Established in 1998 and based in the North West of England, Prescott Design & Development provides hardware and
software development services to the electronics industry, either on site or at our own, well-equipped facility.
Over thirty years experience developing electronic products from concept to final production for a number of
markets with EMC compliance, high reliability, low cost and DFM/DFT key requirements
Our core expertise is in the design of embedded microprocessor based products, ranging from low cost,
low power, 8-bit microcontrollers to high performance, embedded PC systems, and including high speed digital
interfaces, analog interfaces, FPGAs / EPLDs and embedded software.
After more than five years working in the Test and Measurement industry developing Digital Storage Oscilloscopes and four years in Commercial Avionics developing In-Filight Entertainment Equipment, Prescott Design and Development was set up as a partnership when the opportunity arose to work on a contract basis developing Navigation Equipment for the leisure marine market. The limited company was formed a few years later in 1998.
Since then we have provided services for a number of clients, helping them to bring many technologiically advanced products to market either as part of a larger development program or as an independent design house providing a complete turn-key solution.
Virtually all the product developments we have been involved in have employed one or more microprocessors and here is where our strength lies. Over the years we have developed products with a variety of microprocessors, from early 8-bit microprocessors running at a few megahertz, with all memory and peripherals implemented externally, to modern ARM based microcontrollers running at over 1 GHz with sophisticated, integrated peripherals, built in flash memory and high speed memory interfaces. We have also developed products based around the COM-Express form factor embedded PC incorporating some of the latest PC technologies.
Along side developing the hardware for embedded products we have experience writing software to implement complete product solutions, test routines and low level drivers for custom hardware we have developed. Coding in C and assembler we have built up a wealth of experience writing software to bring up a new processor system from scratch and resolving difficult hardware / software interaction issues. This mix of software and hardware experience gives us an excellent understanding of the trade-offs between hardware and software implementation to find the right balance between product cost and development effort.
Semi-custom devices of various kinds have also been at the heart of many products we have developed, from PALs and GALs, through EPLDs, FPGAs and several ASIC designs. We have used a number of design techniques, from gate level schematic capture to VHDL and Verilog and employed various tools to perform synthesis, simulation and timing verification.
Of course real products need to interact with the real world and to this end we have extensive experience in developing a variety of digital and analogue interfaces including, Ethernet and CANBUS networks, USB, Video, Audio, ADCs, DACs, LCD and CRT displays, as well as interfaces for product specific devices such as Radar and Sonar transducers.
A critical component of any electronic product is the PCB, where a good appreciation of how PCB layout affects different aspects of circuit performance is critical to achieving a successful board design. Our understanding of the PCB layout factors that govern circuit performance, such as signal integrity and EMC, has been gained over many board designs employing techniques such as differential, matched length, controlled impedance signal routing, optimal power / ground routing and segregation, high voltage creepage / clearance and high current tracking.
We are well versed in a variety of schematic and PCB layout CAD packages (e.g. OrCAD Capture, Cadstar Design Editor, Easy-PC, Vutrax) as well as digital (e.g. ModelSim) and analog simulators (e.g. Simetrix), with at least a passing knowledge of several other CAD systems including Pads and Altium.
Bringing a product successfully to market involves many other areas of expertise beyond circuit / PCB design. Our experience gained over many project lifecycles has led to an excellent understanding of issues such as manufacturing methods, production test, EMC qualification, thermal management, reliability and maintenance. This gives us the ability to address many potential problems early in the design process, reducing the risk of costly and time consuming changes late in the project.
In addition to writing embedded software we have developed several PC applications, both console (DOS) and GUI based, typically used to control and monitor test hardware.
If you would like to know more detail about our experience with tools and technologies, please feel free to contact us.
