated. There are five faults on the system at this stage.

All of these faults are mapped on our fault mapping guide, which we’ll provide to you with the board. So there are a 100 sets of faults that you can allow students to have practice with or assessment with. What we also have here that you can see is a resistive board of all the fault values that you have in the board. The reason we’ve kept it outside is if you ever wanted to change these values in the future, you can just unplug these from here, take the board off, resolder new values and put them back. That way you have some more variety and some options in the future if you want.

8. What software do you need for operating the faultboard?

Everything you need to program the Faultboard is all built into this. So the hardware is all built in, the touch screen is in there, the computer is inside, the software is built in as well. So there is no external device or external software required to program this board. It’s all at the back. You just touch the screen, choose your option, and you turn the faults on or off.

The benefit of having everything in one board rather than having external devices, because then you don’t need an external laptop or a tablet to program the board. If you needed a tablet or a laptop, let’s say, you would have to have that laptop connected to your network, which then adds another level of IT security and vulnerability that you’ll be opening things to. Instead, we’ve combined it all in one place to keep everything else that you have on the network secure, and then this becomes a standalone device.

9. How much does the software cost to license? What’s the ongoing cost?

No ongoing costs at all. Everything is built into it, so you won’t need any  upgrades or any software changes to it. It’s all embedded inside this board.

10. Are there is problems with cross faults?

In a test panel like this, if you create more than one fault on the same circuit, you might end up with third or fourth fault, and that’s what the cross faults are. The problem with cross faults is that the students might get more confused because they’re still learning, but more importantly, the trainers might not have the same confidence when they’re turning on multiple faults on the same circuit. So what we’ve done is we’ve set them together in a way that you will avoid the cross faults altogether.

In cases where you have multiple faults in a circuit, we have identified them and we have listed them in our fault mapping guide, just to make it easier for you because end of the day you need to be confident that whatever faults you’ve set is what the students will get.

11. Can you turn on individual faults?

As we were talking about cross faults earlier, we wanted to avoid that option altogether because if you turn on individual faults, you might accidentally turn on another fault that you didn’t intend if they ended up on the same circuit. But more importantly, what we want to take away is the decision fatigue, that if we give a lot of options and say that yes, you can choose individual faults, chances are that you’ll have to pre-prepare before you get into the class on what faults you will have to give to the students. Since we’ve already set them up in sets for you in the fault mapping guide, it makes it a little bit easier for you as well as students.

So if you want to give the students some options of setting the faults, or if you want them to choose whatever faults they want, end of the day, they can’t see what faults they’re turning on. They’re only seeing the sets that are being turned on. So individual faults, you can turn on one fault at a time on level one, but no one would know except for the trainer through the fault mapping guide, what faults have turned on.

12. How do you ensure the students don’t change faults during assessments?

Access to the control panel is behind this door. So once you set the fault, let’s just say this is an assessment situation, you set the fault, you close this door and you lock it, then the students can’t access it. This will ensure that each assessment is fair.

13. How to avoid students remembering the faults?

This Faultboard version three has a 100 sets of faults, so it’ll be very hard for students to remember all of them, and these are spread up through the level. So there’s level one that has 20 sets of faults, level two has 20 sets, and so on, all the way to level five. So with a 100 sets of faults and so much variety and complexity, it makes it much more difficult for students to remember the faults, but it also becomes much engaging for them to progress through those levels.

14. How is the board powered?

After discussing with a lot of RTOs and TAFEs, we’ve found out that they really value portability and flexibility in training and assessment, and that’s why we’ve made our board battery powered, and this is the only board on the market that runs on battery. The other benefit of this is that you don’t need a constant cable connection to your board, which reduces the trip hazard.

15. How long does the battery last?

The battery of this Faultboard lasts for 40 hours, and that’s 40 hours runtime, which means if you’re using eight hours per day, then this board will last you for a whole week. For charging, it takes about a couple of hours, and while it’s charging, you can use it. So really practically, there’s no downtime while you are using this board.

16. Can you wall mount the faultboard?

There’s another thing we’ve discussed with the TAFEs and RTOs as mentioned earlier, that they prefer portability and flexibility. If we wall mount this, then we’re expecting that there is a dedicated room or dedicated space for this, which is not something that we can afford in this day and age. We want the flexibility, so that’s why we’ve made this on a frame. So you can wheel it around anywhere. Being battery powered, you don’t even need to keep it near a power point. You can wheel it right in the middle of a workshop or a warehouse and you can still do your training and assessments.

17. What support is available for the customers?

We provide ongoing phone and email support to all our customers. We also have a learning platform where we upload all the supporting resources for our equipment. That includes training videos, training material like exercises, user manuals, posters, and in this case, there will be a fault mapping guide on the platform as well.

18. Does the Faultboard have alternate supplies?

We designed the Faultboard to focus mainly on mandatory testing. Since there is a new unit for alternate supplies, EL47, in our training package, we’ve made a completely new board to focus on alternate supplies. Let me show you that now. This is the alternate supplies board that covers the alternate supplies testing part of the EL39. But this board is dedicated or designed mostly for EL47, and it covers a standalone supply and already has a battery on board. And let me turn it on for you.

19. What innovations are on the board?

One of the innovations that I would like to mention are these test pins. We’ve put these test pins so the students can clip an alligator clip directly on them. This was a result of a feedback where the customer said that they wanted an option so the students don’t have to undo the wires and that the benefit of this is it will actually increase the longevity of the terminals.

The other innovation is the selection between overhead and underground mains. So if your selection is on overhead mains, the power comes from overhead to the meter panel, and if the selection is underground, the power comes from underground to the fuses and to these wires here. The benefit of this setup is that the students will get exposure on both sides, and the testing will mostly be the same, but at least they’ll understand how they will have to incorporate fuses when power is coming from underground.