Ian Smith (@ians)

I am Managing Director and co-Founder of Abelon Systems, an embedded systems design consultancy based in Edinburgh, Scotland. My background is in telecoms and networking technologies, and since 2002 I have been applying this experience to help our clients in wide variety of markets sectors. My specialities are embedded control systems, DSPs and low level embedded design and programming. We are currently very active in designing M2M/IoT solutions in the area of smart metering and other systems where there is a need to gather data from a large number of devices or sensors.

Embedded Firmware Refactoring, Optimisation and Migration

Ian Smith ● March 29, 2016

Legacy products are often based on older hardware platforms which often become under-powered or run out of memory which constrains further product development. Customers are always looking for new features and improved performance but often either don’t want to invest in new hardware or need to retain the current field population of devices.

These are ongoing challenges for any product manufacturer, but are particularly highlighted in embedded systems where product...

SIGFOX – A new network technology for IoT comms?

Ian Smith ● February 29, 2016●5 comments

It’s quite likely you've never heard of SIGFOX, or if you have it has been sketchy at best on details. So what is it, and why should you care?

Well, if you have a need for low cost, low power data collection which doesn't involve transferring megabytes of data and doesn't have to be particularly “real-time” e.g. you only need your data say once an hour, or even once a day, then SIGFOX may be just what you are looking for.

SIGFOX has been designed from the ground up as a low...