Every sensor system, connected product and automation panel starts with a microcontroller and the firmware on it. We do that engineering end to end — chip selection, firmware, board design, prototype, validation — for connected products and for industrial equipment that needs to report what it’s doing.
Where the hard parts actually are
Hardware projects rarely fail at the interesting bit. They fail at the constraints nobody wrote down at the start.
- Power budget. A device that has to run a year on a battery is a different design to one with mains power, and that decision reaches into the chip, the firmware and the radio. It cannot be retrofitted cheaply.
- The environment. Temperature range, damp, dust and vibration decide component selection and enclosure long before anyone writes code. Equipment in a hill-state substation is not equipment on a desk.
- Part availability. The right chip you cannot buy in quantity is the wrong chip. We check supply before committing a design, and design in a fallback where the volume justifies it.
- Updating what’s already deployed. Firmware will need to change after units are in the field. Over-the-air update support is far cheaper designed in at the start than added once a thousand devices are on poles.
How this connects to the software side
The reason embedded work sits alongside AI, machine learning and automation rather than standing alone: a sensor that reports to nothing is a light on a panel nobody watches. The board, the data it produces, and the system that reads and acts on it are one project, scoped together — with the hosting and monitoring underneath handled by the same team.
Where the device also needs a network designed around it — VLAN separation, industrial cabling, failover — that’s cyber and network security work, and it’s usually worth scoping at the same time rather than after the units are installed.
What's included
How we scope this
Microcontroller platforms
ESP32 and ESP8266, the STM32 Cortex-M range, Atmel AVR, Microchip PIC and TI MSP430/Tiva — chosen against your power, cost and volume constraints rather than what we used last time.
Firmware engineering
Low-power firmware for battery devices, bootloaders with over-the-air update support, driver and HAL development, and FreeRTOS where the timing actually demands an RTOS.
Communication stacks
UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, BLE and WiFi on the device side; Modbus and RS485 where it has to talk to industrial equipment that predates all of it.
Custom PCB design
Schematic capture and one- to eight-layer board layout, including high-speed routing, with prototype builds and validation before anything goes to manufacture.
Industrial IoT integration
Sensor monitoring, motor control, data logging and embedded control panels, connected so the data reaches something that acts on it rather than a local display.
Documentation and handover
Schematics, firmware source, build instructions and test results, so a second manufacturer or a different engineer can pick the product up without us.
How we work
The process, in order
- 01
Requirements
Power budget, environment, expected production volume and certification needs — these decide the chip, and getting them wrong is expensive to undo later.
- 02
Prototype
A working board and firmware tested against real conditions, not a breadboard on a bench in a heated office.
- 03
Validate
Hardware and firmware tested together, with the failure modes that matter in the field exercised deliberately.
- 04
Production support
Manufacturing guidance, documentation and the firmware maintenance path, including how you'll push an update to units already deployed.
FAQ