In 1996 the owner and executive director of MycroTools® Automotive, Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Robert Drahn, established the Engineering-Office Drahn with its registered office in Kulmbach and offered services in the field of software development. In the first years numerous software solutions were developed for different branches. The spectrum includes software for the printing industry, the financial accounting section, direct marketing, B2B internet solutions (Siemens) and others.
From 2001 on work began in the automotive branch: The first project was the development of software for head units on basis of Windows CE focusing on the integration of the optical bus system MOST25 – at that point in time a novelty in the automotive field. A research study for the Volkswagen concern in 2003 followed one year later a project in the development section of Daimler-Chrysler. The subject: Test automation of telematic components across different model ranges of Mercedes Benz passenger cars. In 2005 MycroTools finished the Telematic Test Framework 1.0 for the Daimler AG. For the first time the framework allowed to write and carry out automatic tests with the help of the object orientated programming language C#. The busses CAN and MOST25 were supported.
In July 2008 the CEO of MycroTools founded the MycroTools® Automotive GmbH. In corporation with the Daimler AG the new TestGuard 2.0 was developed – an enhancement of the Telematic Test Framework. The software is used for system integration tests and security tests of upper class vehicles. The success lead to Version 3.0 – a completely own solution of the MycroTools®. With growing company size the range of application was extended to vehicle diagnosis.
The year 2009 marked the birth of MycroTools® MyGuine®. This software simplified the test automation in the area of system integration and diagnosis considerably as TestPlans could be created by Drag&Drop. The smallest test units are called TestSteps which can be put into sequences and saved in TestPlans. Every TestStep can be parameterized in the user interface. The Daimler AG successfully applies MycroTools® MyGuine® since 2010 to test the field of diagnosis of electronic control units of different model ranges including the S-Class, E-Class and C-Class. MyGuine is being constantly enhanced and improved since then.
In the following years MycroTools® MyGuine® grew to support several new areas of application. The integration of a powerful imaging system includes the optical character recognition (OCR) in MyGuine®, which lead to the winning of Mitsubishi Electronic as new customer. They are using MyGuine® to test their head units - e.g. for application regression tests, where several electronic control units are simulated in a vehicle. Some of the simulated ECUs include air condition, comfort seats, hybrid driving control and many more.
The switch to 64bit architecture was embedded in MyGuine® 2.5 and TestGuard® 5.0. Both versions fully support the 64bit architecture. This update abolishes the memory limit of 32bit software and enables our customers to develop and manage testing environments with several thousands of TestPlans.
