I'm Now Part Time
Wescott Design Services is a sole proprietorship of me, Tim Wescott. I have started working direct, and am maintaining relationships with a limited number of customers at this time.
But I still want to keep my hand in consulting, so I welcome short, sharp, interesting projects.
If you have a problem that you believe can be solved in a short amount of time by someone who's been there before, or one that just has you flummoxed, or if you want a second opinion from what you're getting, give me a call -- if I cannot help, I will let you know why, and hopefully inspire you in your next step.
What We Do
Wescott Design Services has proven expertise in control systems analysis and design, signal detection, estimation and demodulation, and general embedded system software and hardware design.
Control Systems
First and foremost, Wescott Design Services provides analysis, design and troubleshooting of embedded control systems. Whether you have your system built and need help getting it to work right, or you are contemplating a new design and want to make sure that it meets your goals in the most cost effective manner, Wescott Design Services can help.
Tim Wescott, owner of Wescott Design Services literally wrote the book on designing control systems for embedded systems. This book, Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems is based on years of experience with making real control systems work in the real world. Mr. Wescott can bring this expertise to bear on your problem, and leave you with clear direction to your team members so that you can maintain your own product design.
For new systems, our staff can work with your electrical, software and mechanical designers to create the best system for your application. Our staff is familiar with the mechanical, electrical and software issues that can make or break a control system design. We can help you to select and implement the appropriate sensors, actuators and mechanical design, the best electronics, and implement the best- practices control loops in software to make it all work the way you want with no surprises.
System Analysis, Detection and Estimation
Trying to get good information from a set of data can be a daunting task, particularly if the data is corrupted by non Gaussian noise or other factors. Detection and Estimation theory was developed for analyzing radar systems but it can be used in any environment where you have noisy data from which you need to extract the best possible information.
With training in statistics and Detection and Estimation, Wescott Design Services staff can model your measurement, communications or control system mathematically to predict its performance in a structured manner. This analysis can validate your methods, expose areas where more effort is necessary to achieve performance goals, or show where unnecessary product cost is being added. This analysis helps you to get your product developed for minimum time and money and maximum satisfaction.
Modulation and Demodulation
Demodulating data from a radio or telephone carrier is closely related to detection and estimation, and it is an area where Wescott Design Services can add particular value. Wescott Design Services 'speaks the language' of physical layer data format specifications, yet we also speak plain English. Let us help you compile your specification, or translate your latest specification into useful, practical algorithms that you can implement on your hardware.
Software Design
The best theoretical work in the world isn't much use if it can't be translated into real-world solutions. Real-world solutions that can't be understood by the average engineer can be frustrating and expensive to maintain. Wescott Design Servics staff has the commitment, training and experience to translate advanced theory into practical, maintainable hardware and code.
Our staff has extensive experience writing software for embedded applications in C, C++ and assembly. We have worked with 8-, 16- and 32- bit processors and DSPs. In addition to writing general-purpose embedded code we also write serial communications drivers, ISRs, protocol stacks, signal processing algorithms for interpreting sensors, process and motion controllers, and more.
Circuit Design
Our staff is experienced with all phases of electronic circuit design: analog signal conditioning, analog to digital conversion, digital to analog conversion, digital circuit design, light FPGA design and DC power electronics are all within our capabilities.
Wescott Design Services has the capability in-house to design circuits, perform circuit board layout, build circuit board prototypes and debug them. We can deliver known-good, tested circuit designs to you promptly and efficiently.
Things We Have Done
Our primary goal at Wescott Design Services is to use our expertise to help you reach your technical goals. Here are some examples chosen from the extensive list of projects that we've done over the years.
Mud Pulse Telemetry
Designed and implemented an algorithm for optimal decoding of mud-pulse telemetry using M-ary signaling. This effort centered around an existing format using pulse-position encoding. By applying modern forward error correction techniques I was able to appreciably enhance the quality of decoding without requiring my customer to change their encoding format.
Thereputic Exercise Bike
Designed the electronics and software for a motor drive board used in a therapeutic exercise bicycle. This board replaced an existing drive board that the customer was sourcing from a third party, allowing them to bring this critical part of their business in-house.
This motor drive board was responsible for receiving high-level commands from the system controller, and controlling motor torque and speed while sending angular position, torque, and power feedback to the system controller
Wescott Design Services designed the circuit, contracted with layout personnel to design the circuit board, designed the motor control algorithms,
GPS/IMU Sensor Fusion
I designed an algorithm that fused GPS and IMU data in an extended Kalman filter for vehicular tracking. The Kalman filter was able to locate the position of the vehicle to within the width of a roadway, in real time.
High-Resolution Motion Control
Consulted with customer to improve motion control of precision photographic printer. This effort included identifying their plant characteristics, finding improved PID controller parameters, and finding the optimal feed forward settings for their application to allow them to improve their settling times and thus the overall speed of their printer.
Cell Phone Demodulation
Developed specialized algorithms to demodulate cell phone base station data for both TDMA and GSM systems. These algorithms went beyond the typical algorithms for such purposes in that they measured signal strength and time-of-arrival, which was used to triangulate the locations of cell phones for enhanced 911 services.