News

We are very pleased to announce that towards the end of last year we moved to a newer, larger office space. We've not gone far, about 200m to be specific, moving from Epsilon House where we have been based since 2006, to Kenneth Dibben House.

Kenneth Dibben House, which opened in 2007, is one of the most modern and well equipped buildings on the Southampton Science Park site. Since taking up our lease, we have invested time and money in fitting out our new office and laboratory, including fitting anti-static flooring and workbenches, new server and network cabinets and buying new IT hardware and test equipment.

                                                            
The move comes at the end of a year of strong growth for ITDev. During 2011, we took on 3 new employees as well as making use of on-site contractors. We have also expanded the amount of lab-based work that we're involved in. With more people and more equipment we felt it was important to continue to provide a high quality working environment whilst maintaining the flexibility to support continued growth.

                                                            
With more office space, better lab facilities and improved access to meeting rooms, we are confident that as we grow, we will continue to achieve the same high level of productivity and quality of service that our clients have come to expect, but with the benefit of faster turnaround on urgent and large scale projects that comes with a larger design team.

As we begin a new financial year, the UK economy appears to be continuing on its bumpy path out of recession. At ITDev, we're pleased to be able to say that we've weathered the storm well; remaining in profit, avoiding redundancies and pay freezes, and remaining entirely self-financed. We're also pleased that our customers have been gaining confidence, which is evident in the marked increase in the number of enquiries and project starts that we've seen over the past two quarters.

Annualised Quarter-on-Quarter Growth (%)
for the USA, Euro area and UK

The latest analysis from the OECD, which includes growth predictions for the first two quarters of this year, forecasts continued growth for the UK, USA and the Euro-zone (Euro figures based on a weighted average of the three largest countries). Whilst this is encouraging, our chart opposite, which is based on OECD figures, illustrates the considerable uncertainty that remains.

As markets recover, the need to invest in new products is as high as ever, but whilst the pace of recovery remains uncertain, subcontracting presents a very attractive option. ITDev is keen to ensure that we're ready to help as many companies as possible as they continue to ramp up their R&D investment in the coming months. Two new engineers have joined our team so far in 2011 and we currently have a further vacancy for a software engineer.

If you are interested in joining our design team, then you can find more information on our Careers page.

Staff at ITDev recently enjoyed a celebratory dinner to mark the 10th anniversary of the company's formation.

It's not just ITDev that has come a long way since its formation back in November 2000...

2000	Sony launch the PlayStation 2 and the dot com bubble bursts; as far as we know, these events are unrelated!	Bruce Mitchell leaves his role as software manager at Rural Radio Systems to form ITDev.
2001	Wikipedia is launched (whatever did we do without it) and the original iPod goes on sale.	ITDev's first website goes live and ITDev wins a series of contracts to develop embedded software for a multinational client.
2002	The world's second most popular web browser, Firefox, is released and M.I.T. develop the first commercially available robot vacuum cleaner.	ITDev continues to deliver a succession of successful projects including embedded software for industrial measurement systems.
2003	Skype is launched, Toyota launch the Prius hybrid car and for the first time, DVD sales exceed those of VHS videos.	ITDev is incorporated as I.T. Dev Ltd. and continues to build a reputation for high quality software development.
2004	Intel and AMD show off their first dual core processors and Mark Zuckerberg creates a new website, TheFacebook, later shortened to Facebook.	ITDev contributes to a variety of projects, including the development of automotive vibration measurement equipment.
2005	YouTube is launched, Microsoft Windows goes 64-bit and a probe lands on Saturn's moon, Titan.	Andy Culmer is appointed Engineering Director and ITDev launches a new website including electronics development services.
2006	The 16 year project to sequence the human genome publishes the last chromosome sequence and Nintendo launch the Wii games console.	ITDev moves to the Southampton Science Park and completes its first electronics-based project.
2007	The BBC launch their iPlayer service and Apple launch the iPhone.	ITDev completes 34 customer projects spanning control, communications and internet domains.
2008	UK surgeons implant the first bionic eyes, a proton beam is circulated around the Large Hadron Collider and the Tesla Roadster electric sports car goes on sale.	ITDev continues to build expertise with major projects in video encoding and FPGA development.
2009	The first Android phone is launched and "cloud computing" enters mainstream use.	ITDev launches its latest website with enhanced customer portal and project tracking hosted on ITDev's own high availability servers.
2010	Sky launches Europe's first 3D television channel and a solar powered plane completes a 24-hour flight for the first time.	ITDev celebrates 10 years of business, during which we have never missed a single customer deadline.

The team at ITDev have combined their expertise in compression algorithms, FPGA development and NI LabVIEW to develop a general purpose real-time data compression module for LabVIEW FPGA.

Steve Dwyer, one of ITDev's LabVIEW developers

The module, or "Virtual Instrument" in LabVIEW parlance, can easily be integrated into LabVIEW FPGA data acquisition solutions to provide real-time compression of up to 8 channels of 16-bit data. This allows high speed acquisition to be continuously and reliably performed without overloading the host PC or generating unmanageable volumes of data.

