Instrumental Precision
I design the hardware and firmware inside precision instruments — low-noise analog front ends, networked data acquisition, and the timing that keeps distributed sensors in step. Engagements end with working boards on your bench, not a folder of files.
Getting a microvolt-level signal off a transducer and into a converter without corrupting it. Grounding and return paths, supply partitioning, anti-alias filtering, and the layout discipline that decides whether the noise floor lands where the datasheet promised.
24-bit Δ-Σ · PGIA · ultralow-noise LDO rails · sensor bias and excitation
Turning a sensor into something that shows up on a network with one cable. PoE power and negotiation, the Ethernet stack, streaming and buffering, configuration, calibration storage, and firmware update in the field.
PoE / PoE+ · TCP and UDP streaming · device discovery · OTA update
Hardware timestamping and PTP so that channels spread across an array agree on when a sample was taken. This is the part most sensor specialists have no one to hand, and it is what makes coherent arrays and event correlation possible.
IEEE 1588 PTP · hardware-timestamping PHYs · GNSS-disciplined timing · RTK GNSS
Bare-metal and RTOS firmware for the boards above, plus the unglamorous work around them: bring-up, driver debugging, protocol reverse engineering, and the host-side tooling your team needs to configure and test a unit.
C and C++ · Python tooling · CAN and serial protocol work · bring-up and debug
A board that mostly works, a converter that misbehaves only at temperature, an intermittent fault nobody can reproduce. Often the fastest engagement to scope and the most useful place to start together.
design review · noise and EMC investigation · failure analysis · second opinion
Single-channel underwater acoustic digitizer powered and streamed over one Ethernet cable. Low-noise instrumentation front end into a 24-bit converter, PTP-timestamped samples, and a fully isolated supply chain designed to keep the digital section out of the measurement.
STM32H743 · 24-bit Δ-Σ · PGIA · IEEE 1588 PHY · PoE+
A twelve-channel chassis built on the same digital backbone, sample-coherent across all channels so the data supports beamforming and source localization rather than twelve independent recordings.
12 channels · sample-coherent acquisition · shared PTP time base
Design and day-to-day operation of a centimetre-class positioning network: a base station broadcasting corrections over a 900 MHz link to a fleet of rovers, with a common configuration image and per-unit network addressing.
RTK corrections · 900 MHz telemetry · fleet configuration management
Board-level integration and evaluation of multi-band RTK receiver modules, including antenna and RF front-end selection, correction handling, and host-side tooling for logging and analysis.
multi-band RTK modules · antenna and RF front end · logging tools
Work is quoted fixed-price against milestones wherever the scope allows it, and hourly where it genuinely doesn't. Subcontracting on federal awards is straightforward — the business is registered in SAM with an active CAGE code.
Instrumental Precision is Matthew Bradberry, working independently. Electronics training began in the nuclear power program of the United States Navy, followed by years running and maintaining precision tracking and measurement systems at a naval test facility, leading a team of operators.
That background is the reason this practice exists. Instruments that work on a bench and instruments that survive a year of field deployment are different products, and I have spent a long time on the receiving end of the difference.
MatthewB@InstrumentalPrecision.com
Useful things to include: what you are measuring, what accuracy or noise floor you need, where the instrument has to live, and when you need hardware in hand. A short description is enough to tell you whether I am the right person, and I will say so if I am not.