Case Studies by Technology

A major UK mobile network operator
Design and implementation of Minicom emulation software for profoundly deaf users. The software runs on a handheld device running Windows CE, and connects to any infrared-enabled mobile phone using IrDA.

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

Nexan
Design and development of various software components for a heart-monitoring product. Areas worked on included CE consultancy and configuration, a serial communications protocol, database object and TCP/IP proxies for dial-up communications.

Operating System: Windows®CE
Development Skill: Comms Protocols Embedded Device Drivers Windows application

Leading supplier of consumer electronics
Design and implemenation of many low-level drivers to abstract complex hardware in various set-top box environments. This required a familiarity with the hardware, interfacing with suppliers' technical representatives, experimentation and development of suitable control algorithms. Amongst the areas covered were: • Sound Samples - managing the hardware that can replay sound samples in mpeg and PCM formats; • Video and still picture scaling & positioning; • A manager for the various video 'layers' supported by current set-top box hardware (e.g. background, still picture, video, graphics, cursor layers); • Real-Time Clock; • Wireless Keyboard; • Audio/video switching matrix to control routing through the various SCART and other accessory rear-panel interfaces; • Smartcard interface: a very low-level driver (synchronous serial port and protocol) to communicate with the "smart card" that controls access rights and provides decryption keys to the set-top-box.;

Operating System: pSOS Nucleus+
Development Skill: Embedded Device Drivers Comms Protocols (Porting time critical)

Leading supplier of consumer electronics
Filesystems and device drivers to enable video data to be stored onto and streamed from a variety of bulk storage devices. We have worked with hard disk and solid-state interfaces, implementing standard filesystem structures to allow exchangeable devices to be read/written both in set-top box and standard PC environments, and implementing wear-levelling strategies for flash programmable devices.

Operating System: pSOS
Development Skill: Embedded Device Drivers (Porting time critical)

Leading supplier of consumer electronics
Maintenance and Support: with many tens of thousands of our customers' Integrated Digital TVs (IDTV) now in people's homes, ongoing work is needed to investigate and correct problems identified when broadcasters introduce new interactive applications or conditional access mechanisms. MPC Data liaise with broadcasters and our customers to develop work-arounds or upgrades. MPC Data implemented the necessary software for an IDTV to replace its operating firmware from broadcast data in an 'off-air' upgrade. This critical software required careful peer-review and thorough testing before being deployed.

Operating System: pSOS
Development Skill: Embedded Device Drivers Comms Protocols

Leading supplier of consumer electronics
EPG (Electronic Program Guide) software for Integrated Digital TV products. Our customer's graphics department had a very clear idea about how the user interface should *look*, but little design work had gone into how it should "work" - i.e. the precise interactions between the various screens. MPC Data produced a prototype EPG (in Borland Delphi) as a basis for discussion. The PC-based prototype allowed our engineers to communicate effectively with the customer's graphic and user interface designers and led to a specification for a usable EPG on the target devices that MPC Data subsequently implemented.

Operating System: pSOS Nucleus+
Development Skill: Embedded Comms protocols Porting

Leading supplier of consumer electronics
Image Decompression: MPC Data took over support for an image decompression library. The library supported PNG, JPG and GIF image formats and was modified to work in a multi-tasking environment and to co-operatively 'block' during any stage in the decode process if data was unavailable.

Operating System: pSOS
Development Skill: Embedded device drivers (Porting time critical)