USA
Critical Link is an embedded systems development firm with expertise in a broad range of electronics applications, providing Systems Engineering, Software, and Hardware Design services, and custom product development support. We can contribute to your project anywhere in the product development lifecycle. Our off-the-shelf SOMs, baseboard designs, and imaging platforms act as building blocks proven to accelerate product development and minimize upfront investment.
Our engineers deliver technical expertise when you need it, whether to augment your internal development team, or to fully offload portions of your project onto us. The diversity in skills and experience of our staff means you have access to engineers who can address any aspect of embedded systems design, including:
Our team designs hundreds of boards every year, from very small footprints that minimize size, weight and power, to large, complex, high layer-count designs.
Baseboard Design
System On Module (SOM) Customization
Single Board Computer (SBC) Design
Board Support Package (BSP)
Our depth of experience in image sensor technology, SoC and FPGA design, vision protocols, and signal processing expertise uniquely position us as a premier development partner in embedded imaging system design. We work with OEMs in to develop and manufacture cost-effective, custom imaging platforms around a variety of technologies.
Sensor Board Development
On-Board Processing
Interfaces & Protocols
Mechanical Design
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.