We would like to wish all our clients and suppliers a Happy Easter. We hope you have a good, well deserved break, as will we. Our office will be closed for the Bank Holiday Friday and Monday. Lets hope the weather improves…

Given our involvement in home automation and smart home technology, we are always interested in what the big boys are up to. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft – they are a large cumbersome organisation and many of their products lack real innovation. However I do like the potential of Kinect – it really is an innovative way of interacting with technology. This clip illustrates that nicely (skip...

Not so much news, this, as a bit of a moan. We’re currently upgrading some products we designed 15 years ago, using Echelon powerline technology. This is great technology, and it has stood the test of time, with tens of thousands of products we designed out in the field. However why do Echelon make life hard so for the designer? Most other chip vendors bend over backwards to support the designer, with readily available data, application...

Welcome to our new website! We have given it a fresh new look, and added plenty of new content, such as:- a Portfolio section showing some of the work we have done recently a Testimonials page so you can see what our clients think of us a News section to keep you abreast of what we’re up to Have a look around it, and let us know what you think. If you know of anyone who might be interested in our services, please pass on our details. We...

Following on from our post last September, we’re pleased to see more manufacturers getting on this bandwagon. Infineon have just announced their new XMC1000 range, aimed (like other Cortex M0 manufacturers) at the low-end 8-bit industrial applications, which is where many of our designs lie. They offer an interesting range of features and peripherals aimed at motor control, LED lighting, digital power conversion, etc. etc.. Nice to see an...

For techies like us, a tagline such as “the internet of things” can be rather irritating. We have been designing connected products for donkeys years, using ethernet and the internet simply as ways to extend and improve connectivity – it is not a new idea. Control systems need connectivity, not just for getting data to and from humans (the human-machine interface), but also between devices (machine-to-machine). How else does...