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About Creative Embedded
Creative Embedded is an embedded software/firmware consulting company with a strong focus on Open-Source.
The majority of our projects are using Linux and Yocto/OpenEmbedded often combined with FPGA's for some added
flavour, but also small micro-controllers or 7u servers can be used if that's the platform that makes most sense.
The core of Creative Embedded is me: Walter Goossens, but I have a network of independent developers that can be
brought in if a specific skill is needed or the amount of work to be done is just too much for one man alone.
Before starting Creative Embedded I've been working in the Video Broadcast industry for almost 10 years where we made
24/7 running dedicated video appliances with FPGA's and processors running Linux.
During that time I've learned to love to achieve the impossible in an impossible time-frame but also to create solutions
that make much sense (once they're done) that you are amazed no one has thought of it before, it's the most logical solution!
Crossing the boundary between software and hardware is another point of interest to me. I'm a trained software engineer but
soon got intrigued by the power of HDL and noticed some difficult software problems are easily solved in HDL and the same is true
for complex HDL problems that are a breeze in software. Clever design and knowing what domain best solves a certain problem
is the key to success in more demanding embedded projects.
Expertise
This is a (by no means complete) list of skills/techniques to give an impression of the things we do
Programming Languages
The main languages we prefer to work with/in are C/C++, VHDL, Java, bash-scripting and PHP. We also use obj-c, Python, verilog, tcl,
Assembler (various archs), Perl, basic and many other languages if the job requires it.
Processors/architectures
Listing a bunch of processors architectures and mark them "skills" makes little sense, but instead we'll list some of the architectures
we have hands-on experience with.
From the ARM-family: iMX6/7 families, Xilinx Zynq/ZynqMP, Intel SoCFpga, STM32, SmartFusion, Raspberry Pi, XScale etc... From the
PowerPC familiy: Freescale 85xx, Apple G4. Various systems from the x86/x86_64 family (mostly as backend servers for embedded tagets).
Various softcores but mostly Nios2 and to a lesser extend MicroBlaze/PicoBlaze, RISC-V and OpenRISC.
Operating Systems
Most work is done on Linux, both developing with, developing on and developing for. We've also used ChibiOS and FreeRTOS for smaller
footprint projects. Some work is done on OS-X and Haiku-OS. When being both forced and overpaid we also use Windows.
Services
There are a number of ways we can help with your project:
System design assistence
When projects are in the early phase of development/specification it is best to take the time to really look into the design and make
sure each problem is solved in the correct domain. In the embedded world you really need to know harware in order to do proper software
design, and the same goes for knowing software when designing hardware.
Development in our own lab
The preferred way of working is that we develop the stuff you need in our own facility and share the results over GitHub/GitLab/etc.
We can also just send an unnumbered zip file with some magic binaries if that suits your workfow better.
Development on-site
We can also come in-house to help develop your project if that's needed or do a combination of both on-site development and development
from at our own lab.
Training
We can supply training tailored to your specific use case or give a general introduction to various embedded subjects.
Other ways we can help
There are various other ways we can help you and if you think of one not listed here, do not hesitate to contact us!
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