Years of building broad experience with electronics design have allowed us to develop specialties that allow us to add even more value to a design. Listed below are some examples.
Tiny Designs in Tight Places
Case study - Physiological status monitor.
This small, body worn battery powered device includes an ECG front end that senses heart rate, an accelerometer used to measure activity level, orientation, and a temperature sensor that helps approximate body core temperature, as well as long term data logging and wireless connectivity. All of this is contained in a very small wear-and-forget package.
When space is at a premium yet functionality cannot be compromised, Odic puts its extensive miniaturization experience to work. Using such packages as micro-BGA and 0201 components, Odic shrinks considerable functionality into very small places.
Very Low Power Electronics
Case study – Digital Security Token
When asked to re-design a battery powered digital security device, Odic proposed a solution based on an extremely low power processor, a power miserly algorithm and strategic use of on-chip resources. The security token, running on a digital watch processor, ran for over 6 years on a small cell battery. Since the product was made in the millions of units per year, and the processor cost 60 cents less than its predecessor, our customer saved over $1M per year because of the new design.
Designing power efficient electronics is much like constructing the lightest and most fuel-efficient car. If the materials are lightweight, the engine can be smaller and the mileage will increase without compromising performance. For us, lightweight materials translates to low power components and resourceful use of power management that is implemented both in hardware and firmware.
Over the years, Odic engineers have learned how to squeeze every microamp from a system when needed.
Embedded Wireless Communication
Case study - Wireless EEG transmitter.
Odic designed a small, wireless, rechargeable battery-powered EEG system that sends six channels of digitized brain waves to a Bluetooth-enabled device. The wireless link removes motion artifacts experienced by wired EEG monitors, and improves usability in the operating room by eliminating a cumbersome mesh of sensor wires..
Odic is busily contributing to the ubiquity of wireless communication. We have integrated Bluetooth, WiFi, cellular, and short and long range 2.4GHz and 915MHz proprietary radio transceivers into a wide range of applications, most being battery powered. We help customers choose the best wireless technology for their application, and then we pull in the pieces needed to achieve the required data rate, range, bandwidth and power consumption.
Quick Prototype Design & Build
Case study – Home/Hospital Air Cleaner
A start-up company looking for venture funding needed a prototype to confirm expected performance as well as to raise interest in the venture finance community. Odic designed a solution and had a small number of PCBs made. The firmware was ready to test by the time the PCBs came, allowing for a short integration and test cycle.
The quicker a prototype can be developed, the sooner it can be used for demonstrations, internal or customer evaluation, to prove out certain performance characteristics such as battery life, be appraised for manufactured cost, or for determining if it makes sense to commit the resources required to fully fund a complete product development cycle. Odic’s fast response time and organized approach to project definition and prototype design helps customers prove out an idea and create a working model of a system quickly. Dozens of times we have prototyped a circuit, selected processor and peripheral eval boards, or fabricated and assembled a quick-turn PCB, all while writing firmware in parallel.