Electronics Design & Development Process

- a summary guide or tutorial about the electronics design process, the chief elements,
what they are and how to manage the process.
In most companies it is necessary to manage the electronics design process. The electronics design or development process sho uld be
managed in such a way that it is possible to control the process in an orderly fashion without reducing the creativity of the designers.
In many companies a set of procedures will be used to control the development process. Other companies are tending to move towards web-
based definitions of the electronics development process.
Whatever method is adopted to display and disseminate the information about the electronics development process, there are a number of
common activities within the overall process.
The electronics design process can be manipulated to suit the individual situation - the stated electronics development process should assist
the overall workflow rather than hindering it. However certain activities that may be deemed superfluous may need to be incorporated to
ensure that the end product is repeatable and also maintainable over the longer term.

Electronics development process major activities

There are many different activities within an electronics design process. Some of the major ones are captured below:
Project initiation: This is one of the most crucial elements of the project. Getting the project set off in the right
direction is particularly important. The project may either be requested and most likely defined by the customer, or it
may be a "Private Venture" where the definition of the product will be undertaken internally to meet a particular
market. Either way there are a number of steps that must be taken:
• Capture requirements: When undertaking any project it is necessary to define exactly what is required.
Requirements can be captured from many sources: users; end customer; market assessment, etc...

o Define high level product: With most of the requirements in place (often requirements capture
progresses for many months and some work must usually start before all the requirements work is
complete), the high level product can be worked out. This will enable other processes to be undertaken.
o Prove concept / feasibility study: The high level concept of the product will highlight any areas of the
design that may present a high risk. These can be "de-risked" by undertaking a concept proof or
feasibility study. This may even involve undertaking some trial development to prove whether concept
can work. Simulations are a major way of providing he required data as accurate simulations can be
created using software tools.
o Undertake costing: At this stage it will be possible to undertake a reasonable estimate of the costs.
o Refine requirements: In the light of costings, concept proof and other inputs it may be necessary to
refine the requirements.
o Review: A review is essential at the end of this initial stage of the electronics development process to
ensure that all the required definitions, and authorisations are in place before moving on to the next
stage. Moving on without ensuring that a sufficiently robust definition is in place can lead to major
problems further along the electronics development process.
• Electronics development phase: The electronics design phase is the area where the main work is done on
creating the product or equipment. It is likely that the project team will be at its maximum strength during this
phase.

A large number of activities occur during this phase of the project. Many of them need to be undertaken in
parallel, so it is essential that the development team communicates to ensure that all activities proceed in a
coordinated fashion, and not in a disparate manner where different activities diverge.

o Hardware design: This is often the chief focus of a development activity. It will start with the high
level design, and then as the requirements are flowed down, it will split into modules or subsections.
These can be addressed as individual projects. Again communication is key.

Increasingly much greater levels of computer simulation are available these days, and many circuits
can be fully simulated before any prototypes are built.
 o Software development: Software forms an increasingly significant portion of projects. Typically it will
be many times that of the hardware development. Like the hardware, it should start with the top level
design, flowing down the requirements to smaller modules that can be addressed separately. It should
follow an orderly structured development to ensure that all the modules operate together satisfactorily
when there is a complete software build.
o Mechanical design: The mechanical design is an important element in the overall electronics design
process. Not only is the mechanical box designed, but aspects such as any mechanical interfaces as well
as heat flow and many other elements all need to be addressed. Typically 3D mechanical modelling is
used.
o CAD PCB layout : The printed circuit board design is a major element of the electronics hardware
development. As many of circuit performance features - especially with RF and fast digital circuits -
the PCB design is of great importance. Signal integrity simulations may be carried out as part of this
activity. The PCB design should be carried out in close liaison with the electronics hardware
development. Normally PCB CAD packages are used.
o Test / production equipment development: When developing electronics equipment, it is necessary to
develop a test and production strategy alongside. The development and purchase of the equipment
needed can occur during the development stages.
o Build prototypes: Prototypes of the equipment will be built. Concurrent engineering practices used to
shorten timescales would normally indicate that the production facility, and any fixtures are trialled at
this stage.
o Development testing: It is necessary to undertake constant testing during the development phase to
ensure that each module, software of hardware meets its specification.
o Review: Before moving on to the next stage of the electronics design process, it is necessary to ensure
that this phase is complete to a satisfactory level to move on. The review prior to formal testing is
normally called a Test Readiness Review, TRR.
• Integration, Verification & Validation: A major element of any electronics development process is the
formal integration, verification and validation element of the overall process. The testing is normally
undertaken to ensure that the item works, and it is validated against the requirements to ensure that it fulfils the
purpose for which it was designed. This testing normally occurs towards the end of the overall electronics
development process when the hardware and software have been integrated. However it will still be necessary
to keep the development team in place to rectify any problems.

Only once the IVV process has been completed can the product be launched into production. A complete
review - a production readiness review should be undertaken before the product is launched into full
production.

For development programmes funded by a customer, the completion of the testing will also be a major
milestone that will show that the electronics development has been satisfactorily completed. It is almost
certainly a major payment milestone for the contract.
• Production: Once a production readiness review has been completed, the product can enter production. At
this stage all the production and production test equipment and processes should have been trialled - during the
development phase.
• On-going maintenance: Even when a product has entered production on-going design maintenance will be
needed. Component obsolescence, design problems previously not noticed, minor enhancements and other
issues will all need addressing. These activities must all be allowed for during the process.
2nd Option:

Preface

The Handbook For Aspiring Hardware Startups

• Motivation: Enable more hardware startups & more successful hackathons

• Purpose: Teach those interested in electronics how to build hardware
• Answers: Where do I learn how to design/build hardware?
• Target: http://upverter.com/learn/
• TODO: Backstory, starting a startup, why & anecdotes throughout

Contributors: Zak Homuth

Interested in contributing to this resource? Email support@upverter.com.

Last updated January 2013.

