Andy Culmer Email & Phone Number

Southampton, United Kingdom

At ITDev, I have two primary goals;● To bring peace of mind to our customers, who often find themselves under pressure to deliver complex projects under challenging circumstances.● To build and nurture a team of passionate, high calibre engineers and support them with the right tools, methodologies, technologies and training.My team and I work with businesses that want to get products to market quickly, but without sacrificing quality, taking undue risks, or overstretching their teams.I have been lucky enough to work with some amazing companies since taking on my current role back in 2005. My team and I have helped those companies to win awards, enter new markets and increase market share. I'm passionate about this, and especially proud of the outstanding client feedback that we have received over the years.The chances are, you have experienced the results of some of our projects yourself. It could be through our contributions to the Android operating system, or you may have watched television channels that were delivered using broadcast equipment that we helped to develop and support.If you have requirements in any of the following areas, we would love to hear from you: ✪ Electronic product development, including FPGA design, embedded systems and software. ✪ Design architecture proposals and reviews. ✪ Test automation design and implementation. ✪ Specialist expertise in Linux kernel, BSPs and drivers. ✪ Specialist expertise in broadcast, audio/video, video processing and analysis. (See Imicast brand below) ✪ Electronics and embedded software project management and design flows, including Agile Scrum and Kanban and Continuous Integration (CI).If you would like to speak to some of our past and current clients, please let me know.

Southampton, United Kingdom

Imicast is the specialist video, audio and broadcast technology division of ITDev. Imicast helps companies to develop a variety of video and audio equipment, systems and intellectual property. We have extensive experience designing and implementing solutions through software, FPGA and embedded systems.The team and I have built extensive knowledge of video and audio processing, encoding and transport. I have managed the development of new real time video encoder and receiver products, as well as the addition of significant features to existing products and the creation and integration of IP cores.Imicast has experts in many standards and technologies including:✪ Video compression - Implementation and integration of common MPEG standards and JPEG 2000✪ Audio compression - Integration and understanding of open source and commercial codecs✪ Broadcast ancillary data - Splicing, closed captions, WSS, teletext, generic VANC, ...✪ Transport over IP - Extensive experience with MPEG2 transport stream and related standards✪ Clock recovery, synchronisation and timing - Extensive experience implementing robust reliable systems ✪ Video processing and analysis - For example, we are developing a system for extracting vital signs from videos✪ Handling of raw/base-band video - High bandwidth processing, storage and transfer of video up to UHD✪ Compliance testing - Generation of automated test environments providing high coverage functionality and compliance testingOur experience of developing and supporting high quality broadcast products over many years has given us a valuable insight into the real world challenges faced by equipment in the field. This insight allows us to develop highly robust, reliable and interoperable products that are right first time.

United Kingdom

In addition to my responsibilities at ITDev, I am also excited to be involved with TankTastic Ltd.TankTastic offer groundbreaking non-invasive measurement technology that provides fill level measurement for gas cylinders. We are developing this as an industrial IoT solution for the gas distribution industry.

My responsibilities at Semtech included project leadership for the development of a family of clock cleaning and distribution ICs. This role continued to build my experience in many areas such as mixed-signal system specification and design, project management, digital IC design, behavioural modelling and verification. I was also given the opportunity to innovate and implemented a number of novel solutions, including a modified type 4 phase and frequency detector for which a US patent has been granted.The complexity of mixed-signal designs was such that automation of simulation and evaluation were key. I developed software in Tcl and Perl that automates simulation tasks to ensure maximum fault coverage. I also developed software to control measurement equipment, which I later expanded to become a general-purpose tool, allowing engineers to easily generate automated test scripts. I went on to support users of this software at several sites in the US and UK.I take a keen interest in process efficiency and I implemented a number of software tools to support or augment the existing workflows. Examples include software to convert analogue design databases to VHDL models for mixed-signal simulation and a web-based verification checklist tool to aid collaboration.My systems work led me to develop detailed knowledge of PLLs and jitter analysis. As well as using industry tools such as Matlab, I have also written custom software that models third and fourth order PLLs, predicting jitter generation and transfer for proposed designs.In addition to system level work, I designed sub-blocks such as a delta-sigma DAC, frequency and activity monitors, digital filters and serial interfaces. Other experience included evaluation board PCB design involving signals up to 2.5GHz, implementation of customer and internal evaluation software to support these boards, presenting product information/training to applications and marketing engineers and providing customer support.

Whilst at Philips I was responsible for the specification, integration, design and verification of several key blocks in their TV controller ICs. I also took technical responsibility for a large project during the evaluation of first samples, which involved liaising with six departments based in three countries.