Non-Confidential List of Craftech's Clients and Projects

During the time that Craftech has been serving the technical community, we have been fortunate to have made contributions to the following companies:

John Hopkins University - Applied Physics Lab - Laurel, MD

Win2000/XP WDM  drivers

Oceanography Applications

  • Project details (click here)

    • During the development of an underwater laser imaging system, the client was experiencing multiple crashes and severe data corruption. From a previous effort done for the Coastal System Station (see above), Craftech was already familiar with the hardware and software that was being used, and therefore called in to research the problem and to provide a solution. After working with Raytheon (the hardware provider) extensively, the problem was identified within the kernel drivers. Craftech modified these drivers to insure smooth, reliable data transfers with no corruption of data.

    • Craftech also supplied a WDM Win2000 driver to replace the previous NT40 driver. This allowed the laboratory to upgrade the Oceanography Application user interface to its latest version, which operated only on Win2000 and XP.

    • Other driver enhancements, as requested. These included video data manipulation, and time stamping.

 

Data Translations, Inc. - Marlboro, MA

 

WDM Imaging drivers

Machine-Vision Imaging

Special-purpose DMA solutions

Special-purpose interrupt processing

Video framegrabber technology

USB Capture drivers (WinME/2000)

Data-Acquisition drivers

I2C serial devices & protocols

NT Services

Control panel applications

Direct-X technologies

Conexant chips & software

RISC programming

Embedded systems applications

Team leader / mentor

Project Management

  • Project details (click here)

    • Provided technical expertise in resolving a number of problems related to the client’s older products

    • Produced a series of WDM video framegrabber and data-acquisition drivers to accommodate new hardware that had already been developed within the client’s company. These drivers provided a new direction for the company’s software development efforts.

    • Upon request, Mr. Mowatt stepped in as Software Development Manager and Mentor during a time of transition in the company’s affairs.

    • Provided direction to the client on using the Direct-X mechanisms to displaying video.

    • Implemented several drivers incorporating the concepts of USB, I2C, and Plug’n’Play. These drivers were used as templates for other technical personnel to use as a starting point for their new efforts.

    • Developed and maintained a customer development kit to allow the client’s customer’s to access the programmable features of the hardware. This involved many concepts including WDM device interface issues, Registry management, configuration, and installation issues.

    • Provided extensive consultations on the technical aspects of product definitions.

    • Developed proprietary scheme for flexible handling the large amounts of data that must be transferred from device to computer during high-speed video transfers. This required extensive knowledge of Win2000 DMA transfer mechanisms.

    • Prepared several product demonstration programs, which the client supplied to their customers.

 

Dialout.net, Inc. - Nashua, NH

UART simulations

Kernel driver development

  • Project Details (click here)

    • The client's product involved mechanisms for sharing remote modem pools amongst a host of subscribers. A version of the product, which had not yet been released, was to re-architect several major functional pieces and move them from user-level code to kernel-level code where it was expected to substantially enhance the product’s performance. The performance increases were anticipated due to the elimination of many of the context switches that occurred between the user-level and kernel-level interactions. Craftech’s role involved the relocation of selected functionality from the product DLLs to the kernel-mode drivers.

 

MCK Communications, Inc. - Needham, MA

Telephony

Audio Wave drivers

TAPI Interface

Winsock/TCP sockets

Audio Compression Manager (ACM) drivers

  • Project details (click here)

    • A very interesting problem was put to Craftech – redirect audio data from the installed sound card to the LAN network. The audio data packets submitted to the network had to include proprietary protocol headers in order to be recognized by the receiving client software. This telephony application made use of TAPI, an Audio Compression Manager (ACM) driver, and a NT Wave driver. After the conceptual approach and software architecture were complete, Craftech’s primary responsibilities centered on the Wave driver, which included Winsock code to send audio packets to the network.

 

Coastal Systems Station – Dept. of US Navy - Panama City, FL

Serial EEProm devices

Remote Telemetry Applications

Xilinx FPGA devices

PLX 9080 PCI controllers

Underwater Laser Imaging Surveillance

  • Project details (click here)

    • A division of the US Navy, CSS, contacted Craftech to develop a driver for a PCI remote telemetry device, which receives video image data via an underwater laser system developed by Raytheon. Raytheon did not have the expertise in-house to develop the required software. The driver had to program the onboard FPGA, transfer video data from hardware to holding buffers (system memory) in response to interrupts, and provide an interface for application programs to retrieve the video data. There were several interesting problems to solve on the way to a reliable solution.

    • Craftech received a commendation for its effort in this project.

 

Picturetel Corporation - Andover, MA

Telephony

Win98 VXD drivers

TAPI Interfaces

Driver Installation issues

Active-X Controls

ISDN simulation equipment

Video-Conferencing products

  • Project details (click here)

    • Craftech was notified that several of the client’s older products were not working in the newly released Win98 environment. These older products were the key to a rather large sale that was to be made in Japan. Initial investigation indicated that the difficulties were within the driver portion of the product code. Because of the complexity of interaction between the product components (both hardware and software), the effort to identify and resolve the problems involved a team of 5 people, where Craftech served as technical lead.