"The algorithm we have implemented provides lossy compression in order to deliver significant reductions in data volume. We appreciate, however, that deterministic accuracy is vital to the majority of data acquisition systems, which is why we have developed the algorithm to work to a defined loss, allowing users to specify the maximum error between the original data points and the decoded data."

Andy Culmer, Engineering Director

The code, including an example application, is available to download through National Instruments' Developer Zone website. The algorithm has been optimised for linear signals, where periods of inactivity, or linear ramps are very efficiently compressed. It has also been designed with extremely low overhead decoding in mind. Please contact ITDev for integration support, or to discuss solutions optimised for higher compression, different signal characteristics, or higher channel counts.

ITDev has chosen Altium Designer as its primary solution for hardware design. Altium's product offers a unified design platform, integrating PCB, FPGA and embedded software development within a single tool. This allows ITDev's engineers to implement designs more efficiently and with better optimisation across PCB, IC and software boundaries.

In addition to the purchase of software, ITDev has also taken delivery of one of Altium's Nanoboard 3000 prototyping platforms. The Nanoboard consists of a Xilinx Spartan FPGA connected to an impressive array of peripheral devices, including a colour touch screen and standard interfaces such as Ethernet, USB and SVGA. Also included is a collection of royalty-free IP (intellectual property) to further support rapid development of prototypes and their further development into finished products.

ITDev is excited at the opportunities presented by these new tools and has already made use of them on customer projects.

"We believe that our breadth of experience covering software, IC and PCB design is key to our success. An ever increasing number of products require skills in all three areas. We find that attention to these boundaries results in better products and shorter time to market. It's great to see that Altium are thinking along the same lines."

Andy Culmer, Engineering Director

ITDev Bike Club competed in Original Source Mountain Mayhem 09, the world's largest 24-hour mountain bike endurance race, to raise £858 for the Smile4Rich Appeal. Smile4Rich supports the Wessex Neurological Centre, based at Southampton General Hospital.

This year's Mountain Mayhem race was held at the picturesque Eastnor Castle deer park, near Ledbury in Herefordshire. Each 8.75 mile lap covered 1,272 feet of climbing over challenging terrain. The race saw 2,351 riders and an estimated 15,000 spectators.

ITDev runs the cycling club for its employees, friends and family. The first team comprising Steve Dwyer, Tim Culmer, Jason Anderson and Tom Baker completed 22 laps, and finished 89th out of 228 in the Sport Men category. The second team: Bruce Mitchell, Andy Culmer, Steve Goodman and Phil White, also achieved a respectable result, completing 19 laps.

Bruce Mitchell, ITDev's Managing Director said: "Mountain Mayhem is an amazing event. Everybody who competed put in a superb effort, and did a great job in raising so much money for a good cause."

Andy Culmer, ITDev's Engineering Director added: "ITDev organises a number of sports and social activities for its staff, including cycling, climbing, and rollerblading. The activities are great for building bonds between team members, and for keeping the motivation and energy levels high at work."

The Wessex Neurological Centre treats approximately 4,000 inpatients and 13,000 outpatients a year. Just a few of the conditions that are treated are Brain Tumour, Brain Injury, Stroke, Alzheimer's, Epilepsy, Spinal Injury, Brain Haemorrhage, Hydrocephalus, Motor Neurone Disease, Sleep Disorders and Dementia.

The money raised will go towards sponsoring pioneering research into new treatments for a variety of neurological conditions, and providing new equipment and facilities.

The Smile4Rich Appeal organises a number of events during the year. One of their highlights, the Smile4Rich Gala Dinner, is being held at the NV Cabaret Lounge in Southampton on Friday 16th October. If you're interested in finding out more about the charity and their events, then check out their web site: www.smile4wessex.org.

Over recent months ITDev has been working on a number of improvements to its on-line customer services. This activity has included upgrading some existing on-line services, as well as the development of new customer portal features and a new public website.

In addition to these service upgrades, ITDev has continued to build further reliability into its IT infrastructure. This includes the deployment of new servers and upgrades to internet connections. "One of our key objectives has been to develop a system with no single point of failure," said Andy Culmer, ITDev's engineering director. Such a system is now in place, providing a stable backbone for ITDev's continually improving client portal tools and website.

Today, ITDev was confirmed as a member of The Institution of Engineering and Technology Business Partners Scheme. This builds upon the existing individual memberships of our engineers to foster increased participation in the wide-ranging activities of the IET within our industry.

As a business partner, ITDev now has improved access to IET products and services. Those employees who have not yet achieved chartered engineer (CEng) professional registration, and wish to do so, are supported towards this goal.

ITDev was recently approached to develop a technology demonstrator for a new and highly innovative energy storage device. The demonstrator was to be in the form of a customised mobile phone, incorporating the new technology and providing a compelling illustration of its benefits.

The project included the design of the circuitry to monitor and control the charge and discharge of the storage device, as well as to provide the demonstration application. A highly compact PCB was designed and constructed, allowing the demonstrator to be housed entirely within the mobile phone, which, to the casual observer, appeared identical to the standard model.

