The efficiency and robustness of embedded software not only affects your product’s reliability, but can have a significant impact on your costs.

To minimize memory cost, software must be optimized to consume as little space and as few working resources as possible.

Embedded devices, particularly portable and increasingly ‘green’ ones, are usually very power conscious. A well designed power supply, efficient software and protocols, and sophisticated duty cycling will greatly extend your products’ battery life and energy savings.

On top of these considerations, many embedded systems require real-time functionality – a demanding design and software challenge. It’s one thing to create software that performs the required function, another to do so within very strict timing constraints, where other pieces are relying on the timeliness of information – especially in wireless and power conscious applications.

Our clients rely on our combination of specialized engineering talents and understanding of these unique challenges, to provide quality embedded systems solutions.

ZigBee is a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh networking standard.

In a ZigBee network each device functions as a repeater, creating a robust, reliable, and self-healing network without expensive infrastructure. This makes ZigBee ideal for applications such as building controls, sensor networks, and energy managment.

MMB Research is a leader in the field of ZigBee integration. Our engineers developed some of the first commercial ZigBee modules and end-user products, and continue to work with leading technology companies to integrate the ZigBee standard into their products.

Hardware is often only half of your product. Embedded devices often require user-accessible interfaces to adjust settings. Sensor and control networks require management and monitoring software.

MMB's software engineers specialize in web-based interfaces. Using web-based software makes your products cross-platform, gives you the flexibility of local or remote installation, and eliminates IT headaches for your customers.

New innovations are revolutionizing the building control industry. Traditionally high-cost and labor intensive systems are being transformed by advances in wireless networks – such as ZigBee – that offer wireless controls for far less than the cost of the cables once used to connect them!

Our engineers helped start this revolution by developing the world’s first ZigBee wireless building automation system. MMB has experience in all aspects of today’s building control environment, from occupancy sensors to lighting and HVAC control to the web-based front-desk interfaces that manage it all.

Today we use this experience to help many of our clients bring their products into this exciting and interoperable building control market.

Today’s electronics market is increasingly mobile and energy conscious. Energy savings and battery life are key features that many products compete on.

Many factors affect your device’s power consumption. Even small optimizations in software efficiency, communications protocols, duty cycles, component choices, and others can have a surprising impact. Because of this, power management is a design factor that should be considered from day one of product development.

MMB’s experience in the wireless and building control market – building sensors and controls designed to last years on minimal battery power – gives us the tools necessary to help you minimize your products’ power consumption, and maximize their competitiveness.

Creating a wireless product or taking an existing product wireless is a complex challenge. Many factors can influence the effectiveness of wireless communication: antenna design, shielding, radio tuning, layout, power management, and even the electromagnetic properties of the plastic in your enclosure. All these factors must be implemented with production costs and industry certification in mind.

MMB’s years of experience designing, optimizing, and managing certification has allowed us to bring both our own, and our customers’ wireless products to market quickly, reliably, and affordably.

Too often, communication protocols are designed as an afterthought. Developers under pressure to make devices “just work” end up rolling prototype code into production units, or implement designs that don’t take future requirements into account.

Protocol design can have an enormous impact on both your product’s current performance, and your costs and flexibility in the future. Our engineers have spent many hours reverse-engineering or rewriting poorly designed protocols for our client’s own products to diagnose problems after the original designers moved on, or when they later decided they needed their device to work with other products.

Efficient protocol design will allow your device to perform faster and with less working memory and power. Implementing a well thought out and documented protocol – or even a standards-based one – will streamline future development on your products, help standardize communication across your product line, and ease interoperability with other technologies.

MMB has implemented protocols in a range of devices and applications – from proprietary interfaces with legacy products to cutting edge industry standards. Our experience will help you choose and design the right protocols for your products.

Your enclosure is more than just a pretty face. In addition to aesthetic concerns – though a very important factor – your enclosure has a lot to do with the performance and flexibility of your product, and should be part of the design consideration from day one.

Choosing the right material will significantly affect the range of a wireless product. Designing your enclosure and electronics in tandem can help address heat problems. Incorporating a variety of mounting options will increase your products’ flexibility.

MMB has the experience and industry relationships to design, prototype, and manage production of the best enclosure for your products.

Your product is only as good as your quality control. With devices relying on increasingly complex embedded software, test procedures have become equally complex – and critical. Finding bugs later on might require performing firmware updates on countless products in the field – a task that ranges from costly to impossible.

Proper test design and procedures are an integral part of your product design, and MMB’s development process. We’ve developed test procedures for protoype runs, mass manufactured products, including RF performance testing for wireless devices.

A key step in taking any product to market is compliance testing. Anything that plugs into a wall, computer, or communicates wirelessly needs to undergo at least one kind of industry certification before making its way out to customers.

Not only must the requirements of certification be taken into account in the every phase of design, but the certification process itself must be properly managed to avoid unnecessary and costly delays.

MMB can manage both safety (CSA, UL, CE) and communications (FCC, IC, ETSI/CE, ARIB) certification through our established relationships with testing houses.