 

Safenet, Inc. - Danvers, MA

System Architecture Consultant

Drivers for PCI cryptography hardware

Hardware/Software integration using logic analyzers, scopes, and ICE products

  • Project details (click here)

    • Craftech was initially called in to generate a kernel-mode driver for proprietary PCI cryptography hardware. As the project developed, it became clear that Craftech would be able to contribute to the effort in quite a number of ways – including providing software architectural reviews, specialized test mechanisms, developing an API to their software development kit offered to their customers. Craftech has been regularly called in to solve a variety of problems for this client and enjoys a healthy continuing relationship.

    • See Testimonials

 

Wray-Tech Instruments, Inc. - Stratford, CT

Device Drivers for proprietary storage devices (Win95/98/NT)

Extensive work in Windows file management ( IFSMGR, Hooks, IOS, etc)

Hard-disk simulation of hardware storage devices

  • Project details (click here)

    • The client manufactured proprietary storage devices that supported a larger hardware/software application. Craftech was to supply drivers for the devices, and provide an interface identical to that of a removable hard disk from the user’s point of view. Drivers, and removable hard-disk interface were supplied for all the current operating systems – Win95/98/NT/2000.

    • Supplied drivers for the USB version of the storage hardware.

    • See Testimonials

 

Masoneilan - Dresser Division - Avon, MA

 

VCOMM client drivers for Win98

Serial filter drivers for NT40/2000

Special serial protocol drivers for instrumentation products

  • Project details (click here)

    • This project incorporated a specialized serial device, which had some very unusual protocol requirements. The standard serial drivers for each of the supported operating systems had to be replaced with alternate serial drivers written by Craftech. These alternate drivers tested each serial device it opened for the protocol requirements, and would enter special modes upon finding a relevant device. This application was used to control factory machines and process related equipment.

    • See Testimonials

 

Aspect Telecommunications, Inc. - Chelmsford, MA

NT Service Applications

Data-acquisition device drivers

Control Panel Applets

Interprocess Communications - RPC/Pipes

  • Project details (click here)

    • This project involved several components including a kernel-mode driver, an NT Service application, and a control panel applet. The driver manipulated and provided access to digital I/O hardware. The NT service provided a means to access the driver/hardware remotely through a LAN. And the control panel applet allowed end-user configuration of the entire system.

 

Imagraph Corp. - Chelmsford, MA

AMCC PCI controllers

Multiple PCI board installations

Extensive DMA of Large amounts of data

Video imaging drivers for Framegrabber product line

  • Project details (click here)

    • Client was developing a new line of special purpose video framegrabbers, and needed kernel-level software to access the extensive features of the boards. The drivers had to present these features to user-generated application programs via the client’s software development kit. The problems, and their solutions, encountered on this project provided interesting challenge to Craftech.

 

Circuitest Products - Hudson, NH

Serial communications

Win32/MFC/C++ object design

Integration of Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) into the Windows environment

Hardware interfacing of plotter/prober technology using HPGL engines

  • Project details (click here)

    • Client had developed state-of-the-art automatic circuit-testing equipment, which provided moving contact pens to test elaborate unpopulated circuit boards. Craftech was responsible for providing the software that allowed control of this equipment.

 

White Pine Software - Nashua, NH

Internet audio concepts

Enhancements to the CU_SEE_ME video conferencing product

  • Project details (click here)

    • The client was experiencing problems with the audio portion of its video-conferencing product. Craftech researched the data corruption and general poor quality and worked with client’s personnel to identify and resolve the numerous issues affecting audio.

 

Presstek, Inc. - Hudson, NH

MFC Library Extensions

User interface for Imaging systems

Education and training of technical staff for Win98/NT programming

  • Project details (click here)

    • Craftech’s primary role in this project was to teach the client’s personnel how to program user and kernel level components for their image printing system. The client’s market demanded embracing the Windows environments, and Craftech was called in to simplify the transition from DOS/UNIX to Windows.

    • See Testimonials

 

Keyfile Corporation (now Lexign.Keyfile) - Nashua, NH

Device Driver for Speech board

  • Project details (click here)

    • Client was experiencing problems with a 3rd party speech-synthesis board (Natural Microsystems). Craftech was called in to resolve these problems

 

Tritech MicroElectronics International - Milpitas, CA

Serial Communications

Control-Panel applets

Configuration and Setup management

Registry management

Complete Win95 pen driver for TR88L811 pen-input controllers

 

Vibrint Technologies - Bedford, MA

WinNT drivers for high-performance graphics hardware

Phillips SAA7145 Multimedia PCI controller

 

Vivo Software - Waltham, MA

Special purpose VCOMM communications port drivers

 

MicroTouch Systems - Methuen, MA

Multimedia Touch-Screen driver interface and Demo programs for Win3.1 and Win95

 

Itran Corporation - Manchester, NH

Touch-Screen operator interface

OLE Objects and graphics drawing tools

Computer control of external equipment

Hardware Interfacing of Video Capture equipment

 

EM Separations Technologies, Inc. - Wakefield, RI

Real-time data acquisition and User-Interface programming

MFC, C++ and standard Win32 API

 

Sales Technologies - Manchester, NH

Database Front-end

Custom Controls

C++ Class Libraries

User-Interface concepts

MFC and C++ training

DLL-based development tools