Firmware Development Services
Your product ships when the firmware works. We write production firmware for medical devices, industrial equipment and connected products, and we write it so your schedule holds: the firmware is proved on real silicon before your boards arrive, so bring-up is not also the first integration. You own the source from the first day, and nothing moves to the next stage until you have signed off the last one. Whichever chip you have chosen, we almost certainly work with it.
What We Deliver
What do you actually get from a firmware development partner?
Working firmware, the source it was built from, and the evidence that it does what you asked. Firmware runs in parallel with your schematic and layout work, so the day boards arrive, drivers are already written and proved. The intellectual property is yours from the first day, whether we finish the programme together or you take it in-house halfway through.
How the work runs
- Scope and architecture agreed in writing first, so a hardware change and a software change cannot quietly disagree and cost you a board spin
- Drivers written and proved on a vendor kit while your board is still being laid out, so your schedule is not waiting on hardware
- Board bring-up starting the day boards arrive, not three weeks later while somebody reads the schematic
- Integration and test against your requirement, not against whatever the code happens to do
- Field readiness: secure update path, recovery behaviour and the evidence your market asks for
- Handover, and support for as long as the product needs it
What you receive
- Full source code, with the intellectual property yours from the first day
- The build environment, so anyone can rebuild it in five years
- A written record of how the hardware and software agree to talk to each other, with test cases and results
- A defect log with every finding, its owner and how it was closed
- Signed over-the-air updates the device verifies before it applies, with a defined way back if one fails
- A written record of your sign-off at every gate
Silicon and Platforms
Will you work with the chip we have already chosen?
Almost certainly yes. We work across ARM Cortex-M, Cortex-A and Cortex-R, RISC-V, and the 8 and 16-bit families where a product still calls for them, on bare metal, FreeRTOS, Zephyr and embedded Linux. If you have already chosen a part, we work with it. If you have not, we help you choose it against the power budget, the radio requirement and the update path.
Low-power and wireless
Battery-powered devices where every microamp is argued over, and anything that has to hold a radio link without draining the cell.
- Nordic nRF, Espressif ESP32, Renesas DA and similar families
- Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi, Thread and cellular
- FreeRTOS, Zephyr and bare metal
- Sleep and wake behaviour measured on real hardware
Control and real-time
Devices where timing and safety matter: motor and instrument control, and equipment that has to keep working when the network does not.
- ST STM32, TI, Microchip PIC and AVR, NXP and similar families
- Bare metal where the timing is tight, an RTOS where it is not
- Behaviour proved on hardware, not assumed from configuration
Linux and rich interfaces
Devices that need a display, a file system or a full network stack, running on application-class silicon across all major and minor microcontrollers.
- NXP i.MX, TI Sitara and other application-class ARM
- Embedded Linux, Yocto and board support packages
- Device drivers and the boot chain
- Update and rollback that survives a power cut
These are the families we are asked for most often. They are examples, not a limit. Tell us the part and we will tell you honestly whether we have shipped on it, or how quickly we can be productive on it.
De-Risking
How do you keep a firmware project from going wrong?
By deciding at the start where the risk on your project actually sits, and attacking that first. It is different every time. On one device the risk is a radio that has never been through certification. On another it is a sensor nobody has read reliably. On another it is a schedule that depends on a board that does not exist yet.
We name those risks with you in the first weeks, agree which ones get retired early and how, and you see that plan before the work starts. Our founders are engineers and are in the room when that call is made.
Strategies we use most often
- Prove the risky part on a vendor evaluation kit before your board is fabricated
- Write drivers in parallel with layout, so bring-up starts from working software
- Build the measurement setup early where the behaviour is hard to see, so a problem shows up in month two rather than month eight
- Write the interface decisions down and sign them before anyone codes to them, so a disagreement costs an email rather than a board revision
- Bring the certification laboratory into the plan early, not after the first spin
- Reuse a proven baseline where one exists, and audit it before trusting it
Those are a few of the ones we reach for most. The right set for your product is a conversation, not a template, and we would rather invent one for you than force a checklist onto a problem it does not fit.
Battery Life
Can you make the battery last as long as we promised?
Usually, and the way to do it is to measure rather than model. Battery life is decided by what the device does between wakes, how long the radio stays on, and how honestly the sleep current is measured on real hardware. The datasheet figure and the figure your device actually draws are rarely the same.
We instrument the device, find where the charge is really going, and design the duty cycle around the answer instead of around a spreadsheet. If the target is not reachable, you hear that early, while the hardware can still change.
- Sleep and wake behaviour measured on hardware, not estimated
- Radio duty cycle designed around the real power budget
- Fuel gauging and charge behaviour treated as their own workstream
- Updates that cannot leave a device flat or half-flashed
Quality
How do I know the firmware will not fail in the field?
