FIGFI Design Consultants
The people at FIGFI have been designing leading edge home automation, lighting,
sensors, and consumer / industrial products for over 40 years.
Since the birth of the Internet we have been connecting these devices together;
long before
someone coined the phrase the Internet of Things.
With more than 400 clients in 30 countries we are global experts in integrating
products into the connected world, and we have already joined millions of IoT
devices to the Web.
Our experience as consultants in wireless and mesh technologies covers
industrial design, hardware, firmware, software, dashboards, apps, system
integration, production engineering, certifications, production assistance,
ATE, and on-going support.
We have extensive experience in all the leading technologies including Thread,
ZigBee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Mesh, BLE, Beacons, LTE-M, NB-IoT, LoRa,
Sigfox, NFC, and RFID. When these are not suitable we implement
proprietary protocols, such as for smoke detectors that require a 12 year
battery life and an alarm latency of a few seconds.
A Brief History
40 years ago we started designing wireless products the hard way.
Nothing digital.
In 1982 we designed for British Telecom what the Science Museum in London
called the first electronic mail terminal in the world. Aimed at replacing Telex it was called
Mantis. It had a dial-up modem, error
correction, encryption, word processing, and battery back up
operation. It ran at a blistering speed
of 1,200 bits per second, which was 20 times faster than Telex.
We designed parts of the original BBC microcomputer, parts of the modem in
Apple’s first laptop, emergency communications in 100,000 Otis elevators, and more
than 100 dial-up modems. Our designs could be found in more than 12 million fax
machines from Canon, Brother, Samsung, LG, OKI, Minolta, Mita,
Hewlett Packard, Jetfax, Nikon, and Xerox.
With an office in the ‘90s in Palo Alto in the centre of Silicon Valley,
we participated in the birth of the Internet, and worked with Intel, Sun
Microsystems (Oracle), United Technologies, Dell, IBM, Hitachi, Texas
Instruments, AT&T, Toshiba, and again with Apple and Xerox PARC.
In the last
20 years we have returned to our roots. Designing wireless products.
Over 20 models of linked smoke and CO detectors; 1 million connected
streetlights; millions of flashing wristbands and bottles; real time race horse
monitoring; public utility data logging; energy monitoring and control; fire
sprinklers; concrete analysis; sensors; alarms; office lighting and control;
animal welfare; gunshot detection systems; wireless charging; long range
tracking; marine beacons; smart meters; gas and water monitoring; hubs and
gateways; sex toys and others too confidential to mention.
And all connected by wireless.
What
makes FIGFI different ?
Three very
simple things:
1.
We are from the “old school” where it was necessary to fully
understand technology rather than just use it.
2.
We provide a full
consulting service from conception through feasibility studies, specification,
industrial design, development, high volume production engineering,
certification, tooling, manufacturing and the all important on-going support.
3.
Rather than employ general engineers with wide-ranging skill sets,
FIGFI takes the approach of having many engineers with extensive experience in
selective narrower disciplines. These
include specific engineers for high speed digital design, analogue design, RF
engineering, antenna design, mains power supplies, batteries, PCB layout,
mechanical, system architecture, embedded firmware, web development, apps,
databases, Java, production test, approvals and industrial design.
Any half
decent engineer can build a prototype on a bench. But to design, production
engineer, test and support a high volume product is
something very different.
This is what
FIGFI does. Day in, day out. As confirmed by 20 million products in the
field.
20
years of involvement with Silicon Labs
FIGFI have designed in every Silicon
Labs wireless chip family. This includes,
but is not limited to, the Si443x, Si446x, Si100x ranges, and EFR32 variants at
chip-down level and also as modules for ZigBee, Thread, Bluetooth and WiFi. Having the
experience to design at chip-down level, rather than taking the easy route of
putting a module on a PCB using a reference design, reduces BOM costs and gives
full flexibility on antenna design and performance.
We use Silicon Labs wireless chips in
all the ISM bands including 169MHz, 432MHz, 863 - 876MHz, 915MHz and
2.4GHz. Over 100 designs, with worldwide
approvals. On the topic of approvals
over 90% of our product designs pass all certifications first time.
We
have also implemented their 8 bit 8051 MCUs, and Zero, Happy, Tiny, Leopard,
Giant, Wonder and Flex Geckos with M0+, M3 and M4 ARM cores.
And
to fill in the gaps we use Silicon Labs safety isolation products, and we have
designed in their FM radio solutions, capacitor barrier modems, and Hall effect
sensors.
Contact us for more information and a
free appraisal of your requirements