Critical Link has the embedded systems design expertise and engineering flexibility to support product development tasks for our SOM customers. Using Critical Link to help design and integrate your product or system saves time and reduces costs. Click the areas below for an in-depth look at our capabilities.
Full Lifecycle Embedded Systems Design
Critical Link provides end-to-end electronic product development, including:
- Product Concept
- Analysis of Requirements
- Product Design
- Full Implementation & Testing
- Manufacturing & Support
Our staff, with an average of 15 years engineering experience, helps accelerate time-to-market and decrease costs compared to ground-up, in-house efforts. We maintain the highest quality standards, whether helping you develop completely new products from scratch, or retool legacy products to extend lifespan and revenue stream.
We have a proven process for client communication and collaboration that supports seamless integration. In fact, our clients consider Critical Link engineers a virtual extension of their own teams.
Systems Engineering
Critical Link stands apart from other embedded systems design organizations in our ability to provide complete systems engineering services. Not all of our customers ask us to take on this level of responsibility, but those who do can be sure a high quality system will be designed, laying a solid foundation for smooth implementation.
When we design components that are part of a larger system, we take into consideration all external interactions, and the constraints they impose. Our systems engineering expertise includes:
- Requirements analysis
- Algorithm design
- Photonics
- Control system design
- Communications system design
- Digital signal processing
- System test
Hardware Design
We support our clients along every step of the hardware development cycle, from product concept through manufacturing and beyond.
Our team continually develops new hardware and releases approximately one new board design a week. We use FPGAs in many of our hardware designs, and as a result, programming hardware in VHDL is second nature to our team.
- PCB Design tools include Altium & OrCAD
- VHDL for FPGA development
- High speed, low noise analog data acquisition
- Sensor integration
- Processor subsystem design
- High speed bus architectures including PCI, PCIe, USB, LVDS
- Switching and linear power supply design
Software Development
Critical Link’s software development capabilities cover a wide range of operating systems, languages, development environments, and protocols. We use a best-in-class, object-oriented approach that helps ensure our software performs at the highest levels and accomplishes the tasks set forth.
As an electronics product development company, our software skills on embedded platforms are extensive. In some cases the embedded systems we develop also require a PC-based graphical user interface. To fill this need, Critical Link has many talented software engineers capable of delivering top quality PC-based applications that complement our embedded platforms.
Programming languages include C, C++, C#, Assembler, Java, Ada, and a variety of scripting languages including Linux shell scripts, Perl scripts, Windows batch files.
- Embedded Linux and BSPs
- Real-time Operating Systems
- DSP software / optimization programming
- Device drivers – embedded and PC
- Ethernet TCP/IP and serial based communications
- Embedded software
- Graphical User Interfaces
Mechanical Engineering
Rounding out our product development skills is our ability to assist with mechanical phases of the design. Our team can help with your mechanical product development issues, including everything from integrating the electronics into your existing mechanical enclosure to fully developing the mechanical design.
Our mechanical expertise includes:
- Mechanical concept development
- Precision opto-mechanical/electro-mechanical
- Enclosure design
Prototyping
The systems development life cycle, more often than not, begins with developing a working prototype of your product. Critical Link is uniquely qualified to help with this phase – from interpreting your specifications to suggesting alternatives to optimize performance or achieve a more cost-effective design. We have designed thousands of prototypes for customers and are ready to help with yours.
Manufacturing & Assembly
Every embedded systems design project generally culminates in a transition to production. Critical Link’s experience taking our own designs to production has given us the expertise to make your transition into production as seamless and smooth as possible.
Whether Critical Link manages manufacturing or you execute builds at another facility, we help ensure that your product design can be reliably reproduced in quantities of tens, hundreds, or thousands of units.
Project Management
Our senior engineers are seasoned project managers with expertise in budgeting, scheduling, project requirements, product content, and quality. We manage for success, from the initial stages of development through production.
Critical Link has an in-house project management system geared for jobs both large and small. Key components of our project management capabilities include:
- Online collaboration tools
- Weekly customer update / coordination meetings
- Task breakdown (time and cost estimates accompany every proposal)
- Frequent status reports
- Weekly resource allocation (ensures correct skill sets are allocated to your project and proper staffing levels maintained)
- Cost & Schedule Management (monitored from initial estimate to completion)
For more information on our embedded systems design capabilities, or to talk with Critical Link about an upcoming project, contact info@criticallink.com.