Comprehensive Embedded Systems & Autonomy Engineering
The most critical and risky phase of the product development lifecycle is the seamless integration of custom hardware architecture with software. At Spikedge, we don't just list technology stacks, we develop end-to-end architectures, from selecting the right processor (SoC/MCU) to kernel-level Linux/RTOS optimization and efficient deployment of complex AI models on constrained edge devices.
EtherCAT System Design, Master and Slave
Deterministic industrial network architecture
For motor drives, servo control and multi-axis lines we bring up the EtherCAT network, integrate the master and slave sides, and characterise cycle timing on our own bench.
Concrete Deliverables
- EtherCAT master/slave network design and integration
- Master/slave development with Acontis EC-Master and Beckhoff SSC
- FOC-based servo drive architectures
- CAN FD and CANopen gateway integration
BSP and Yocto Linux Development
Secure boot ecosystem and kernel architecture
Yocto-based BSPs for custom boards: a lean image without unneeded packages, boot time measured stage by stage and cut down, secure boot, SBOM generation and a safe OTA update path.
Concrete Deliverables
- BSP development from scratch for TI and NXP processor families
- Yocto Kirkstone / Scarthgap distribution builds
- U-Boot Falcon mode and device tree configuration
- Image size reduction with SquashFS and musl libc
RTOS and Bare-Metal Development
Deterministic latency and interrupt handling
Control loop architecture on TI-RTOS, FreeRTOS and bare metal: the goal is a bounded worst case, not a low average. Interrupt latency is measured with a GPIO output and an external instrument, not software timestamps.
Concrete Deliverables
- TI-RTOS HWI direct dispatch and priority banding
- FreeRTOS-based asymmetric multicore designs
- Low-overhead interrupt handling in bare-metal firmware
- CAN FD and EtherCAT driver integration
NVIDIA Jetson and Edge AI
Hardware-accelerated real-time inference
On-device inference for applications such as C-UAS and predictive maintenance: INT8/FP16 quantisation with TensorRT, CUDA, offloading to the Jetson DLA and, where it fits, a Hailo-8L accelerator.
Concrete Deliverables
- Development with JetPack across the Jetson Orin family
- YOLOv8, DeepStream and custom model integration
- Sensor fusion and multi-target tracking architectures
- Power optimisation by sharing work with the DLA
GStreamer and WebRTC Video Systems
Low-latency tactical video streaming
Multi-sensor video to command centres, with the latency budget defined and measured glass to glass. Secure UDP transport on closed networks and hardware-accelerated encoding.
Concrete Deliverables
- GStreamer pipeline design: camera capture, hardware encoding, network streaming
- Low-latency peer-to-peer video with WebRTC
- Hardware-accelerated H.264/H.265 encode and decode
- Multi-source synchronisation and command-and-control integration
Qt/QML HMI and Command and Control
Performance-focused interfaces on embedded displays
Touchscreen interfaces for defence and industrial systems, real-time telemetry dashboards and a C++17 back end; dropped frames are traced to their root cause through their measurement signature.
Concrete Deliverables
- HMI development with Qt 6 / QML
- Embedded display integration with EGLFS and Wayland
- Real-time data visualisation with a C++17 back end
- OpenGL ES accelerated render pipeline
Tactical Telemetry and C2 Networks
Secure data transport on closed networks
End-to-end telemetry platforms for air-gapped networks: a WebRTC/UDP transport layer carrying low-latency video, radar tracks and sensor data to the command centre.
Concrete Deliverables
- Message distribution architectures on MQTT and ROS 2/DDS
- Mesh communication that tolerates broken links
- Efficient serialisation with Protobuf/gRPC
- Merging multi-sensor data on a single time axis
Let's Evaluate Your Project's Technical Feasibility Together
The most effective way to determine which area of expertise fits your needs is to put your architectural requirements and project constraints on the table with our technical team.
Schedule an Architecture Review Meeting