Petersen Instruments is a company specialized in the development and engineering of devices used in scientific material research, video processing & communication as well as automotive robotics development. Most of our products can be customized and implemented for either Mircosoft Windows PC systems, Linux operated environments or embedded platforms (Infineon, ARM).

The mastermind behind the development work of Petersen Instruments is Nikolai Petersen. The material research products are manufactured and distributed by John Shaw of Magnetic Measurements Ltd. Petersen Instruments itself has been founded in 2005 by Klaus Petersen.

We generally provide all source codes and design schematics with our products as we strongly believe in the open source / open design community.


Our material research product range consists of three kinds of instruments. The first two are different types of VFTB (Variable Field Translation Balance). These are used to find the magnetic properties of materials using a range of highly accurate measurement procedures.

The so called Bacteriodrome or Magnetodrome is utilized in Biomagnetism research. It provides the possibilty to apply varying electromagnetic fields to magnetotactic particles and organisms. The effect can be watched on a computer, recorded and analyzed.




Petersen Instruments is a specialist in the development of video processing communication software. Several kinds of real-time video stream filters have been developed. These products can be applied widely, ranging from art to science & production. We also offer a motion tracking software suitable for scientific analysis and quality control.




We have strong backround in automotive and robotics research. Our devices can be used in any application that requires autonomous and pseudo intelligent behaviour of vehicles. Our technology has proved very efficient and robust in variuous environments. Contact us if you need any custom made designs or products in this field.