Metadata handling in legacy Arbin software

[johnphd]

In older version of MITS PRO (Arbin) prior to the new platforms which take advantage of SQL for data management, there is a feature that is present in the software that was intended to be a feature, rather than a bug. When testing cells on an Arbin tester, one can select multiple channels to start a test schedule, the intent was to compare sets of identical cells. This has been discontinued by Arbin (I have talked to them directly) as it is not widely used.

Accidentally one can select two or more channels when starting a test. The cells can be unlike, and the schedules can be different in theory. What happens is the channel information is put into the metadata at some level which confuses the basic functions of cellpy, which seems to work fine but only when a cell is assigned to a single channel. This feature gives the appearance of the cell being assigned to multiple channels and is not processed as a result. The channel the battery is actually connected to contains data, the secondary channel which is not connected to the battery also has data, even if it is a completely different test. It could be the error originates because the secondary channel is a different battery, with a different file name creating a conflict when this is done accidentally.

This feature in the software is not used often, and these errors also do not often happen but there must be some commands to separate the metadata to avoid errors like this. I am suggesting a column that indicates the channel used, which may offer to ignore or use data. Channel information is kept anyway, this would also

allow for redundant record keeping.