Applied Software Engineering

Timely and cost-effective embedded software development is critical to the success of many projects.  The quality of the embedded software in your product, whether it is for entertainment purposes or for keeping people safe in a transport system, can have a major impact on both the time to market and the resultant sales and publicity.  That is why at ASE we have expertise in both project management and embedded systems’ engineering, that we bring together to focus on projects, enabling us to repeatedly meet demanding timescales and requirements.

SOFTWARE EXPERTISE

Our main expertise is in embedded systems, especially embedded software development, delivered as either fully bespoke or customizedsoftware solutions.  We operate in a wide range of market sectors, as diverse as safety critical railway systems and digital TV set top boxes, allowing us to bring experience from one sector’s solutions to others that may face similar challenges but in different circumstances and products.  A major benefit in engaging ASE to handle your embedded software development is that we always focus on the reliability and longevity of our software, providing both peace of mind and long-term savings for our clients.

SPECIFICATION

Your needs, and those of your clients, drive the way we work with you to develop your specification.  Our extensive experience means that we can work with you to produce specifications that really do describe what you want your system to do.  If you already have a detailed implementation specification, we can review it with you, discuss it in technical detail with you and sort out those little details that can so easily cause issues later.   If your specification is an idea or a view of what you want as an end-result, we can create technical specifications for systems that will deliver the functionality that you need; and we can communicate in English, as well as tech-speak!

You will find that we can really add value to your project if you involve us at this stage.

SOFTWARE GUARANTEE

Unusually for the software development sector, you will receive a whole year’s guarantee for the software that we develop for you to an agreed specification.  We can offer this without hesitation because we build our software to last.  Yes, we are proud of our quality, but it also means that many of our clients come to us again and again when they are creating new products.

Not all clients’ requirements are limited to purely embedded software development. Many have intelligent software products and devices; therefore, we also provide embedded hardware design and development services for products needing embedded computers or microcontrollers. This service can be delivered as a complete hardware design and development package or can be delivered as separate elements, see below:

HARDWARE DESIGN

Because of the diverse nature of our clients’ businesses, the projects we undertake are based around embedded processing in a wide range of environments and industries. This allows us to transfer proven solutions from one industry sector to influence solutions in another. Many of our clients have commended this approach as an innovative means of knowledge transfer.

Typical environments include:

• Rugged and extended environmental operating conditions
• Safety critical applications

Projects include

• Processors and DSPs
• Video input interfaces (cameras etc)
• Sensor and other analogue interfacing
• Displays

All hardware design work is undertaken within our quality and standards processes. This ensures both the integrity of the design and provides our clients with the knowledge that their solution has quality built in. In the typical environments quoted above, this is a critical feature of embedded hardware design.

A wide range of expertise is available from designing for low-cost high volume manufacturing, through to low volume high value products. This allows us to present solutions to a variety of industry requirements.

All work is designed for manufacturing with appropriate test capabilities built in. This allows our clients to feel confident that performance of the solution they have will be capable of being regularly monitored.

Prototyping and low volume manufacturing for clients can also be managed. This type of solution requires working very closely with our clients and has resulted in the level of quality that can be expected from truly bespoke equipment.