Banana Skins

Real-life short stories about electromagnetic interference (EMI)

Downloads available: a three-way Index to all of the Banana Skins stories; plus a number of downloads each containing 95 Banana Skins stories.

If you prefer you can download all 890 stories in one compendium here.

Some of these stories are extracted from official documents and reports,
some are personal anecdotes, and some come from research.

Some of these Banana Skins stories had harmless or amusing outcomes, some lost companies large amounts of time / money, even causing bankruptcy,
and some caused (or could easily have caused) injuries and deaths.

In our experience these stories only represent the very tip of a large iceberg, with unimaginable costs for manufacturers and society as a whole. As electronic devices and technologies continue to advance; more (and more complex) software and wireless communications are used; as electronic systems are increasingly integrated into systems-of-systems which no person can understand fully, and even into systems-of-systems-of-systems (including the “Internet of Things”, IoT, and autonomous vehicles): the only thing of which we can be certain is that EMI problems will occur more frequently and have larger impacts on cost and safety.

We hope these stories help identify possible EMI problems in advance, so that they are dealt with as part of the normal design/development procedure and don’t create the embarrassment and costs of trying to correct poor EMC design after products have been shipped or systems installed.

If you have any suitable stories or know of any relevant research or reports, please tell us about them so they can be included (anonymously, if preferred) in this list.

“The First 500 Banana Skins” is available for purchase as a slim softback book from https://www.emcstandards.co.uk/books4

It makes a great Christmas stocking filler for electronic engineers and their managers!