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Engineering Services

Colorado Digital Labs, Inc. is a research and development company providing a complete range of engineering services for the development of electronic and computer based components, products and instruments. Saving you time and money, CDL delivers quick turn engineering services to get your design up, running and into production fast.

We specialize in the design, development and manufacture of high performance components, embedded systems, products and instruments on a job specific to complete turnkey basis. Our experience covers a wide range of consumer, medical, scientific, aerospace and industrial applications.

Services we provide include the following:

Since 1990, Colorado Digital Labs, Inc. has been providing these services to clients in the U.S., Europe and East Asia. Many of our clients have relied on us to complement their existing engineering resources while others use us for their entire product development needs.

Engineering Project Management

From start to finish, Colorado Digital Labs provides the resources to take your ideas from initial concept to product launch and beyond. We are structured for flexibility to meet your project schedule goals and budgets. Our extensive project management experience can augment your internal engineering capability, or, we can provide you with an outside product development resource you can call on whenever you need.

Colorado Digital Labs provides insight to your executive staff that can optimize opportunities and make your business excel. We can help build an engineering team to match your product development requirements and budget. Over the years, we have helped many companies get their products to market successfully. Our greatest achievements occur when we help startup enterprises get their product launched and they go public or are acquired soon after due to that products success. Several of our customers have done this and we are proud to have been a part of their team.

Specification Development

We work best with specification documents that clearly describe the engineering goals to be achieved. Usually these specifications are provided by our clients, but we can also assist in developing and refining specification documents if needed. Typical specification documents may include:

System Architecture Development

The overall system architecture of any electronic or computer based product is determined primarily by the guidelines established in specification documents. In cases where these specifications are subject to change, Colorado Digital Labs strives to establish a systems architecture that is adaptable and provides enough flexibility to accommodate changing requirements. The architectural definition is the launch point of the focused design effort that follows.

At Colorado Digital Labs, we deliver elegant and efficient system architectures providing a foundation you can build on, generation after generation.

Technology Evaluation

In the vast electronic component marketplace, there are literally millions of competing parts, development platforms, and systems technologies available for use in creating new products. Some of these are at a mature stage in their lives while others are new in the market and may have availability issues. With specification providing detailed descriptions of what the new product must be able to do, we identify the technological solutions available to best meet those requirements.

Electronic Design & Packaging

The product requirements, architecture, cost and technology objectives contribute to the basis for the electronic design of the product. Our extensive electronic design experience across a broad range of digital, mixed signal, analog, photonic (optical), wireless (RF) and power control applications assures optimal design and packaging are achieved.

From initial concept to mass production and everything in between, Colorado Digital Labs does it all.

Our hardware design capabilities utilize the following:

Software & Firmware Development

The code procedures and objects we create are determined by the applicable specification, the processing device selected, and the local memory resources available. Whenever possible, we use high level, object oriented languages such as C, C++, or Java. In single chip microcontroller environments, memory restrictions sometimes dictate that the code be written in a low level machine code assembler. Our development work is typically done in GNU LINUX or MS Windows environments.

Software development languages that we use include:

A list of target processors can be found on our Technologies page. It describes devices we are familiar with and provides links to detailed information about them.

Colorado Digital Labs has developed software for:

All software that we generate is structured, modular and extensively documented. Our design process emphasizes creating software development strategies and planning before coding efforts begin. All code modules are thoroughly tested before release, and documentation within the code usually exceeds 60-70% of the total source content. Additional development tools we use when possible include:

Mechanical Design

Colorado Digital Labs, Inc. provides mechanical design services to assist in prototyping and test fixture creation. We have provided detailed motion control and drive train design for instruments and devices requiring positional capabilities of mechanical assemblies. Some of the applications we have provided services for include:

Prototype Development

Prototype development is where hardware design, software design and mechanical design efforts come together to provide an engineering first article that can be bench tested and checked for manufacturability issues. Colorado Digital Labs can create multiple prototypes at various design stages, providing tools that assist in the overall development effort.

Our goal is to create engineering prototypes that are as close to the physical final product as possible. In fact, many of our customers have taken our initial prototypes and put them directly into production.

When a product development effort is to include a large amount of software design, and hardware design issues have not been finalized, it is important to get target hardware quickly so that the code and its algorithms can be tested. It may be required to obtain third party development kits that provide evaluation boards using a compatible processor for this early development. If not, custom board support packages can be created to provide this capability.

Regulatory Compliance

The United States Federal government requires compliance testing of certain products that enter US markets. If the product is to be marketed internationally, it must also comply with similar regulations in each of the countries in which it is sold. Colorado Digital Labs has been through these testing processes and provides the experience to help get your product approved quickly.

Contract Manufacturing

It is important to identify and select potential contract manufacturing vendors early if you will not be building the product in your own facilities. Colorado Digital Labs works with potential candidates, both domestic and overseas, to identify purchasing conflicts, process conflicts and tooling related restrictions so when you are ready to build, there are no hidden surprises. We provide complete documentation of your design so that your vendors have access to accurate information to get the job done right the first time.

Technical Support

Colorado Digital Labs provides comprehensive ongoing technical support for all of our design projects. If we are involved with a project, we can provide ongoing assistance to that project long after the design process has completed.

Technical Manual Preparation

Colorado Digital Labs provides technical document preparation including product user, service and training manuals and materials. We can also put you in contact with government and military manual preparation services if required. All documentation we provide is in hardcopy and CD/DVD-ROM media form. We also have extensive experience with visual graphic design and international experience in multi-lingual technical and engineering consulting.

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