Learn Electronics
Hardware is to electronics, as software is to computer science. There are some of us who have been trained
as electrical engineers, others as computer scientists, and although they have a fundamental advantage in
their fields, their training is not a requirement. Said another way, you don’t need an EE degree to build the
next great hardware company, only a basic understanding of electronics and a problem that needs to be
solved.
This resource exists to help you go from zero to product as quickly as possible. It was written to accelerate
the rate at which new hardware companies are being started, to explain what goes into building a
consumer electronics device, and to remove as much fear as possible from people interested in designing
and building real things.
Being a proficient hardware engineer requires confidence not only in the field of electronics, but also in the
fields of software and industrial design. But don’t be scared away. None of it is required to get started and
you will quickly master those fields and more as you work through designing and manufacturing your first
product.
First, we start with a bit of background on electronics itself. There is a huge amount you could learn about
the way electrons and protons interact, the way transistors are analyzed mathematically, and the physics
that goes into simulation. And while we recommend you become passionate about why the devices you
design work the way they do, you need to know relatively nothing to get started designing hardware.
Think of the fundamentals as a bit like writing a “hello world” script. If you have an electronics background
we encourage you to skip forward to Ideation.

Learn The Fundamentals

There are a number of comprehensive and interactive tutorials for learning electronics and we encourage
you to try them all. The following is a very minimal overview of the concepts and device types that go into
most hardware devices. Our goal is only to give you a bit of footing, and allow you to start in on the ideation
process. Again, please see the resources section for more comprehensive electronics primers.
First, there are a few simple concepts you should know.

Voltage
This is the name given to the quantity of electrons in a wire relative to another wire. Electrons, like water,
flow from high to low. So voltage tells you which way electrons would flow if two wires were connected.

Power & Ground

These are simply names given to voltages for convenient communication. It is convention to pick a
reference net and designate its voltage as zero. All other voltages are then measured relative to this
common ground voltage, for example a +5V power net is really just 5 more volts than ground.

Current
Voltage provides us with a word for the energy potential between two nodes. Its sister measurement,
current, describes the amount of energy flowing through a given path in the circuit. Think of it like the
amount of water flowing through a pipe.

Impedance
The resistance against the flow of electrons between two nodes in a circuit is its impedance. Impedance is
an important tool in controlling voltages and currents in a circuit. You will use it to create new voltages, to
limit current through LEDs, and to make sure power and ground aren’t shorted together.

Digital & Binary

Humans are much better at understanding absolute binary states (eg. on vs. off) than they are at
understanding analog gradients. As a result, most electronics produced these days are digital, ie. based on
binary signalling. Instead of communicating between components in analog, we do so in binary by sending
patterns of high and low voltages (1’s and 0’s) which are then interpreted as commands.
Second, there are very generalized classes of components that make up most hardware products. The most
important of these are the following.

Microcontrollers
These are by far the most popular active components money can buy and they allow your device to “think”.
They cost as little as pennies, they enable you device to run software, and they exist in almost every
electronic device you own.

Sensors
These components allow you to “listen” to the world. They can sense everything from light, to temperature,
to motion and when connected to microcontrollers, and communication they allow you to listen, think, and
share.

Storage
These components allow you to “record” any binary data. They come in all kind of sizes, they often connect
directly to microcontrollers, sensors or communication, and they give your devices a memory.

Communication
These components allow you to “talk” with other devices. There are off the shelf devices that communicate
in most of the languages you already know about (bluetooth, wireless, infrared, etc), often compared by
range, bandwidth, speed and cost.
And that’s the crash course. Almost every device you ever design will involve most of these component
groups and designing it will require some understanding of each of the concepts. It’s ok if it’s still all a bit
fuzzy, it will get clearer. You’re now ready to move on to the ideation phase.

Ideation
Ideation is the first real phase of the product design cycle. It’s an iterative process that should result in a
very rough list of keystone components, a rough idea of how they fit together and maybe even a collection
of building blocks you will tie together in your design. The goal at the core of ideation is to refine your
problem space down to something actionable. To better understand how you might fix the problem. And to
figure out what bits of hardware will go into the solution.
You will spend a lot of time tossing ideas around, sketching little circuits and block diagrams, and
researching the things that other designers have built in the past. You need a whiteboard, some scrap paper
and some people to bounce ideas off of. You should probably begin to build a team. You should keep lots of
notes. And you should try to get out of ideation and onto something concrete and in-design as soon as you
can.
But like most great ideas your great idea is probably either already in your head and why you showed up
here, or it hasn’t yet come to you, and often it can’t be forced.
“The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they’re something the founders themselves want,
that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and
Facebook all began this way.” Paul Graham [1]

There are four major stages to the ideation phase (The Idea, Discovery, Part Selection, Whiteboards & Block
Diagrams).

The Idea

Prerequisites:

• Minimal understanding of electronics fundamentals

Tools:

• Life experiences
• Whiteboard

Next Step:

• Discovery

Once you have some small understanding of the fundamental electronics concepts and component groups
you’re ready to move on to the idea stage of the ideation phase.
But more likely you actually started here. There was some sufficiently real problem you faced or are still
facing. Some part of the world that was substantially broken and holding you back. You also realized like
most real problems that it couldn’t just be solved with an app. You need to design and build some piece of
real, physical hardware to solve this problem. Awesome!
We’ve produced this resource for you. It exists to make your life a bit easier, your product more likely to
come to life, and your company more likely to succeed.
In the event that you’ve gotten here without a problem to solve there are some links below in the resources
section that should help you figure out how to find your idea. Look for something real. Something you have
personally experienced. Pain that you know needs to be, and will be, relieved eventually. We wish you the
best of luck in your search, and a little bit hope that the pain you focus on is also one of ours.
Once you’ve found this idea you’re ready to begin piecing together a solution and that starts with
exploration and discovery.

Discovery

Prerequisites:

• Minimal understanding of electronics fundamentals

• An idea or a problem to solve (optional)

Tools:

• Hardware community

Next Step:

• Part Selection

Once you’ve found this idea you’re ready to begin piecing together a solution and that starts with
exploration and discovery.
Ten years ago, this kind of discovery would mean digging through old engineering tomes and parts
catalogs. But these days there are wonderful online resources for this kind of exploration (see
Recommended Resources). Start by looking for reference designs that are associated with technologies you
understand, and explore outwards. You will come across both new ways of connecting the same parts, as
well as common layouts and common parts. Take note of these parts - it’s possible they will become
keystone parts in your design.
As you circle outwards you should get a feel for parts that are very close to what you need but either not
quite right, or configured wrong. This is where the little eureka moments start happening. This is where you
can start saying things like “Well if I took that circuit, and this circuit, and the one over there... hook them up
with such and such... change the configuration of U12 and fill in this void...”. Said another way, given
knowledge of the problem, past solutions and resources you’ll start to engineer a solution.
Try not to underestimate the power of discovery and reuse. It will save you mountains of time and help you
from wandering down design routes that have already been taken. It’s these scraps of experience that make
veteran hardware designers good at what they do. The availability of this knowledge is also why it’s so
much easier to engineer hardware today than a decade ago.
Once you’ve discovered a couple of building blocks, or at least an understanding of what has been tried
before, you’re ready to move on to selecting your

