Electronic Design undertake a full range of design activities including hardware, software, system design and integration activities to support the equipment required by our customers. We provide support to our projects from pre-contract discussions with customers to post delivery production support activities with the shop-floor and customers.

A key activity in Electronic Design is the design of electronics and software to support servo-mechanisms used to control the position of optical elements giving the required optical performance. The current generation of servo-mechanisms is generated from a ‘toolbox’ of proven solutions based around a high performance motion control DSP. The emphasis is very strongly based on standard hardware and any special to type functionality or interfacing being provided by software. The use of software allows direct control of the optical parameters by the customer, for example the focus distance could be specified directly in metres and this would be maintained with changes in temperature and magnification / field of view.

Through the use of specially developed servo loop design software we can tailor the performance of the servo-mechanism to match not only the optical design requirements for accuracy, but also customer requirements be they for high speed operation or low power operation – or even some reconfigurable combination of the two. Through the use of a serial data interface (Which can be generic eg CAN Bus or customer specific) extended diagnostics and field upload of new application code can be achieved, simply.

We also have significant experience of integrating uncooled IR cameras and miniature displays into systems. This work includes managing the complete interface from specific electronic details to MMI (Man Machine Interface) and driving miniature displays including painting symbology on to the video signal. Key to the performance of much of the uncooled IR equipment is our capability in low power design.