Case Studies by Technology

Derbyshire County Council
Specification, design and development of a Pocket PC 2002 application allowing Council surveyors to create and update building surveys electronically whilst onsite.

Operating System: Windows®CE
Development Skill: Application Embedded

MPC Data
A unique modified Fiat Panda was driven from the UK to Mongolia in order to raise monies for rural families in Mongolia and Africa. MPC Data sponsored the event by creating a Windows XP Embedded image that allowed Windows XP to run from a solid-state disk, thereby creating a fully solid-state solution for operating in the harsh environment of a vehicle. A custom application captures timelapse video from a USB webcam and stores the images on a USB memory stick. As a 'headless' system, startup and shutdown operations needed to be fully automatic and reliable.

Operating System: Windows®XP Embedded
Development Skill: Application Embedded

Ashby Microsystems
A data acquisition program for the SAPPAR pile driver project. Data acquired for force, frequency, depth, etc as concrete piles are driven into the ground.

Operating System: MSDOS
Development Skill: Instrumentation

Davis Derby
An access control and management information system for fork lift trucks. A detailed case study is available on request.

Operating System: Windows®95/98 Windows®NT Windows®2000
Development Skill: Application

Petrovend
Implementation of a configuration and alarm reporting utility for industrial Petrol Station Fuel-Monitoring equipment. Supports multiple industry-standard protocols for a broad range of different tank gauges and alarm condition sensors. Alarm conditions can be automatically reported directly to an off-site engineer via a dial-up connection.

Operating System: Windows®95/98 Windows®NT
Development Skill: Comms Protocols Application Internationalisation

Crane Electronics
Development of an application that allows a desktop PC user to view and print information collected by a Windows CE device.

Operating System: Windows®95/98 Windows®NT E
Development Skill: Application

Sony Broadcast and Professional Europe
Functional design, software design and implementation of video editing software for reporters "in the field" to prepare video inserts on a portable editing console. The equipment is based on a standard notebook PC and custom docking station with video stored digitally on magneto-optical media. MPC Data developed the PC software and the docking station firmware which performed real-time MPEG video encode/decode.

Operating System: Windows®95/98
Development Skill: Windows application Embedded Device Drivers

Action Information Management
An application to validate the contents of bus timetable data files, in varying formats, against standard formats. The project also required the development of a wireless communications protocol.

Operating System: Windows®2000 Windows®2000
Development Skill: Windows application Comms Protocols

An airport security system supplier
Development of an application which provides automated transmission of image files using standard internet protocols.

Operating System: Windows®2000
Development Skill: Application

Net Voyager
Consultancy and development for a variety of low-cost X86 based products aimed at home web browsing and terminals to Windows application servers. Products use both embedded Linux and Windows CE 3.0 with Microsoft WBT (Windows Based Terminal) thin client software.

Operating System: Embedded Linux Windows CE
Development Skill: Embedded Windows application

An airport security system supplier
Development of an application which provides automated transmission of image files using standard internet protocols.

Operating System: Windows®2000
Development Skill: Application

Petrovend
Enhancement of EPOS back-office software for a card-based fuel vending system. The work included addition of fuel tank alarm and monitoring features.

Operating System: Windows®95/98 Windows®NT
Development Skill: Application

Petrovend
Prototyping, design and implementation of a major application for unmanned petrol stations. The system controls and manages card operated automated vending of fuel on a petrol station forecourt, and interfaces between fuel pump controllers and card readers, and provides full back-office EPOS functionality. Dual hot-swappable machines provide excellent resilience and integrity for critical financial data. In the event of a critical error, engineers can be automatically warned by SMS messaging.

Operating System: Windows®95/98 Windows®NT
Development Skill: Application Time critical

Petrovend
Enhancement of EPOS back-office software for a card-based fuel vending system. The work included addition of fuel tank alarm and monitoring features.

Operating System: Windows®95/98 Windows®NT
Development Skill: Application

VG Scientific
Windows NT COM Service to drive various 'stage controllers' attached to a PC using a serial interface. The stages hold silicon wafers within a lithography machine. We also developed an MMC plug in to allow convenient configuration and calibration of the stage.

Operating System: Windows®NT
Development Skill: Application