Electronic Design for Scientific Testing and Measuring Devices

Data acquisition and conversion

We design the acquisition architecture around what you are actually measuring: converter selection, sampling and timing, anti-alias filtering, and the digital capture, whether that is a microcontroller, an FPGA or a streamed interface to a host. The resolution you put on the box has to survive contact with a real PCB, and we design so that it does.

References, calibration and drift

An instrument that is accurate on the bench and out of specification in a cold warehouse has been sampled, not designed. We design the references, the drift budget and the calibration architecture so the product holds its specification over temperature, time and supply, and so it can be calibrated economically in production and re-calibrated in the field. Where your customers need traceable calibration, we design the product so that route is straightforward and repeatable.

Isolation, EMC and compliance

Instruments that connect to the outside world carry risk that self-contained products do not, and measurement products are judged twice on EMC: they have to meet the limits, and keep measuring correctly while being deliberately interfered with. We design the isolation, the safety architecture and the EMC from the start, to the right standard for your product, which for measurement, control and laboratory equipment is usually IEC 61010 and its EMC counterpart. We scope which parts apply at the outset, when it is cheap to get right, and carry the evidence as the programme runs. For more detail on how we can help ensure you stay compliant, head over to our electronic product compliance page.

Firmware and instrument interfaces

We develop the instrument firmware and the interfaces your customers expect, from the measurement modes and signal processing to the command sets, protocols and drivers that let an instrument drop into a customer’s test framework. And we design the data integrity a measurement product lives on: trustworthy timestamps, fault and over-range reporting, and updates that cannot leave the instrument in an ambiguous calibration state.

From bench instrument to embedded module

Precision measurement is the same discipline whether it ends up in a rack instrument, a portable analyser, an embedded sensor module or a piece of scientific apparatus, and the transferable part is the difficult part: the signal chain, the references, the isolation and the calibration. What differs is the packaging and the specific claim your product has to stand behind, from a metrological traceability route to a laboratory data-integrity regime. We build the electronics to suit the claim you need to make, so the same core capability serves a one-off scientific instrument and a product heading for volume.

Across the instrument range

Every instrument is built on the same electronics core: precision measurement, conversion, references, isolation, firmware and connectivity. That is our day-to-day work, and it applies whether the product is a bench instrument, a portable analyser, an embedded sensor module or a scientific device. What changes between them is the sector-specific requirement sitting on top, from a metrological traceability route to a laboratory data-integrity regime, and we scope that into the programme from the start, exactly as we scope the compliance route for any product.