FAQ

Procept was founded in 2006 to enable Australian businesses to access the same world class electronic engineering services as were available to multi-nationals. In that year, we won our first technology award for a wireless industrial sensor called ControlMesh. Every year since then, we have helped our customers win technology awards of excellence and governments grants for research and development.

We have fully-staffed offices in Melbourne and Barcelona which are complemented by our extensive test facilities in Central Victoria.

In addition to the typical test facilities required by an embedded engineering company, Procept has invested heavily in test and calibration systems to enable the modelling and calibration of the latest MEMs technologies such as accelerometers, magnetometers and gyroscopes.  Our facilities enable customers to access world class aerospace grade magnetic test facilities in Australia.

We also have an open area wireless test site covering 900 hectares in central Victoria for long range, large scale ISM band testing, environmental testing and testing of products using renewable energy like solar and wind.

To connect us with the latest trends, technologies and leading industry minds, we have forged long term affiliations with a few trusted organisations and individuals. We work actively with our affiliates, gaining their input to industry challenges and their specific skills to complement our own on particular projects.

Procept provides consulting and engineering services that allow our customers to successfully take embedded products to market.

Consulting
Procept consulting services are split into five streams to help customers plan product development, manufacturing and product support:

1. Feasibility studies
2. Technology & Strategy planning
3. Concept Design
4. Launch readiness
5. Manufacturing Support

R&D
Development of embedded products:

1. Proof of Concept
2. Product Development
3. Project Management
4. Manufacturing Readiness
5. Product Maintenance

Our speciality is the development of robust, small electronic devices that perform at high levels, reliably and continuously.  Depending on the product and application the engineering disciplines required can be quite diverse and this is where we work with our affiliates to provide specific skills to complement our own.

An embedded product may require some or all of the below areas of expertise:

• Wireless technologies and testing
• Efficient power
• Sensors & Calibration
• Software & Operating Systems
• Hardware Design
• Signal Processing
• Mechanical design
• Industrial design
• Fluid dynamics
• Mathematics
• Compliance Testing
• Manufacturing
• Web development

Procept’s R&D team are primarily made up of engineers with experience in hardware, software, signal processing and sensor technologies.  Our R&D team is supported by project managers, test engineers, and technicians.

Innovators are found everywhere, and we’re delighted that so many of them in different industries have chosen Procept to be their partner in new product development.

Some of the industries we serve follow. Where we have permission to use them, the industries are linked to detailed case studies.   

• Healthcare
• Consumer electronics
• Industrial control and automation
• Agriculture
• Mining
• Defence
• Clean Energy

Procept delivers products using a product development process based on modified waterfall and agile models, which provides the structure to manage projects to set budgets and milestones but also provides the flexibility and test coverage of an agile model.

The time to develop a product is largely dependent on the complexity of the product (i.e. functionality), the type of product (i.e. consumer, medical) and the maturity level of the technology being integrated.  Projects can range from a couple of months for a simple product using mature technologies to many years for complex products requiring the integration of cutting edge sensor technologies or the development of invasive medical devices.

We are usually able to provide indicative development timeframes after our first meeting.

Our goal is help Australian innovators, to transform your ideas into robust, competitive, cutting edge electronic products that win you recognition and success.

We see your success as our success.  We work with customers in a collaborative and transparent way, providing expert guidance at all stages from concept to production with a single accountable contact throughout your journey.

Most certainly.  We understand that some customers may have much of the expertise required but wish to outsource a particular design element due to resourcing constraints or limited expertise in a certain engineering or scientific discipline.

Many of our customers have internal design teams, ranging from a couple of engineers to well over 50.  We work closely with your engineers, project and product managers to deliver the product. In some cases, it has also made sense for the teams to centrally locate to be more effective.

We take confidentiality very seriously.

For many of our customers Procept is seen as a strategic partner and as such we work with them on an ongoing basis to develop their product strategies and roadmaps.  This information is critical to their business success and why we don’t compromise on document security or confidentiality.

For those new to Procept, all correspondence is deemed commercially in confidence and we are happy to sign non-disclosure agreements to further protect your intellectual property.  Our projects are managed so that only those who require access have access to your confidential information.  All staff and affiliates have confidentially clauses in their contracts.

Procept's operating system is an embedded operating system similar to the commercial systems available in the market but solely focused on 8-bit and 16-bit processors (i.e. those with limited memory and processing power).  It was developed by Procept due to the lack of focus on the low-end processor market and also the licensing costs associated with commercial operating systems.   

The Procept OS is used in some of the products we develop but it is not suitable for all. Benefits include:

• Small memory footprint, full real-time performance
• Ability to run on memory constrained microcontrollers
• Natively supports ATMEL AVR family of microprocessors
• Modular operating system including kernel, libraries and drivers
• Thread swapping in 4 processor cycles compared to up to 40 for traditional Operating systems
• Costs significantly less than commercial operating systems - no royalties
• Reduces development costs and risks through tested libraries
• Debug interface

Yes. We have a network of affiliates which can support you in identifying appropriate funding and then help you through the process of applying.