Main areas of activity

esd electronics develops and manufactures hardware and software for industrial automation technology with a focus on customer-specific solutions. Customers come primarily from the automotive, mechanical engineering, medical technology and aerospace sectors. Training and workshops complement the range of services. The products are sold worldwide directly and via distributors.

Development of hardware and software

The focus of engineering activities is on the development of hardware and software for the company's own standard products and for customer-specific designs. The customer is supported from the analysis of the task over the development up to the series production. 

Series production

For series production esd electronics cooperates with OEM partners. The final functional tests are always carried out in-house. For this purpose, a large part of the test systems is developed and programmed in-house. The know-how acquired in this process is also used in the development of test systems for customers.

Technologies

Fieldbus CAN

esd electronics is one of the world's leading suppliers of CAN modules. The company has CAN experience since 1990 and is a founding member of the user association CiA®. Customers can find the right interface for almost every bus system and for almost every current operating system in the extensive standard program. In addition, esd electronics supplies the appropriate drivers and software stacks for numerous platforms.

Industrial Ethernet EtherCAT

The increased demands on speed and complexity lead to the increased use of Ethernet-based fieldbuses. In this context, esd electronics mainly relies on EtherCAT as technology for and offers software for it in addition to I/O modules and controllers. The master is also available for real-time operating systems. 

Plug-in card systems VMEbus and CompactPCI

esd electronics continues to develop and manufacture state-of-the-art components for proven plug-in card systems such as VMEbus and CompactPCI, thus supporting the relatively long innovation cycles in some industries. Even discontinued modules from other manufacturers are rebuilt by esd electronics in a functionally compatible way, so that the life cycles of the machines can be extended for the end customers.

Software and control engineering

esd electronics supports standard operating systems such as Windows® as well as various UNIX® and Linux® systems with drivers, tools and applications. A special focus of esd electronics is the application of real-time multitasking operating systems like VxWorks®, QNX®, RTX64 and OS-9®.
In addition to application programming and the creation of Board Support Packages (BSP), esd electronics also conducts customer training and workshops. 
Often the required software is created in addition to the hardware development. From the bootloader to the driver layer to the customer specific application, esd electronics can provide the appropriate programs. Especially for control engineering tasks esd electronics has the appropriate specialists.

Company History

esd electronics was founded in 1984 by Dr.-Ing. Werner Schulze and Dipl.-Ing. Klaus Detering as the engineering office Schulze&Detering in Hannover. The two engineers had studied electrical engineering at the University of Hanover and wanted to apply their theoretical knowledge of control engineering and real-time systems in industrial practice.

They quickly found customers from various industries throughout Germany who wanted to use the innovative know-how of the young company for their devices and systems. Within a few years, the small office with garage in Ellernstraße became an internationally active system house. The founders were helped by the fact that automation technology was experiencing a major boom in the 1980s. After a few years in the Technology Center, the company moved to its current location on Vahrenwalder Straße in the north of Hanover in 1992. The premises were extended several times, so that currently about 60 employees have their workplace at the headquarters.

In 2004 the subsidiary company esd electronics Inc. was founded in the USA near Boston (MA). From there, the North American market is served with a small team. Over the years, distributors were added, especially in Europe and Asia, through which the extensive standard program of CAN interfaces and gateways is sold. 

Since its foundation esd electronics is owned by the management. After the sudden death of Werner Schulze in 2010 Klaus Detering took over the sole management. 

 

Steuerung von Industrielasern
Messdatenübertragung an einer Turbine
Bild aus der Lackdrahtfertigung
Bild eines Projekts aus der Qualitätssicherung
Gruppenbild von esd-Mitarbeitern