Bespoke development

Overview

FMK can provide bespoke software solutions on a variety of hardware platforms and operating systems. We have a wide range of experience of all types of projects, but we have specialist knowledge in a number of areas:

Hand-held and barcode terminal programming, including the latest Windows Mobile platforms;
Data communications: network, serial, wireless (including GPRS) and modem based;
OCR and intelligent image processing;
Multi-threaded server applications.

We operate generally on a fixed price contract basis, either working to the customer's own specification, or where the project hasn't reached that stage, providing early technical assistance to help the customer to produce the functional specification.

We use principally C/C++/C# .NET to cater for everything from mobile barcode solutions to SQL-based data processing. We also have experience in other development environments, such as Visual Basic.

Hand-held and barcode terminals

There is a wide variety of these devices on the market, and each has its own idiosyncracies of programming. There are also some important general considerations when programming these devices which don't arise in PC programming (e.g. power saving, small screen, relatively small amount of memory, etc.). Over a numer of years we have developed many applications on devices from most manufacturers, including Motorola/Symbol Technologies, Intermec Technologies, Handheld Products, Casio Electronics, Datalogic, Nippon Denso, Systel and others, and we can therefore offer a service based on sound, practical experience. We work with both manufacturers and resellers, providing everything from low-level system drivers to full end-user applications. Moreover, our expertise in both data communications and PC database systems means that we can provide a complete solution encompassing the terminal application, data exchange with the host, and data processing on the host.

Data communications

We develop a range of data communications software, often as specialist modules or libraries for inclusion in a larger project. This may involve designing and implementing a custom data transfer protocol, or perhaps implementing an existing protocol on new hardware or under a new operating system. We can support a large number of communications media, including:

direct serial transfers;
modem transfers - including configuring and driving the modems themselves;
LAN/WAN transfers - using standard and proprietary protocols over TCP/IP;
Wireless transfers - using GSM/GPRS, 802.11 wireless LANs and Bluetooth;
Fax - we can convert text and graphics to T3 and T4 fax format and drive standard fax modems directly.

OCR and intelligent image processing

OCR technology has a value in commercial production systems only if it is supported by reliable and accurate pre- and post-processing. We have developed flexible software techniques for examining images produced by high speed production scanners, cleaning them (e.g. by removing noise and lines, and perhaps de-skewing), identifying regions of interest where these may be movable in a mixed batch of forms, and interpreting the results of subsequent OCR to validate and format the output, by means of rule engines and validation look-ups. All this is available in a series of completely customizable modules. We can integrate with any supplied OCR engine, but we work principally with the highly regarded QuickStrokes engine from Mitek Systems, Inc, and with TextBridge.