Embedded Software Design is an embedded software contracting and consultancy business, set-up in June 2007 by Andy Pont as a sole-trader under UK legislation.

Whilst the company is relatively new it brings fifteen years of experience within the embedded and system level software development arena. This is backed up by the integrity and professionalism of membership of both the Institution of Analysts and Programmers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Following studies in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Aston University in Birmingham, my career started at ICL in the Volume Systems division developing the BIOS and diagnostic test software for high end multi-processor Intel® based servers along with BIOS extensions for multifunction plug-in cards.

The two years working for ICL were followed by twelve years working for Blue Chip Technology on all types of industrial and embedded single board computers. During those twelve years, career advancement was made from being the sole Software Engineer, to being the senior member of a multi-engineer team to becoming the Software Development Manager.

The early years at Blue Chip Technology focussed on customising both the AMI and Phoenix BIOS and adding features for resident flash arrays, solid state disks, EEPROM and system watchdogs. As the demand for solutions rather than just hardware began to grow then focus moved towards providing operating system implementations for the various hardware platforms.

Starting with version 2.12 device drivers and board support packages have been developed for Windows CE, WDM device drivers and API libraries have been produced along with componentised drivers and embedded images for both Windows NT Embedded and Windows Embedded XP operating systems.

Microcontroller firmware has been developed for both 8051 and Atmel AVR devices for a number of control systems including the instrument panel on the Aston Martin DB7 along with application development for DOS and Windows using Visual C, Visual Basic and Delphi.

All of this software development experience is backed up with an extensive hardware knowledge of chipsets and peripheral devices and contacts with all the major distributors and software partners allowing the best choice of solution for any given situation.