Part Selection

Prerequisites:

• A rough design concept

• Design building blocks (optional)

Tools:

• Component research tools

• Hardware community

Next Step:

• Whiteboards & Block Diagrams

Once you’ve discovered a couple of building blocks, or at least an understanding of what has been tried
before, you’re ready to move on to selecting your keystone components.
You will probably have noticed that a couple of parts seemed to show up in most of the designs you looked
at. Or have stumbled across a really great piece of silicon for solving the particular problem you’re trying to
solve. Whatever the case your job now is to take those little flashes of inspiration you got discovering the
space around you problem and use them to research silicon chips.
It’s common for your idea to strongly dictate the chips you choose as the keystones for your design. For
example, I used to build very sophisticated telecommunications hardware and we knew that we needed
silicon to handle the networking, silicon to handle the processing, and silicon to handle the interfaces. We
had a cache of reference designs related to our field and the search for keystone components was a big
matching problem where we tried to fit all the parts together.
You will spend most of your search on silicon fabricator and distributor websites. You’ll probably
understand enough about the chip you need to do parametric searches. And you will probably spend a
bunch of time reading datasheets. Think of these datasheets as the encyclopaedia entry for a given part.
They tell you everything you could ever want to know about it. This is how you figure out what kind of
power a chip needs, and which language it uses to talk to other chips.
As you begin to choose your keystone components you will get pushed into white-boarding and block
diagramming your design. At this point you can expect to begin rapidly bouncing between all stages of
ideation.

Whiteboards & Block Diagrams

Prerequisites:
 • A rough design concept
• Design building blocks (optional)
• Keystone components

Tools:

• Whiteboard

Next Step:

• A lot more Ideation

• Schematic Capture

As you begin choosing your keystone components you will get pushed into white-boarding and block
diagramming your design.
This will feel like a very natural progression between part searching and schematic capture. You will likely
find a couple parts that you want to use, but there will be a gap between them. They won’t speak the same
language. Or will need different kinds of power. Or will get programmed differently. And this is where block
diagraming them, or simply sketching them on paper, comes in.
Your goal is just to get a feel for how all of the parts you are using connect at the highest level. How many
different power supplies do you need? Which parts talk LVDS, or HGMII, or I2C? Where do you need signal
converters? Where do you need connectors? Are there any parts that come as a pair with other parts? How
much power will you need? How hot will all these chips get?
You obviously don’t need to answer all of these questions right now - but you do need to start thinking
about them. You need to get a feel for how it all fits into space and how big the final product needs to be. As
you start to answer some of these questions you can start sketching your product both logically and
physically. Your goal should be a block diagram that, at the highest level, shows the connections between
your most important parts, and gives you a starting point for your schematic.
Once your block diagram begins to solidify, your keystone components stop rapidly changing, and your
design concept has gelled you are ready to graduate from the whiteboard and move on to schematic
capture.

Design
Design is also a very iterative process. At some point during ideation your block diagrams will get too
complex, or your parts list too long, or you’ll have started hooking building blocks together in your mind.
You have enough slivers of the solution to move into design.
Historically you would now need to find enough financing to buy $100,000.00 worth of Electronic Design
Automation (EDA) CAD-type tools. You would probably need to take a course or at least read a textbook to
learn how these tools work. And you would then begin the arduous multi-month process of creating a parts
library, on your way to eventually recreating your ideas as schematics.
But thankfully those days have mostly passed. These days you at least have options ranging from feature-
lacking but free and open-sourced tools, to online monthly licensed SaaS tools. And obviously there are still
the multi-year upfront contracts - descendants of the old workstation software. There are even a small
number of growing crowd-sourced component libraries that all aspire to kill the pain associated with
creating and curating a component library. And while most of these tools and libraries are new on the
scene, they are trending towards disrupting the mainstream “professional” software market.
Once you have chosen a software package and have gotten it set up and working your next step is to begin
tying the pieces together. You will need to create parts, turn your ideation and building blocks into
schematics, and begin connecting your keystone components.
There are only two major stages to the design phase (Schematic Capture and PCB Layout) but it’s common
to often do Part Creation and Simulation as well.

Part Creation

Prerequisites:

• A rough design concept

• Keystone components

Tools:

• Logical design tool (Schematic Capture EDA)

• Physical design tool (PCB Layout EDA)
• ERP system (optional - Aliases & Supplier Parts Data)

Next Step:

• Schematic Capture

This is less of a stage and more of a description of the process by which you will turn datasheets into
components for use in your logical schematic capture, physical PCB layout, and component engineering
ERP type systems.
There have been approximately 185 million electronic components ever documented. Of these a couple
million are still actively produced, and even fewer held in stock. For example DigiKey has just over 2.5
million total SKUs, only about 650,000 of which are actually in stock. Said another way, it is incredibly likely
that any given part number no longer exists (the odds are 99.6% against you), but at the same time most of
the parts that you actually do want to use are probably pretty common. They have probably been used by
someone else, they are probably in active production and they are probably in stock somewhere.
Each of these parts is described by a document called a datasheet. The datasheet usually contains
everything you the engineer need to know about it. It should have sizing, pin names, physical
characteristics, details like how hot or cold the part can get and still function, and tactical information like
how to solder it to a PCB. Unfortunately most of these documents are not machine consumable, and you
the engineer need to go through the painstaking process of parsing and converting these details into EDA
CAD data, specifically the component’s logical symbols, pin names, and physical solder land pattern. And if
you’re really lucky and you choose the right parts and the right library, someone has probably saved even
you a ton of time and created the EDA models for you already.
And so our advice is rather than expect a perfect library of all 185 million parts, which unfortunately has
never and probably should never exist, we recommend you use the library that does the best job of the
10,000 or so super common parts, and a pretty good job of the remaining, longer tail, 100,000 or so. But that
means you will definitely need to create or improve at least a couple of part models eventually. If you’re
lucky it’ll only be 10% of the parts you use, unlucky and it will be 25 or 50%, and in the absolute worst case
you will be designing with parts no one has ever used before (a warning sign) and you’ll need to create them
all.
When creating a part model in a library your goal is to as closely as possible represent the real world off-the-
shelf device. For any unique part number, there should be 1 and only 1 correct model. There is some room
for preferences when laying out a logical symbol, but for example pin 28 should always be named GND and
the footprint should always be that of a 28 pin PDIP.
And so with that in mind, when creating a part model you absolutely need to capture the following four
details.

