Electronics design

Our Electronics Design Team (EDT) specialise in the design and build of bespoke technology products to assist and enable marine, freshwater and environmental related scientific and commercial customers to achieve their goals.

Cefas offer expertise in electronic and mechanical design, firmware and software development and offer engineering advice and support to customers as well as a production facility and equipment maintenance. Our team of multi-skilled engineers have over 75 years of combined experience in the design of electronic, mechanical and software products.

Our team design and develop innovative products for the marine environment. From our pioneering design of the miniature Data Storage Tag (DST) to the rugged and reliable ESMx Oceanographic Data Logger, we use the latest technology, components and software to design to project, scientific and environmental requirements.

We use the latest industry-standard tools and our dedicated engineering facilities to ensure our designs are tested, reliable and accurate.

We are experienced across the end to end process of product development including:

  • Electronics design
  • PCB design
  • Firmware and software design
  • Mechanical design
  • Engineering, advice and consultancy
  • Manufacturing
  • Deployment, including our Remotely Piloted Aircraft pilots.

We have worked on a range of products to collect data on the marine environment, its health and the life it supports. These include:

  • Data Storage Tags (DTS) - developed in collaboration with fish behaviour scientists, these small sensors help record the behaviour of marine fish, mammals and birds. Currently, sensors now available can include pressure, temperature, 3-axis acceleremoter, gyro, magnetometer. 
  • ESMx Oceanographic Data Logger - the ESMx is a data logger capable of interfacing with a range of oceanographic sensors, enabling "plug and play" for different sensor arrays based on the need. The ESMx has been deployed across the Cefas SmartBuoy monitoring programme.
  • Cefas Mooring Locator (CSM) - the CML tracks the location of scientific equipment moorings in the open ocean using a miniature GPS receiver an the Iridium satellite network. 
  • Cefas Water Sampler - able to take up to 16 independent water samples to a depth of 10m, the sampler is battery powered and can be connected to an Iridium telemetry unit to take samples on demand, as done on our WaveGlider Lyra.
  • Electronic Data Capture System (EDC) - the EDC system was developed with Cefas scientists to make fish measurements, smarter, quicker and more accurate. 
  • RFID systems - antenna, decoder and logging systems have been developed by our team to track fish and sediment movements.
  • Ship-Board Data Logging System - Our RV Cefas Endeavour is equipped with sensors, instruments and machinery across the whole ship. The logging system collates all of this data, enabling crew to view any combination of sensors to obtain live data.