Halliburton Systems Inc has been involved in producing embedded systems since the 1970s. Our latest project is an automatic polarimeter (a device that measures the amount of rotation in polarization that light experiences passing through a test sample). Starting several years ago by supporting an existing legacy product we were able first to add enhancements to that product while we were designing the new one.

Due to budget and time constraints, we decided to use part of the existing instrument in the new design, at least for the first year. Our design made this selection transparent as all interfaces to the instrument hardware and firmware were abstracted in our code. The first of the "hybrid" instruments was shipped in December 2010 and since June 2011 they have been shipping in quantity.

As these instruments are shipping, we are hard at work designing the next phase of the implementation using different instrument hardware and a new firmware processing board that will give us finer-grain control over the operation of the instrument. We have written completely new code for the new board but due to careful design in the early stages of the project the user interface and data storage will be unchanged. From the user perspective this will be the same instrument, but it will be more reliable and less expensive to manufacture as well as being better-positioned to move into the future, becoming part of an automated laboratory rather than a single instrument.

The instrument is completely 21CFR11 compliant and can be remotely supported and diagnosed from our facility. It supports hundreds of printer choices, includes sufficient storage to keep millions of measurements on file and the measurement database is completely searchable. Software updates can be installed by the user or by HSI staff over the Internet.

The instrument is run on a Linux server and the interface is completely web-based. As a result it can be operated from the included small laptop, a local PC or even a remote system half-way around the world. Since the interface is web-based, the computer used run the operator interface can run any web browser software under any operating system. Data can be exported in various forms for analysis using the operator's favorite software.

Call us today to find out how we can help with your embedded project.