A Brief History of nikam electronics

nikam Electronics (Ltd.) was founded by Mike Meakin in 1979 to undertake the design and development of industrial electronic equipment. This venture was based on eight years experience in the study and design of medical electronics equipment at Manchester University. Design contracts quickly spawned products used in industrial telemetry, professional sound equipment, industrial gas analysis systems, video games and the booming home computer market of the early eighties.

In 1985 Mike moved to Gloucestershire to be employed as European Applications Engineer for National Semiconductor where his expertise in analogue electronics was utilized. The promotion through seminars and articles of a mains signalling chip then lead the preacher to practice the art of mains signalling as Technical Director with Emlux Ltd. in 1988. During this time he designed lighting control systems that are still in use throughout the world.

In early 1990 Mike's skills were recognized by Philip Black of the Echelon Corporation who contracted him as Technology Consultant to help with the inauguration of Echelon Europe and introduce the Neuron Chip and the LonWorks concepts of Distributed Intelligent Control. This task having been completed, Mike returned to full time consultancy with nikam electronics in April 1992. 

A life time interest in 'radio control' systems lead to involvement in short range radio in the newly released 418MHz band. Many products and evaluation boards were developed which were marketed by Quantelec/LPRS and are still available in the RS Components catalogue. Much work was undertaken using Radiometrix radio modules in conjunction with PIC micro controllers. 

In March 1998 Mike was persuaded to work for LPRS as Technical Manager after over five years association as a consultant. Many designs were undertaken including Micrel single chip receiver modules. Considerable expertise was also gained in helping customers use various low power radio modules within their products.

Wishing to maintain a 'hands on' engineering role and develop some new products Mike once again returned to consultancy in August 2000. More recently he has become involved in the emerging LED lighting market which offers many interesting challenges.

Mike has a modest output of published papers/articles and holds two jointly assigned patents.