The project progressed from initial specification, through design, manufacture and testing, to be delivered as a finished product in less than four weeks. By meeting these aggressive timescales, we allowed our client to successfully include the demonstration in a scheduled presentation to key customers.

When designing complex FPGA-based systems to tight deadlines, the time taken to evaluate the first samples of your new PCBs sits right on the critical path. One way to reduce hardware evaluation time is to develop test code for each of the FPGAs on the board. This code can be prepared well in advance of receiving populated PCBs and can be designed to quickly and automatically test all of the FPGA interfaces, giving a high level of coverage within minutes of programming the boards.

ITDev has recently been involved in the development of such test code for one of our customers. When hardware became available and the board was programmed we gave initial feedback to the customer after less than half a day. We were able to report the successful operation of all links for 8 out of 9 different interface types and isolate the error with the failing interface down to a faulty regulator.

ITDev has also made other significant contributions to the development programme. In addition to test code, we have provided functional FPGA and embedded software code amounting to almost 3 man years of effort.

ITDev Bike Club raises over £700 for Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance

ITDev Bike Club entered a team of 4 riders into Giant Mountain Mayhem 2008, the largest and most exciting 24 hour endurance mountain bike race in the European events calendar.

Nick Dyer, Tim Culmer, Steve Dwyer, and Jason Anderson, battled against wind, rain, mud, and lack of sleep during the relay race around the grounds of Eastnor Castle in the Malverns. Out of the 624 teams participating, the club finished in a highly respectable 248th place, completing 16 gruelling laps in 24hrs 12mins – and in the process raising a grand total of £709 for the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance.

Ilika Technologies have been working with ITDev to provide state of the art materials research equipment to Belgium-based Flamac.

When Flamac approached Ilika to develop a bespoke high-throughput chemical vapour deposition machine, Ilika took the decision to outsource the software development to ITDev. The required software was responsible for bringing together the 33 separate computer-controlled devices that control and monitor the system. ITDev's solution included a touch-screen-based interactive schematic of the machine showing status and providing real-time control. Additionally, the software allowed users to define command sequences through an easy to use interface and included a sophisticated simulator to allow these sequences to be tested without the need for the machine hardware.

ITDev has recently delivered PC-based software to allow users to easily evaluate, configure and design with our customer's communications ASICs. Following the success of this project, our customer has asked us to port some of this functionality to a web-based configuration tool. This Internet-based approach benefits the end user, saving them time and disk space by eliminating the need to install any software. Our client also benefits directly, by gaining visibility of the popularity of different configurations and of any requests for configurations that are, as yet, unsupported.

1 year on, ITDev's move to the Southampton Science Park has been a great success. Located alongside some of the top science and technology businesses in the UK, the science park has certainly raised ITDev's profile and has helped ITDev to win some exciting new business.

ITDev continues to expand, with new staff joining the design team over the next few months. We still have a vacancy for a Graduate Software Engineer. Please see our Careers page for more information.

ITDev is pleased to announce that it has released its proprietary Perl graphing module, Tk::PlotDataset, to the open source community. Tk::PlotDataset provides a quick and easy way to build an interactive plot widget into a Perl application.

Please click here for more information.

ITDev completes the development of complex real-time embedded software for an advanced sensor that will be used to monitor critical assets in the Oil and Gas industry.

The development project spanning 4 man-years, has been delivered on time and budget, with excellent feedback from the customer.

Continued success in business and recruitment has led to ITDev outgrowing its Chatsworth Road offices. Today, the company took up residence in Epsilon House, which is situated on the Southampton Science Park in Chilworth, Southampton. The science park provides an extremely pleasant and practical site on which to work. It also represents a thriving community of high technology businesses, several of which are existing ITDev customers.

Today ITDev announced that it has created a new post for an experienced software engineer. This is in addition to the graduate positions announced in November. ITDev's managing director, Bruce Mitchell, said, "We are continuing with our business expansion plan. This year's orders are tremendously encouraging. The addition of a hardware development service to our portfolio is opening up some exciting opportunities for us."

If you are interested in joining the design team at Southampton, then you can find more information on the Careers page.

The new ITDev site includes customer login facilities and a wealth of new information. During 2005 ITDev has expanded from its strong base of software and management services to offer a complete package of software, hardware, products and systems development. With this business expansion, we felt it was an ideal time to revamp our website and let everyone know what we have to offer. As part of the redesign, a new company logo has been developed. This logo is an evolution of our original logo, reflecting the evolution of the company.

Thanks to their ongoing success, ITDev has announced the creation of two new positions at their office in Southampton. "We are seeking one software engineer and one electronics engineer to join our design team," said Bruce Mitchell, ITDev's managing director. "2006 promises to be a year of continued growth at ITDev. We've been receiving a lot of positive feedback from our customers, and our forecasts for the coming year look extremely healthy."

If you are interested in working at ITDev, then you can find more information on the Careers page.