Solutions

Micro-Key services in a bird's-eye view

Please find below a complete summary of the services Micro-Key is able to provide. Micro-Key quotes these services as fixed price consultancy, development or manufacture projects:

Consultancy / Project Management

  • Feasibility studies, requirement engineering and functional analysis
  • Project Management for different types of product developments

Development (design and engineering)

  • Embedded system design for optimal hardware and software platform choices
  • Hardware design including: functional and technical design, simulation, schematic capture and PCB layout & route, all according to EMC standards
  • Software design including: architectural design, detailed design and software coding & debugging
  • Hardware and software design review and design verification

Prototype engineering

  • Component procurement and PCB assembly
  • Hardware and software integration
  • Hardware and software integration
  • Hardware design validation including EMC pre-compliance testing (subcontracted)
  • Software design validation
  • Technical product documentation

Initial production

  • Hardware redesign from prototype to mature and reproducible product
  • Design, engineering and constructing of product test benches
  • Component procurement and PCB assembly
  • Hardware redesign validation including EMC compliance testing (subcontracted)
  • Technical product documentation

Volume production

  • Product configuration management
  • Supply chain management (procurement and logistics)
  • PCB assembly (subcontracted)
  • Product/system and cable assembly
  • PCB level and/or product/system level testing on qualified test benches
  • Packaging
  • Distribution

Maintenance and repair services

  • Warranty service, help desk and repair workshop
  • Product part-list management
  • Product design maintenance
In case the development costs are for account of the customer, all documents, reports, source code, schematics, bill of materials, PCB files, gerber files, drawings, manufacturing files, etc. are made available to the customer without any restriction. The customer is free to select any manufacturing partner in preference to Micro-Key.


Micro-Key commonly used technology and tooling

The core technology and tooling expertise includes the following:

Hardware

  • 8, 16 and 32 bit microcontrollers and CPUs: 8051, ARM, ColdFire, PowerPC and microcontroller series of e.g. Atmel, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Infinion, MicroChip, Nec, Philips
  • 8, 16 and 32 bit soft-core microcontrollers: Nios, 8051, ARM
  • DSPs: Analog Devices, Texas Instruments
  • Power supply circuits
  • Complex digital and analog circuits and interfaces
  • Motor drive interfaces: DC, AC and Stepper motors
  • Peripheral interfaces: RS-232, USB, PCI
  • Field bus interfaces: CAN, RS-485, Ethernet
  • Network interfaces: Ethernet
  • Wireless interfaces: Bluetooth, ZigBee
  • System on Programmable Chip: Altera, Xilinx
  • VHDL design for PLDs and FPGAs: Altera, Xilinx

Embedded software

  • (Real-time) operating systems: VxWorks, Nucleus PLUS, CMX-RTX, embOS, Embedded Linux, WinCE
  • Real-time system software and application software design
  • Field bus protocols: CANopen, DeviceNet, Profibus, Profinet, Modbus
  • Network protocols: TCP/IP, RTnet
  • Custom-specific communication protocols
  • Wireless communication: WLAN, GSM, GPRS
  • Wireless positioning: GPS
  • Assembler, C and C++

PC based software

  • Graphical user-interface design
  • Object oriented programming
  • Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft .NET, Borland Delphi, National Instruments LabView

Micro-Key application areas

The core application areas are industrial, automotive, maritime and technical scientific electronic modules including:

  • Device / instrument control
  • Machine control
  • Process control
  • (Distributed) measurement & control systems
  • Automotive electronic control units (ECUs)
  • Maritime electronic control units
  • Medical and pharmaceutical instruments
  • Motion control
  • Data acquisition & logging