Manufacturer & Part Number

This should allow an unambiguous link back to one and only one part. It should not link to a family or a part
without the package defined. This should be the exact part number such that if you called that
manufacturer and ordered it they would provide you with the exact part you specified.

Datasheet
This should come from the original manufacturer and contain every possible detail known about the part.
The datasheet may exist for the family your part number belongs too, but that’s fine as long as the
datasheet you choose is as specific as possible.

Schematic Symbol
This is the logical model of the part you will use with designing a schematic. This is the only subjective part
of the component. Some designers prefer to lay out their symbols differently, which is fine, but they should
(ideally and if possible) all exist as symbol variants under the same part. But that being said the pin names
need to remain consistent across variants.

PCB Land Pattern (a.k.a. the Footprint)

This is the physical model for how the part connects to the PCB. The land pattern should include silkscreen
for the reference designator, part outline and pin 1 location, and it should include a copper padstack for
each terminal/pin the part has.
Whatever EDA tool or crowdsourced library you are using should include library management tools that will
allow you to edit existing parts, create new parts, draw symbols, and generate footprints. You can get
started finding, auditing, improving or creating your keystone components now.
Once your components are finished you can move on to using them in your schematic capture or PCB
layout design tools.

Schematic Capture

Prerequisites:

• A rough design concept

• Design building blocks (optional)
• Keystone components
• Block diagram (optional)

Tools:

• Logical design tool (Schematic Capture EDA)

Next Step:

• Simulation
• PCB Layout
Once your block diagram, keystone components and design concept have solidified you’re ready to move
on to schematic capture.
Schematic capture can seem daunting at first glance, but it’s really quite simple. It’s little more than a
continuation of the block diagramming and white-boarding you did in ideation. You will probably use an
ECAD, EDA or CAD package to design (also called capture) your schematic. This system will allow you to
create parts, place and move them around on a canvas, and connect their pins together. A connection is
called a net, and represents a electrical wire that will eventually be routed between these pins.
Your goal in schematic capture is to go from a blank canvas, to a set of building blocks, to a fully connected
logical design. This logical design should “work”. It should generate power from other power, turn-on all
parts that need power in the right order and connect to abstract inputs and outputs.
But for starters you just need to begin by adding your keystone parts and connecting them to each other on
the right pins. The next step is to add the “glue” parts and start connecting them to everything else. And
then come the passives, the filter caps and auxiliary components.
Most schematic editors work like you would expect. There are tools to add, move and remove parts. Tools
to connect them together. Tools to edit part properties. And tools to check your work. Think of it as a
topical, more specific, more granular mind mapping or block diagramming tool.
Your workflow:

• Add keystone parts

• Read datasheets re: power
• Connect their power
• Read datasheets re: communication buses
• Connect their buses
• Add “glue” parts
• Read datasheets
• Connect them to power and everything else
• Add filtering and other remaining parts
• Read datasheets
• Connect remaining pins
• Check & double check

As soon as parts of your schematic begin to solidify you can either begin doing simulations or start laying
out your PCB.

Simulation

Prerequisites:

• A simulatable schematic & netlist

Tools:

• Analog or mixed signal simulator (Spice or Verilog-A)

Next Step:

• More Schematic Capture

• PCB Layout

As soon as parts of your schematic begin to solidify you can begin doing simulations.
Commonly used as a way to test analog or mixed-signal design concepts, simulation is the practice of
modelling a circuit with known electronics physics properties and graphing the response curves. It’s very
common to simulate audio, power and semiconductor transistor circuits prior to fabrication. It provides a
cost and time effective way of justifying a prototyping run, or forcing the designer back to the drawing
board.
To run a simulation you will need to generate two things: A circuit netlist, and a collection of part models.
The netlist describes the way all of your parts are connected. And the models use phyics formulas to
describe how the parts function. Most EDA tools will allow you to export your schematic as a spice netlist
(spice is a specific type of simulator). You will then need to begin the arduous process of connecting your
netlist to a model library, and running a simulation. In most simulators this will give you back a 2D plot of
the response of your circuit.
Some of the newer and better EDA tools have simulators and models built right in, which means less pain
exporting your circuit and less pain finding and associating models with parts. We highly recommend using
one of these all-in-one simulators if possible.
The output of your simulations will be graphs. It could be voltage vs. time, or voltage vs. frequency, or any
of a number of other simulation types. But the point is you are generating graphs which you will then need
to compare to either a known graphed wave form of good quality, or to your understanding of how the
circuit should respond. Either way, given the simulation plots and some time understanding what they
mean you should be able to give your test circuit a pass or a fail.
Once you have graphed the responses to the impulses you were interested in you can either move back into
schematic capture to fix the bugs or move on to PCB layout to produce a prototype for further verification.

PCB Layout

Prerequisites:

• Schematics & netlist

Tools:

• Physical design tool (PCB Layout EDA)

Next Step:

• More Schematic Capture

• Design Review

As soon as parts of your schematic begin to solidify you can start laying out your PCB.
The PCB has a dependency on the logical design and schematics, so it will always be finished after the
schematics are.
This dependency can be a limiting factor depending on how serial your design process is. The more serial
you operate, the more it will limit; the less serial and more collaborative your process, the more likely your
layout will finish within days or even hours of your schematics.
When you begin laying out your PCB you will start by making sure all of the logical parts you have used have
footprints. This is normally just a sanity check but in some cases you will need to add or update footprints
for parts that don’t have them.
As soon as all of your parts have footprints you can begin to place the parts and get a feel for how big your
PCB will be. Move and place the largest parts in the design so that they are as adjacent as possible to the
parts they connect to. As you place more and more parts it will make sense to begin rotating and shuffling
all of the parts in the design.
Eventually most of your parts will have a location, most of them will be oriented the right way, and you can
begin to hook up pins with traces. Trace routing is a lot like painting, or vector art. You start at a pin and
using mostly straight lines and 45 degree angles, work your way to the destination pin. It’s a bit of an art
form, so don’t worry too much about doing it perfectly. Expect it to take a few tries and for things to get
ripped up and redone before it is finished.
Your Workflow:

• Make sure all of your logical parts also have physical footprints
• Begin spacing out the circuit board and placing the largest parts
• Start shuffling and rotating parts to optimize the rats nest
• Begin hooking up the lowest risk nets with traces
• Continue clearing rats nests until the design is complete
• Check & double-check

Once your PCB layout has been completed, and your schematic requires no further changes you are ready
to move on to the design review stage of verification.

