![Systems Engineering Center [SEC] system icon](sec-icon-v5.png){kind=icon}
01 / Systems analysis
Understand what happens.
Inputs + model→Output?
Given the inputs and a model, work out the output. Explore how a system responds and what its behavior tells us.
Independent engineering lab · Netherlands
Systems design
and analysis
SEC is an independent lab for exploring how systems behave, how to design them, and how signals help us understand the world. Our main pursuit: turn the mobile phone into a richer instrument for observation and discovery.
Explore the visionThe bigger picture
A systems lens.
A world of possibilities.
Systems engineering is the wider home for SEC’s work. We approach it through two complementary questions: what will a system do, and what system could produce the result we want?
02 / System design
Shape what could happen.
Inputs + desired outputs→Model?
Given the inputs and the outputs we want, find or design a model that connects them—a transfer function where that representation applies.
Signals are the other half.
Alongside the systems perspective sits signal processing: working with measurements to extract meaning. At SEC, these ideas meet in tools that connect sensing, understanding and design.
The main pursuit
A tricorder ambition.
A phone-sized beginning.
Imagine the phone in your pocket becoming more like the tricorder in Star Trek: Voyager: an instrument for exploring and understanding the world around you.
That is the dream driving SEC’s main activity. Bring together the phone’s sensors, signal processing and systems concepts to develop useful ways to observe, measure and interpret.
This is a direction to work toward, one focused tool at a time. It sits within a broader curiosity about systems, extending beyond mobile devices and today’s apps.
- 01
Sense
Start with what the device can observe.
- 02
Interpret
Use signal processing and models to make sense of measurements.
- 03
Understand
Turn those observations into something useful.
Selected work
Ideas taking shape.
One tool at a time.
TreeRings and PocketMeter explore observation and measurement. Ideon supports another side of the lab: collecting and revisiting ideas. Together, they are current expressions of a wider systems curiosity.
01Available on iPhone
Ideon
Your private feed for ideas, links, notes, images and useful AI answers. Save what matters, then rediscover it naturally.
02Available on iPhone
TreeRings
Read the story held inside a tree. Estimate age from growth rings and turn a simple observation into a moment of discovery.
03For iPhone
PocketMeter
A practical measurement tool that turns the phone in your pocket into an instrument for understanding physical dimensions.
The lab
A fascination
with systems.
SEC grew from its founder’s engineering education and a lasting fascination with systems: understanding how they work, and imagining how they could work differently.
During those studies, Signals and Systems became a foundational way of thinking. Donella Meadows’s Thinking in Systems captures the deeper fascination that continues to motivate the lab.
Systems analysis, system design and signal processing belong together in that outlook. The mobile phone is the main place SEC puts it into practice today; the wider field remains open for exploration.
01Analyze
02Design
03Explore