Fidus Solution Portfolio

A client requested Fidus to integrate their proprietary technology into a unique product. Fidus was responsible for the full development, including electronic hardware design, FPGA coding, mechanical and thermal design, and embedded software architecture. Using a Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC, the project included signal conditioning, clock recovery, FMC interface, signal conversion, optical QSFP communications, and PRBS-based error detection.

The embedded application ran on Linux hosted on the quad-core Arm Cortex-A53. Deliverables included bootloader/BSP, IP over PPP, support for various USB peripherals, and data gathering from a Cortex-M4 for ADC and sensor information. We provided a Yocto build environment and Jenkins automation for future builds. The project concluded on time, within budget, and with a cohesive embedded software solution.

This board was designed for a customer in the residential and commercial automation market. The ZigBee® enabled solution provided building-wide wireless control over HVAC systems. Given the market segment, this product was built to be extremely reliable, easy to use, and cost effective.

This device is an over-the-air (OTA) HDTV antenna. For this project we relied on our expertise in custom printed antenna development, wireless/RF design, simulation, and characterization, and regulatory approvals. To make it accessible to the masses, we also optimized the bill of materials.

This tiny little board was our first “Made for iPod” device. It was a sleek little, super low-power Bluetooth® transceiver that enabled a user to control a remote device with their iPhone, iPod, or iPad. To accomplish this, Fidus joined Apples MFi program, and designed in Apple’s “MFi licensing” components. Our customer wrote the app, and the rest is history.

Fidus created this tiny ZigBee® module to be used within our customer’s wireless HVAC control product line. The design, based on an Ember® controller, offered excellent performance and range utilizing a simple whip antenna that was also designed by Fidus.

This design demanded small size, extremely low-power, and low-cost. To keep costs to a minimum, Fidus worked with the crystal manufacturer to ensure that a standard crystal could be used, while still meeting the RF center frequency requirements. For further cost savings we restricted the layer count to 2, and ultimately replaced the whip antenna with a printed antenna.

This unit features an LCD, GSM, Satellite, GPS, and Bluetooth functionality all in a Li-Polymer powered handheld unit. The most challenging aspect of this project was obtaining excellent wireless performance with so many wireless protocols/antennas in such a small size. Fidus’ hardware, signal integrity, and antenna experts sized it all up, and made it work.