Verification
Much like design, verification is also an iterative process. At some point during design you will reach a point
where you need to test a concept beyond what is theoretically possible with simulation. Or maybe you think
you’re done design completely. Or you’re just at a nice breaking point. Whatever the reason, you now need
to verify your design.
Historically you would now manufacture 10-100 prototypes of the design, often called a pre-release build or
an A01 revision. It could cost as much as $50,000.00 for these prototypes. And they would be used for
everything from turn-on testing to environmental testing. The success of a product would largely hinge on
these A01 boards. The better a job you did of the design and ideation stages the more likely this prototype
would only need one more build (often the B01 revision) before it could be pushed into production and
mass-manufacturing.
But these days prototyping is more accessible and cheaper in smaller quantities. It’s possible to get a single
prototype for hundreds of dollars manufactured in a matter of days. And while you might want to get a few
to cover yourself in case you blow one up, we are finally moving away from the world of mandatory
minimum quantities.
There are four major stages to the verification phase (Design Review, BOM Selection, Prototyping, Testing &
Debugging).

Design Review

Prerequisites:

• Requirements specification
• Logical design (Schematics)
• Physical design (PCB Layout)
• Mechanical design (3D Models)

Tools:

• Printouts & PDFs (Offline)

• Collaborative design tools (Online)
 • Bug-tracking software

Next Step:

• BOM Selection

The verification process starts with a simple peer design review (the software world calls their parallel a
code review).
For simple designs, this could take a matter of hours; for more complex designs, it could be a multi-week
process, with lots of little revisions in between reviews. At some point, the whole team should get involved
and do a comprehensive walkthrough of the design, preferably in the most asynchronous way possible.
The focus of the review is to optimize the prototype for maximum debuggability. You should assume that
this first prototype will have issues, and you need to build in as many safety nets as you can. Your ultimate
goal of the first pass-through verification is to learn everything you need to build a second prototype that
requires no additional fixes.
The secondary priorities are everything from design style, to schematic clarity, to manufacturability, to
testability. Everyone has their own little quirks and preferences and a design review is a great forum for
aligning your team around a common style.
Expect to do a couple of reviews and make fixes in between them, including more and more stakeholders as
you find fewer and fewer errors in the design. This will be a period of high volatility in the design, but
hopefully with lots of mostly small changes. You will need to exchange the design with a lot of people not
accustomed to spending their time in design tools and the more collaborative your tools, the quicker you’ll
be able to iterate through this phase.
Once the design gets a thumbs up from the team it moves on to component selection, BOM review, and
alternate management.

BOM Selection

Prerequisites:

• Logical design (Schematics)

• Design review approval

Tools:

• Design tool (BOM Export)

• ERP system (Aliases & Supplier Parts Data)
• Spreadsheet software

Next Step:

• Prototyping

Once your design gets a thumbs up from your stakeholders it moves on to component selection, BOM
review, and alternate management.
You will now need to map each of the parts you designed with onto a real world part. There isn’t just one
10K resistor, but thousands. Most of these parts won’t be in stock at any given time, and hundreds have
probably become obsolete. If you planned ahea, or used connected design tools this will probably be a very
quick stage. If not, just try to stay persistent - it will all be over soon.
The first step is to export your Bill of Materials from your design tools. It will probably come as an Excel
spreadsheet or a CSV file. Your BOM should contain as much information as possible about your parts -
unfortunately most CAD or EDA programs don’t have great component management features and even
worse default libraries - so you might not get much. Some companies have ERP systems that they use to
store this info while others have stand alone applications for managing their BOMs.
Regardless of what you start with or what programs you use - you should at least plan to collect the
following details about each part into something like an excel spreadsheet:
TODO: Insert google doc inline with the following fields + some BOM data.

• Manufacturer Part Number

• Manufacturer Name
• Any Internal Part Numbers Or Aliases You May Have
• Any Assembly House or Fab House Aliases
• Preferred Supplier
• Supplier Part Number
• Minimum Lead Time
• Reference Designators
• Qty 1 Price

Once you have your spreadsheet set up and filled in with the basics you need to start checking stock
quantities and lead times. You will probably have a few generic or made up parts that need a real world
part, parts that have gone obsolete or parts that are out of stock and you need to find alternates. There are
a couple of services that can help you with this (see Recommended Resources). But you’re basically just
looking for a close-enough substitute part that is form, fit and function compatible (same size, same
features, same cost, etc) but also in-stock and available.
Once your BOM is reconciled, and all the parts are available and in-stock from at least one distributor you
are ready to move on to prototyping.

Prototyping

Prerequisites:

• Physical design (PCB Layout)

• Design review approval
• Reconciled bill of materials (BOM)
• Manufacturing & assembly specifications

Tools:

• Design tool (Gerber Export)

• ERP system (Inventory & Supplier Contacts)
• Spreadsheet software

Next Step:

• Inspection & Turn-On Checking

Once your BOM is reconciled, your design has been reviewed, and your PCB has been laid out you are ready
to order some prototypes.
You will now need to start building an archive that you will send out to all of the different manufacturers
and service providers involved in building your prototypes. Think of the archive as their guidebook to
building your design. They will do their best to build exactly what you tell them to. If you tell them to do
something wrong, or give them the wrong files, or are confusing in your documentation - chances are you
will get the wrong thing back from them, and still have to pay for your mistake. This is why the design
review stage is so important. Do your best to measure twice and cut once.
The archive should probably be a .zip file and it should be structured like this:
TODO: insert an example archive including a template .zip file [[ your company ]]_[[ board name ]]_[[
version ]].zip

