In the last few years, the growing demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in the transportation sector has contributed to the increased use of electric rechargeable batteries. At present, lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are the most commonly used in electric vehicles. Although once their storage capacity has dropped to below 80–70% it is no longer possible to use these batteries in EVs, it is feasible to use them in second-life applications as stationary energy storage systems. The purpose of this study is to present an embedded system that allows a Nissan® LEAF Li-ion battery to communicate with an Ingecon® Sun Storage 1Play inverter, for control and monitoring purposes. The prototype was developed using an Arduino® microcontroller and a graphical user interface (GUI) on LabVIEW®. The experimental tests have allowed us to determine the feasibility of using Li-ion battery packs (BPs) coming from the automotive sector with an inverter with no need for a prior disassembly and rebuilding process. Furthermore, this research presents a programming and hardware methodology for the development of the embedded systems focused on second-life electric vehicle Li-ion batteries. One second-life battery pack coming from a Nissan® Leaf and aged under real driving conditions was integrated into a residential microgrid serving as an energy storage system (ESS).

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Optical fiber single modemultimodesingle mode (SMS) structures can be used as wavelength detection-based sensors. In this work, we focus on the performance at short wavelengths, where optical sources and detectors are less expensive. Here, a self-image band with a high transmission power is monitored in this short-wavelength range. In addition, the diameter and the length of the SMS structure have been optimized in order to improve the sensitivity of the device. In this sense, a maximum refractive index sensitivity of 305 nm/RIU was achieved by an etched SMS with a diameter of 34 µm. Furthermore, the obtained devices were used for testing the quality of automotive coolant and antifreeze liquid.

In the recent years the instrumentation has focused its development in devices fabricated in fiber optic applied as sensors; these devices are useful to monitorate physical, chemical and biological variables. By the previous, it is necessary its deposition of a thin- film sensible to temperature, humidity, pH, glucose, etc. There are two technics to deposit this into a fiber optic sensor: dip-coating and layer-by-layer. In both cases, is mandatory the application of a automated plataform to manipulate the fiber optic structure when it is immersed into the films to its depositon and the subsequent characterization in different liquid mediums; applying rutines stablished by times, positions and repetitions. The previous has been developed into a Robot X-Y, controlled by LabVIEW and its hardware MyRIO with an electronic arquitecture of low cost devices; also was applied the 3D impresion based on “open software” to design utensils to manipulate the devices and materials.