Services
Engineering And Design Services To Help You Launch Quickly & with Confidence
Bringing a hardware product to market is one of the toughest things to do. We've brought many products to market and know exactly how hard the struggle can be. A hardware product incorporates electrical engineering, software engineering, user design, industrial engineering, manufacturing, logistics, and some of the most strenuous regulatory hurdles in business. It's tough to have all those competencies on one team.
We've created a suite of services to help you navigate the quickest path for getting a great product to market. Whether you are looking for an experienced team to complete a significant portion of the engineering or just need some advice to help with a specific problem, we are here to help.
Hardware Engineering
Many of our customers can meet their needs with our COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products. However, sometimes more is needed. Embedded Now can and will provide custom engineered solutions for your needs. Whether it is more fully integrated solutions, custom analog or RF solutions, Specialized control or monitoring, or you just want to make it less expensive. We have seen and worked with almost anything and everything in the embedded computer space. No job is too small or unusual.
Electrical design, prototyping and manufacturing at all volume levels. Digital, analog, RF. Commercial & Industrial.
Firmware Engineering
What is firmware? Where does firmware start and hardware leave off? Where does other software fit in?
All good questions. Here is our take on it.
There is a very blurry line between firmware and hardware. Much of the hardware designed today - including our own have programmable devices. These can include various flavors of EPROMS, EEROMS, flash memory devices, fabric in an FPGA, CPLDs, among many others. We have the expertise to do all of this initial programming. These must be programmed in ways that are supportable and manufacturable. We do all that for you. Everything has to be thought of and designed in the context of the entire system.
FPGA - Fabric programming in VHDL
CPLD - logic design in VHLD
Custom Boot - BIOS or UEFI
BIOS customization
We guarantee version level and data programming throughout your manufacturing.
Operating System Customization
Every device has it's own natural fit for operating system. Many of our customers use Linux. We create a customized version of Ubuntu Linux (either Desktop or Server) and modify it to make it robust in an embedded world. Have you ever just pulled the plug on your desktop system to shut it down? Well, it's not a nice thing to do. However, that is the way things work in the embedded world. We have solved those problems and many others in very elegant ways. Other customers prefer WIndows, or some variant of an RTOS. or the Android OS. We can provision, guide and customize these you very efficiently. Many are "Off The Shelf" from us.
Software Engineering
We have deep expertise creating embedded applications. We've built mission critical software to control nuclear reactors. We've build slick consumer-oriented interfaces using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. We also understand that what the user sees is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the application sits analytical systems to track usage and errors, server infrastructures for aggregating data, in-field application updates, and much more. It can be a lot to deal with, especially with aggressive schedules. Our software development team can bring some specific know-how to your team or can be used as an outsourced software development partner.
Scope:
Prototyping and proof-of-concepts
UI and UX design
Production applications and processes
Server and cloud infrastructures
Companion mobile applications
Technologies:
C and C++
Javascript/NodeJS
Rust
Ruby on Rails
Amazon Web Services
Mechanical Engineering
Our mechanical design services range from development of a looks-like prototype straight through to creating designs that can be sent to manufacturers or tool makers. Whether it is making sure the your product looks its best, has sufficient cooling, or moves the right way, we can help.
Whole-product design
Enclosure design
Thermal engineering
Motion and actuator design
Human interface design
Piconium Custom
We believe that the best approach for hardware developers is to use our off-the-shelf components. Except, sometimes it's not. If you have very specific size or component restrictions, then our Piconium Custom service might be right for you. We can take the rock-solid engineering of the Piconium and adapt it to your, specific needs. In the past, we've added and removed components and modified the dimensions of the circuit board to fit customer-specified dimensions. Get in touch with us and we can discuss whether Piconium Custom is a good fit for you.
Examples of customized versions that we have done in the past includes:
Stepper Motor Drivers
MEMS (Micro mirror) drivers for lasers
Laser drivers
Thermo-electric coolers (TECs)
i2C channels
SPI channels
m.2 sata or PCIe drives
mSATA drives
FPGA connected via ethernet, PCI or PCIe interfaces
LinuxCNC interfaces for servo motors, stepper motors, switches and motor sped controls
CPLD logic
various high and low density connectors
Smart Battery management and power