• readme.txt
• assembly_info
o assembly_spec.txt
o bom.csv
o centroids.txt
• design_files
o design_[[ version ]].json
o link_to_online_design_viewer.url
• manufacturing_info
o manufacturing_spec.txt
o drill_files
▪ [[ long list of excellon drill files ]]
o gerber_files
▪ [[ long list of gerber files ]]
• misc
o [[ anything else you think they will need ]]

There are templates for all of these files in the reference section below. But here is a quick walkthrough of
each of the files and why it’s needed.

readme.txt
Use this file to remind your suppliers who you are, your contact details, when the design was created, who
owns the copyright, etc. You want this to be the first place they look when they have questions.

assembly_spec.txt
Use this file to remind your assemblers of the quality level you expect, any IPC specs you need met, what
type of solder to use, any processes they should or should not use, what kind of pre or post-assembly
inspection is required, etc. This should be the guidebook for your assemblers. Don’t shy away from calling
out the obvious details.

bom.csv
Your assemblers may need your Bill of Materials to determine which parts belong in which locations.
Depending on the size of your design and the quantity ordered they may even be doing the assembly by
hand, and not in an automated way. This should simply be the BOM that was produced in the reconcile
process.

centroids.txt
This is a machine consumable file that relates each part in the BOM to each part’s centroid in the layout. It
should just be a matter of exporting this file from your design tools and including it.

design_[[ version ]].json

This / these files are optional. You gain the benefits of reduced cycle time (assuming your suppliers can
open the files), in exchange for needing to trust your suppliers to keep your IP private. We recommend
sending them to your suppliers, except for those in China and Southeast Asia.

link_to_online_design_viewer.url
If your design tools support online collaboration and design viewing then you should include a link that
allows your suppliers to consume and collaborate with you at the source. In the future our expectation is
that this is the only link you will need to send your suppliers - they will go to the source and be able to
export all of the design files they need to produce your product.

manufacturing_spec.txt
Use this file to remind your Printed Circuit Board Manufacturers of the quality level you expect, any IPC
specs you need met, your stackup, what type of preprag to use, any processes they should or should not
use, what kind of post-manufacturing inspection is required, etc. This should be the guidebook for your
manufacturers. Don’t shy away from calling out the obvious details.

drill_files
These are machine consumable files that includes the sizes and locations of all drill holes that need to be
made in the board. Because of the manufacturing process there will probably be multiple files, or at least an
order to the drilling and the files will include things that are not obviously holes like vias and fiducials. It
should just be a matter of exporting these files from your design tools and including them.

gerber_files
These are machine consumable files that include include the layer by layer copper exposures (what the
remaining copper should look like after a layer - a piece of fiberglass covered in copper foil - is etched). Each
file describes a single layer. And each file contains a huge list of vectors, some added to the plot, and others
subtracted from it, that sum to describe the layer. Silkscreens and the board outline are often also included
as gerber files. It should just be a matter of exporting these files from your design tools and including them.
Once you have collected all the files you need and assembled in your archive you need to start contacting
suppliers. Some of the hobbyist and more forward-thinking suppliers allow you to do it all through a web
form, while most of the professional grade suppliers will still require a phone call and an upload to an FTP
server. Whatever it takes get your BOM parts ordered, your PCB boards ordered, your logistics figured out
(so that the boards and parts will both arrive at your assembler), and your assembly ordered. In the end you
should expect to receive your final assemblies (sometimes called PCAs) in between 5 and 45 days.
After your order has been placed comes the worst part of the whole process... waiting. Getting that sick
feeling that you messed up somewhere and going back through and checking your design a few dozen more
times. This will also probably be the first time in the whole design flow where you weren’t the critical path -
so try to take a few days off and recharge.
Once your prototypes have been manufactured, assembled and finally show up at your door you’re ready to
move on to inspection & turn-on checking.

Inspection & Turn-On Checking

Prerequisites:

• Assembled prototypes

Tools:
 • Bug-tracking software
• Multimeter

Next Step:

• Testing & Debugging

Once your prototypes have been manufactured, assembled and have finally shown up at your door it’s time
to start inspection.
Note: It’s common for prototypes to show up in two waves, bare PCB boards between manufacturing and
assembly so that they can be inspected before they have parts soldered on. This is often done to make sure
that the PCB manufacturers are providing the requested quality level and doing the inspection required. It
can also save on parts cost for expensive BOMs in the case that a layout defect is found in the PCBs before
assembly.
The following is a template to guide you while inspecting the PCB, PCA and Turn-On:
TODO: Insert a google doc inspection template

• PCB Inspection
• PCA Inspection
• Turn-on Checks

Here is a quick walkthrough of each of the stages, what you’re looking for and why it’s needed.

PCB Inspection
The manufacturing of Printed Circuit Boards is still predominantly an imperfect photochemical process.
Copper foil is treated and exposed to UV light to control which parts of the copper get etched, and which
doesn’t. Too long in the acid bath and it will get etched off, too short and you’ll have shorts between traces.
And to complicated things multiple layers are etched separately and then laminated together, which can
result in misalignment of inner layers. During this part of the inspection process you are looking for
evidence of physical manufacturing gone wrong. Shorts, copper where it shouldn’t be, voids where there
should be copper, etc.

PCA Inspection
The assembly of PCBs and parts into PCAs is still largely influenced by human operators. It could be loading
reels into pick-and-place machines, setting reflow oven temperature patterns, loading through hole parts
into their holes prior to wave soldering, or full on part-by-part manual assembly of smaller boards. In this
part of the inspection process you’re looking for human error. 0802 parts soldered to 0603 land patterns,
TQFPs rotated by 90 degrees, tombstoned SMT parts, missing solder, too much solder, or tarnished solder
that didn’t fully wet, parts near holes or the edge that have been broken or knocked off the board, etc.

