Firmware,
built to last a decade.
Bare-metal, RTOS, embedded Linux, connectivity and edge AI, engineered for products that ship into homes, factories, hospitals and vehicles, and stay there for years.
A complete embedded practice, engineered end to end.
From silicon strategy through firmware, RTOS, Linux, connectivity, edge AI, security, OTA, certification, DFM and long-term support.
Product & silicon strategy
MCU/SoC selection, reference-design assessment and BOM economics, grounded in the environment, lifecycle and volume of the actual product, not on a datasheet demo.
Firmware & bare-metal
Bare-metal firmware on ARM Cortex-M, RISC-V and equivalents, with power budgets, timing correctness and long-term maintainability treated as first-class constraints.
RTOS engineering
Zephyr, FreeRTOS, ThreadX, NuttX and RTEMS, designed against the real-time guarantees the application needs, not just because 'we need an RTOS'.
Embedded Linux & Yocto
Yocto and Buildroot-based Linux distributions, with secure boot, immutable rootfs, A/B updates and long-term support engineered from the first image, not the tenth.
Connectivity & protocols
Cellular, LPWAN, Wi-Fi, BLE, Thread, Zigbee, CAN and industrial protocols, designed against coverage, power and interop reality, not against a marketing table.
Edge AI & on-device inference
Model selection, quantisation and deployment on TensorFlow Lite Micro, ONNX Runtime and vendor SDKs, for latency, privacy and bandwidth-sensitive workloads on-device.
Embedded security
Secure boot, chain-of-trust, TEE, cryptographic identity, encrypted storage and OTA integrity, aligned to IEC 62443, ETSI EN 303 645 and sector-specific regimes.
OTA & fleet lifecycle
Redundant firmware slots, staged rollouts, signed updates, rollback and telemetry, because a firmware regression that requires a truck-roll is a design defect.
Certification & compliance
FCC, CE, RED, UKCA, IEC 60601 medical, IEC 61508 functional safety, ISO 26262 automotive, engineered into the product rather than discovered at test.
DFM & manufacturing enablement
Design-for-manufacture, provisioning, calibration, testing and production programming, because the product that leaves the line has to be identical to the golden sample.
Diagnostics & field service
On-device diagnostics, structured telemetry, remote debugging and field-service tooling, so the fleet is knowable rather than mysterious.
Long-term support & LTS strategy
Kernel LTS choices, dependency governance, security backports, obsolete-part planning and end-of-life pathways, because embedded products live for 5–15 years, not 5 quarters.
Real silicon. Real environment. Real lifetime.
A delivery model built for the honest realities of embedded, physics, unit economics, certification and 5–15 year lifecycles designed in from day one.
Frame
Product requirements, environment, power, cost, lifecycle and compliance mapped. Output: a phased plan with a working prototype scoped early.
Prototype
Silicon, firmware and connectivity stood up on real hardware, in the real environment. Physics and unit economics validated before manufacturing spend.
Productionise
Full engineering, security, OTA, diagnostics, DFM, certification, designed for the production line and the field, not just the bench.
Sustain
OTA, telemetry, security updates and obsolescence management as ongoing engineering. Long-term support is designed in, not appended after launch.
A pragmatic embedded toolchain.
Silicon, RTOS and Linux distribution choices are driven by power, timing, cost and lifecycle, not by whichever eval kit landed first.
PythonAAssemblyACARM Cortex-MACARM Cortex-ARRISC-VEESP32SSTM32NnRFZZephyrFFreeRTOSTThreadXNNuttXYYoctoBBuildrootOOpenEmbeddedLLinuxBBLETThreadZZigbeeLLoRaWANL/LTE-M / NB-IoTWWi-FiCCANMModbusTLTF Lite MicroORONNX RuntimeMMenderSSWUpdateRRAUCProgrammes delivered on this practice.
What prospective clients ask us first.
If your question isn't addressed here, please reach us at hello@tekansa.com.
01Bare-metal, RTOS or embedded Linux, how do you choose?
Per product, on power, timing and complexity. Bare-metal wins where the device does one thing on tiny silicon with minimal footprint. RTOS wins where the workload has hard real-time deadlines and modest complexity. Embedded Linux wins where the product has a substantial software surface, networking, media or an app-store-like model. Choosing the wrong tier is one of the most expensive early mistakes in embedded, we take the time to get it right.
02How do you keep firmware maintainable over a 5–15 year product life?
By treating firmware like software, modular architecture, tests, CI, version control, static analysis, code review, instead of as a one-shot artefact tied to a chip revision. Kernel LTS choices, dependency governance, secure OTA and structured telemetry are designed in from day one. Products that survive their decade do this; products that don't become a support quagmire in year three.
03How do you handle security for connected devices?
Secure boot with a hardware root of trust, unique cryptographic device identity, encrypted storage, signed and integrity-checked OTA, TLS for transport, and least-privilege for cloud access. Threat modelling is done per product, aligned to IEC 62443 or ETSI EN 303 645 depending on the vertical. Revocation, rotation and vulnerability response are designed into the fleet, not improvised the day a CVE lands.
04How do you approach OTA and firmware lifecycle across a fleet?
Redundant firmware slots for A/B or fallback rollback; signed and encrypted images; staged rollouts by cohort with health checks; structured telemetry so failed updates are visible immediately; and a policy for what happens when a device misses updates for months (offline, out-of-comm, or genuinely abandoned). Bad OTA is how expensive fleets become brittle; well-designed OTA is how they age gracefully.
05How do you handle certification (FCC, CE, medical, automotive)?
By engineering to the standard from day one, not by testing at the end. FCC/CE/RED emissions and immunity are informed by hardware choices; IEC 60601 medical touches architecture, isolation and documentation; IEC 61508 and ISO 26262 shape process, tooling and traceability. Test labs and notified bodies are engaged early, not after a failed first submission.
06How do you work alongside a client's hardware team?
As embedded engineers with hardware fluency, not as a black box. Firmware and hardware engineers share the same design space; schematic reviews, DFM feedback, board bring-up and characterisation are collaborative. The seams between hardware, firmware, cloud and app teams are where embedded projects usually break, we design against that reality.
Let's discuss your embedded programme.
Share a brief overview of the product, silicon and environment, we'll arrange an introductory conversation with the relevant practice leadership.