Because the failures are found before the field, and written down when they are. Every design stage is reviewed by an engineer who did not do the work. Every finding becomes a tracked defect with a named owner, and it is closed before release rather than noted in a meeting and forgotten. Connected devices mostly fail at the seams between subsystems, so that is where the test plan looks hardest.
Reviewed before anything is fabricated
The firmware engineer sits in the schematic and layout reviews. That is how the interface is agreed before the board exists, and how a whole class of bring-up problems simply never happens.
Written so it reproduces
Every defect is written so anyone can reproduce it, and carries a named owner and a closure. Nothing is noted in a meeting and forgotten, and you can see the open list at any point in the programme.
Tested where devices actually break
Reconnection after network loss, latency, implausible readings, recovery after a power cut. Connected devices fail between subsystems far more often than inside one of them.
Reuse audited before it is trusted
Proven firmware carries forward between programmes rather than being rewritten, and the baseline is checked before anyone relies on it.
Evidence
How do you know a firmware partner is actually delivering?
Six years. 100,000+ engineering hours delivered, and counting.
Every hour is booked to a named task, not a monthly lump sum, so you can see exactly what a month bought. Every gate needs your written sign-off before the next one starts, and every defect has an owner and a closure.
That is the whole argument. Not that we are large, but that nothing on your programme is invisible to you.
What we bring
- Every hour booked to a named, trackable task
- Every defect logged with a named owner and closed before release
- Written client sign-off at every gate
- Source, build environment, design files and test evidence at handover
Measured, not assumed
Power, current draw and timing come from a bench measurement on real hardware. A datasheet figure is a starting point, not evidence.
Proved before the board exists
Firmware is developed and proved on the silicon vendor’s evaluation kit, so the first board spin is not also the first integration.
Handed over, not held
At handover you receive the source, the build environment, the design files and the test evidence. Not a compiled binary and a promise that the rest exists somewhere.
Common Questions
What makes a firmware development partner stand out?
Three things you can check before you sign anything. Does the firmware get proved before the boards exist, or does bring-up become the first integration? Is power measured on real hardware or estimated from a datasheet? And at handover do you get the source, the build environment and the evidence, or a binary and a promise? We do the first two as standard, and the third is written into the contract.
You get a scoped gate plan before any engineering starts, so the commitment is to the first stage rather than to a number pulled out of the air. What moves the figure is the number of peripherals and radios, whether the device needs an operating system or embedded Linux, and how much of the hardware is new. Rates on request, and you commit to the first gate rather than to the whole programme.
It depends far more on the peripherals and the radio stack than on the application logic. What we commit to is the shape: architecture first, drivers proved on an evaluation kit while the board is laid out, then bring-up, integration and test, each closing on your written sign-off rather than on a calendar date.
Yes, and it is a common way for us to start. The first gate is an audit and baseline review: what works, what is worth keeping and what has to be redone, before anyone commits to a schedule. You get that assessment in writing whether or not you carry on with us.
Sometimes none. Plenty of good products run bare metal, and adding an operating system to a device that does not need one costs power and memory for nothing. Where one helps we work with FreeRTOS, Zephyr, embedded Linux and the vendor stacks, and we recommend against your power budget, your update path and how much of the driver layer you want to own.
Yes. Updates are signed, the device verifies before it applies, and there is a defined way back if an update fails, so a bad release does not turn devices into bricks. We design that path at the start rather than bolting it on, because the security review will ask how it works, not whether it exists.
Yes, and the honest answer is that offshore embedded firmware development fails when visibility fails, not because of distance. We deliver to clients in the United States and Europe, run reviews directly with them in English, work to a phased plan with your written sign-off at every gate, and book every hour to a named task. The same engineers stay on your programme rather than rotating through it, because continuity is most of what makes a remote team feel like your team.
You do, from the first day, and it is set out explicitly in the statement of work before any engineering begins, alongside scope, acceptance criteria, both parties’ obligations, term and termination. At handover you receive the source, the build environment, the design files and the test evidence.
You can, at any gate, and you leave with everything: the source, the build environment, the design files and the test evidence, in the state they are in that week rather than after a separate handover project. The commitment is always to the current gate, never to the whole programme. Nothing in the statement of work is designed to make leaving expensive.
Yes, and starting then is usually cheaper than waiting. We work on the silicon vendor’s evaluation kit, sometimes on a small interim board we build for the purpose, and where the behaviour is hard to observe we build a test rig for it. By the time your boards arrive the software is already working.
Yes, and it is a large part of our work. Medical device firmware carries the IEC 62304 lifecycle on top of everything above: safety classification for every software item, a documented list of third-party software, and traceability from requirement to test. Our medical device software page covers that in full.