Turn-on Checks
Now that you’re confident in your manufacturer and your assembler it’s your turn to have screwed up.
Before powering on the board you need to make sure that it’s not going to burn out completely. This is
usually as simple as checking 3 things: ground has a low impedance to itself all over the board, all of the
power rails have a non-zero impedance to ground, and walking through the power-on circuit by hand shows
the right connections and impedances are there.
Once you’ve checked everything over and you’re confident you’re not going to let the smoke out when you
flip the power switch, you’re ready to turn it on and move on to testing and debugging.
Testing & Debugging

Prerequisites:

• Assembled prototypes
• Inspection finished

Tools:

• Bug-tracking software
• Multimeter
• External power supply
• Oscilloscope, logic analyzer, device programmer

Next Step:

• Qualification & Environmental Testing

• Production

Once you’ve inspected and checked everything over you’re ready to move on to testing and debugging.
Your circuit, like all circuits, has a flow to it. There are things that happen, in order, that allow other things
to begin happening. It could be as simple as a switch getting flipped, which powers a 12V to 3v3 power
supply, which then powers a micro-controller. Debugging is all about understanding the flow of your circuit.
Understanding the inputs and outputs to each phase of your circuit’s power up, right through its operation,
will allow you to pinpoint the places where things have gone wrong and ultimately fix them.
Start at the beginning. What happens first? Where is the first sign that things are bad? Where is the last sign
that things are good? Once you have the bookends of your problem you can start checking the points in-
between them. The simplest way to do this is with a multimeter. Measure the voltage of a part and compare
it back to your expectations. If it’s right then you can move forward, if it’s wrong then you need to go back.
You should eventually find the exact spot where things go from good to bad, and will be able to dig into the
cause of the bug, and hopefully fix it.
Once you’re done debugging, you’ve made the changes necessary to make your design work, and you’ve
learned everything you can from the current revision you’re ready to spin another batch of prototypes and
start the verification phase over again.
If you didn’t have any fixes with this batch, or fixes small enough to apply as ECOs (Engineering Change
Orders) during production you’re ready to move on to qualification & environmental testing if necessary, or
straight on to production.

Qualification & Environmental Testing

Prerequisites:

• Mostly working prototypes

• Some testing & debugging

Tools:

• Bug-tracking software
• Environmental testing chamber
• Emitted radiation sensor
Next Step:

• Testing & Debugging (when it breaks)

• Production

Once your design is sufficiently debugged, bench tested and functional you’re ready to move on to
qualification & environmental testing.
TODO

• Types of qualification
• Why qualify
• Order of operations
• How to debug qualification issues

Assuming you discovered some bugs or failures, you need to head back into testing & debugging, make
some design changes and produce more prototypes.
Once you have made it through internal and external qualification testing, and your product has been
certified to an acceptable level you’re ready to move on to production.

Production
Moving a product into production is a feat of communication. It’s about spending the potential energy you
have been developing throughout the earlier processes, optimizing imperfect situations, and taking a
couple of prototypes held together with duct tape and finding a way to mass produce them.
Historically you would now found a corporation, borrow some money, build a factory, hire a few hundred
people and start churning out radios or TVs. But these days due to supply chains, low-cost labour and
specialization you’re going to contract out most of the functions that go into mass producing your device. In
order, you are going to contract out the following services:
# Component Supply # Mechanical Enclosure Manufacturing # PCB Manufacturing # PCA Assembly #
Product Assembly # Final Testing
The goal should be to provide your customer with the highest quality product for the lowest cost and at
highest margins you can, with some obvious optimization of those variables. In many cases the best case
mass-manufacturing systems have outsourced all 6 functions, though you can probably be successful and
only outsource the first 4.
There are three major stages to the production phase (Export For Manufacturing, Mass Manufacturing &
Southeast Asia, and DFM, DFT & BOM Cost Optimization).

Share It

Prerequisites:

• Prototyped and debugged design

Tools:

• Hardware community

Next Step:

• Export For Manufacturing

 • Kickstarter & Crowdfunding

Once you’ve made all of the necessary design changes, or documented fixes small enough to apply as ECOs
you’re ready to move into production.
I strongly recommend you at least consider making the design you have just completed available as widely
as possible. This could be limited to within your organization, but it could also spread as far and as wide as
the open source hardware movement.
There are 2 headline reasons to do this. First, it will drastically improve communication between all of the
stakeholders. You will be able to make sure you’re all talking about the same things (and have something to
point at). You’ll be able to accept feedback and improvements from these stakeholders that you otherwise
couldn’t have. And maybe most importantly, when your design makes it into manufacturing, you’ll be able
to make sure your manufacturers are using the most up-to-date and highest quality information possible.
The second reason is that along your journey to this point you probably leaned heavily on a community of
designers, reuse blocks, shared libraries, and reference designs. Sharing your design will allow those
aspiring hardware engineers to learn from your work, build on top of your accomplishments, cover the
same ground you have (faster!) and maybe even provide you with feedback and improvements.
Once your design is shared, you can promote it to be used as a building block in other hardware engineer’s
designs, you can begin soliciting feedback for how you can improve it in the next version, and you will likely
be seen as an expert at the type of hardware your design is build around.
If you’re design is intended for mass-manufacturing you can move on to exporting it for those
manufacturers, finding a way to fund the manufacturing or even pre-sell units using a service like
Kickstarter.

Export For Manufacturing

Prerequisites:

• Prototyped and debugged design

• Funding or pre-sales sufficient to cover manufacturing costs

Tools:

• Design tool (Gerber Export)

• ERP system (Inventory & Supplier Contacts)
• Spreadsheet software

Next Step:

• Mass Manufacturing & Southeast Asia

Much of this stage overlaps with building an archive for prototyping, we recommend you review that
section before proceeding.
Depending on your supplier arrangement you need to begin building an archive for each of them. Think of
the archive as their guidebook to building your design. In addition to the files you collected in the
prototyping stage you want to include any lessons you learned in your previous debugging and prototyping,
any ECOs (Engineering Change Orders), and a test plans for qualifying your design through manufacturing.
The archive, should probably be a .zip file and it should be structured as following, most of the files are
documented in the prototyping section:
TODO: insert an example archive including a template .zip file [[ your company ]]_[[ board name ]]_[[
version ]].zip

• readme.txt
• assembly_info
o assembly_spec.txt
o bom.csv
o centroids.txt
• design_files
o design_[[ version ]].json
o link_to_online_design_viewer.url
• manufacturing_info
o manufacturing_spec.txt
o drill_files
▪ [[ long list of excellon drill files ]]
o gerber_files
▪ [[ long list of gerber files ]]
• misc
o [[ anything else you think they will need ]]
• eco
o [[ any engineering change orders ]]
• testing
o [[ test plan, test jig details & test software ]]

There are templates for all of these files in the reference section below. But here is a quick walkthrough of
the files not included in the prototyping section and why they’re needed.

eco
Place all of the eco documents required to rev a PCA from freshly manufactured through to the latest
version here. They should be very explicit documents that walk the operator step by step through applying
the ECO, including pictures if possible.

testing
This folder should detail any testing you expect the manufacturers to do. There will be a process which will
probably include a test jig and some amount of test software. As a product matures so should the testing
done by the manufacturer as any stock received, despite how defective it is, will often be unreturnable and
a cost burden on your company.
Once you have collected all the files you need and assembled your archive you need to start contacting your
mass-manufacturing suppliers. If possible it may be worth sticking to your prototype suppliers, or running
small volumes with your prototype suppliers while you turn on a larger production scale process. There are
also a number of developed world service providers that can also help you make the transition into lower
cost countries.

