Portable tester tailored for specific customer's requirement :

A chance for one of our customer’s to win a multi million pound contract depended on being able to modify one of their off the shelf testers.

With a change in value of just a few components on the PCB and upgraded software we were able to meet our customer’s requirement, with the result that they secured the contract. This is a good example which shows the flexibility to meet changing market need by enhancing the software embedded a a product.

Portable tester battery monitoring software :

One of our customer’s supplied rechargeable lead acid batteries as an option to replace the dry battery pack on a portable tester they had had developed by another company. Unfortunately without proper battery monitoring software the batteries were being over discharged and had a very poor life. We implemented software to detect the type of battery being used or if the tester was running on an external power supply. By monitoring the battery performance we were able to give the user a warning that the battery was running low and also when it was finally exhausted.

With active battery monitoring tailored to the type of battery connected we prevent damage from over discharge, but also gave an indication to the end user when the battery was low and exhaust. The tester refused to start a test when the state of charge was too low to guarantee its completion.

We also noticed that the power saving options were not well implement allowing us to reduce the average power consumption using the low power modes of the processor. This resulted in an increased the number of testes that could be performed with a single charge, an added bonus to the battery protection.

New life for a legacy 8051 product :

Our customer had placed an 8051 based product on the back burner thinking that it could not be further enhanced. When they approached us we realised that with a few simple optimisation techniques we could reduce the code size of the embedded software substantially.

We achieved a reduction from 63.5K bytes to just 42K bytes and nearly double the execution speed at the same time. This allowed us to add the additional facilities our customer required to win a major contract and still left room for new and enhanced facilities.

Handle held control panel :

We added a local hot pluggable handset to a tester originally designed for remote computer control only. The handset was originally designed for a portable tester, and so was added quite easily.

The tester can now be controlled form a computer, a hand held LCD handset or a combination of both. The test is a C166 based measurement device intended for OEMs to build into their own products.

We developed the embedded software for the original product, and with this hot pluggable handset our customer has been able to extend the market for their product.

Other Recent Projects :- Test & Measurement | Bespoke Testers | Laboratory Equipment | Portable Equipment | PC Software