BTE Technologies makes physical therapy equipment for muscular testing and (re)training. Among the company's successful products is the Primus PR20. But when the engineers at BTE first hired Netrino, in 1999, the new product was in big trouble: the company had a $500,000 order backlog for the PR20 but the engineer who had designed a critical embedded computer and its firmware had just quit. The exiting engineer's software for the Microchip PIC microcontroller was found to be riddled with bugs and more incomplete than thought. BTE needed this embedded software finished properly, and they needed it yesterday.

Team approach

BTE's engineering director hired an engineer from Netrino as an outside consultant to the project. A quick review by Netrino showed that the electronics was in fine shape, but that the assembly language software was virtually unusable. Netrino's engineer recommended rewriting the firmware entirely in C rather than trying to patch and finish the broken assembly language code. However, Netrino and BTE agreed that engaging a second (non-Netrino) PIC assembly expert in a parallel patch and finish effort with the assembly code would be a smart move for risk mitigation on a project so critical to the company's survival.

This parallel effort offered a rare opportunity to answer several recurring engineering questions, including:

• Is it faster to ditch an existing design and start over?
• Is assembly or C better for firmware development?

The answers were clear. The new C program was complete in just a few weeks. By that time, only a few of the many bugs in the old assembly code had been eliminated. In addition, the easily modified or extended C code included features not yet made part of the increasingly fragile assembly code. Finally, in a surprise to everyone involved, the working C program consumed just 4KB of code space vs. the larger 6KB of assembly code.

Order fulfillment

With the new C code from Netrino complete and the new product thoroughly tested, BTE was able to quickly fulfill its backlog of orders for the new product, recognize critical revenues, and move on to the next new product development. BTE's engineering director concluded from this experience that it was valuable to maintain a long-term relationship with a team of electronics and firmware consultants rather than rely on an internal staff for such specialized expertise outside the company's core business. Embedded software and electronics designed by Netrino engineers now lie at the heart of most of BTE's products.

Learn more about Netrino Labs.