Product Prototyping Services
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intelligent software inside
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Many of our customers come to us in the first instance, because they require a
reasonably rapidly developed functional prototype of their product, and need some
help developing the software.
We have a long history of developing two types of prototoypes - a prototype that
runs on a manufacturers development kit, and a prototype that runs on a personal
computer.
PLATFORM PROTOTYPES
The most traditional method of prototyping uses some hardware platform used to run
and test software and to test usability and exercise specific risk areas of the hardware.
This might be a development kit provided by a processor manufacturer, some form of
prototyping platform, or perhaps an earier version of your device hardware modified
suitably to include new devices.
Note that we are primarily a software house, and generally rely on our customers
to have their own hardware facility. As such, we don't have the facilities to
design or build your electronics. However, we do have some electronics experience
and are more than comfortable with "breathing life" into new electronics, which
often includes small board mods, or breaking out the logic analyser or oscilloscope
to probe around the board while commissioning new hardware.
PC PROTOTYPES
Over a number of years, we have developed a set of software libraries and techniques
that allow us to build PC prototypes. What is unique about these prototypes, is that
the device functionality is implemented in real software, the same software that
runs on your target device or on a development kit.
There are two main benefits of this technique. (1) you can assess the usability of
your device before it is even built, quickly iterate it's design and try out
what-if design changes, and even deliver working prototypes to users for evaluation.
(2) You only have to pay once to have the software developed, as the same software
runs on both the PC and on your target hardware. Changes can be verified with your
users via the PC prototype, and quickly reflected into the real device's design.
[Sorry, we can't show you any examples of this on this website, as all of our
project work has been developed under a Non Discosure Agreement with our customers.
We hope to rectify this by developing some reference applications that can be shown
on this website in the future].
As a guide, PC prototypes we have developed in the past have a range of features
including:
- LCD displays [both dot matrix and custom segmented]
- buttons
- audio playback
- rs232, CAN and TCP/IP interfaces to real devices
- interface to a simulation of some process or data model
- zigbee dongle, and direct connection of PC program to a real system
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