Manufacturing Walkthrough

Prerequisites:

• Design review approval

• Collection of manufacturing files (Gerbers, Centroids, BOM, Specifications)

Tools:
 • Email & Phone
• Translator
• FTP client

Next Step:

• Mass Manufacturing & Southeast Asia

This is less of a stage and more of a description of the process your design files go through to become a
physical piece of hardware. Treat it as informative only, and feel free to skip it over.
The manufacturing of Printed Circuit Boards is still predominantly an imperfect photochemical process. The
following are the stages by which copper foil, fiberglass, and epoxy are combined to become the PCB we all
know and love.
TODO

• Copper foil is treated and exposed to UV light to control which parts of the copper get etched, and which
doesn’t.
• Multiple layers are etched separately and then laminated together.

The assembly of Printed Circuit Assemblies is still largely a manual human process. The following are the
stages by which a bare PCB and a collection of components are soldered together to become the PCA at the
core of most modern devices.
TODO

• loading reels into pick-and-place machines

• setting reflow oven temperature patterns
• loading through hole parts into their holes prior to wave soldering
• full on part-by-part manual assembly of smaller boards.

Once your PCAs are finished you can move on to testing them, or spot-checking batches before they get
installed in an enclosure and shipped to your customers.

Kickstarter & Crowdfunding

Prerequisites:

• Prototyped and debugged design

• Approximate per-unit cost & sale price
• A story with social proof

Tools:

• Copywriting
• Video production

Next Step:

• Mass Manufacturing & Southeast Asia

Now you’ve moved into production, but if you don’t have a way to finance mass manufacturing, or you are
in need of distribution, or you want to reduce risk and pre-sell your product you may want to investigate
crowd-funding.
Lately there are a number of newly popular platforms for funding creative works, of which Kickstarter is
probably the most well known. The basic idea is an artist with a project in need of financing, documents
their project on the website which is then promoted to the community of project backers. The backers
pledge any amount of money and often get different rewards depending on the amount they pledge to a
project. The only caveat is that if a project doesn’t reach a certain minimum level of funding it gets nothing.
Kickstarter and other crowd-funding platforms are adamant that they are NOT pre-sales tools, but rather
tools for donating towards or investing in projects that you want to see come to life (albeit without a
security or even an investment worthy return). And while people may continue to use these platform as pre-
sales channels, and while backers may continue to expect a return on their investment, it is strongly within
the platform’s interest to feature and support projects that will be successful. The more prepared you are
going in, the better the story you can tell, and the more you can show social proof suggesting you will be
successful - the more likely your project will get selected for funding, and the more likely you will raise your
target.
There is a growing negative sentiment towards physical products funded on Kickstarter as they very rarely
ship “on-time” and many of the companies launching products have even folded (after they received the
funds) and failed to ship anything at all. To combat these failures there are a growing number of pre-sales
platforms, which differ from crowd-funding in only that you the customer are guaranteed to receive a
product (or your money back) and often even within a certain timeframe.
Regardless of your preference both represent large distribution channels which you can use to get your
product in front of the market. If you are building a mainstream consumer product that appeals to the
demographics of one of these channels it may be worth running a campaign simply for the exposure.
If you do chose to crowd-fund or pre-sell you will need to tell a great story, demonstrate pre-existing social
proof, and come across as likely to deliver on your promises. Spend due time on the copy for your product
and story of how you came to develop it. And if you choose to include a video consider hiring a professional
film crew with the right skills and equipment to tell your story and showcase your product in the best light
possible.
Once you’ve raised sufficient funds to mass-manufacture your product you’re ready to begin that process.
Hopefully you still don’t need to design whatever it was you raised funds to produce.

Mass Manufacturing & Southeast Asia

Prerequisites:

• Prototyped and debugged design

• Collection of manufacturing files (Gerbers, Centroids, BOM, Specifications)
• Funding or pre-sales sufficient to cover manufacturing costs

Tools:

• Email & Phone

• Translator
• FTP Client

Next Step:

• DFM, DFT & BOM Cost Optimization

Once you have collected all the files you need and assembled your archive you need to start contacting your
next tier of suppliers.
This process will likely involve a series of negotiations and contract signing and if possible it may be worth
continuing to run small volumes with your prototype suppliers while you turn on a larger production scale
process. There are also a number of developed world service providers that can help you make the
transition into low-cost regions (see Recommended Resources).
Moving into full-scale production will likely result in a period of maintenance and management to make
sure the new supplier is producing at the required level of quality. You will also now need to manage the
burden of returns and defective units.
Once things are running smoothly you should be able to move on to optimizing your margins through
Design Manufacturability, Design Testability and BOM Cost Optimization, or begin working on the next
revision of your product.

DFM, DFT & BOM Cost Optimization

Prerequisites:

• Prototyped and debugged design

• Spun up mass-manufacturing process

Tools:

• Design tools (Physical Design, BOM Export)

• ERP system (Aliases & Supplier Parts Data)
• Spreadsheet software

Next Step:

• Feed results back into Mass Manufacturing

Once things are running smoothly with mass manufacturing you should be able to move on to optimizing
your margins through Design Manufacturability, Design Testability and BOM Cost Optimization.
TODO

• Failure & root cause analysis

• Layout optimization
• Test flow & efficiency analysis
• Design & layout optimization
• Cost optimize your bill of materials

As soon as you have a new working prototype of your design with an optimized layout or Bill of Materials
you can begin to update the process at your mass manufacturers. Expect some pain every time you do this
as processes being updated, and tooling be reworked tends to be slow work which is prone to
misunderstanding and regression.

Done?
At this point you have traversed an entire product lifecycle from ideation through design, verification and
production. You are now ready to begin work on your next product! From all of us here, thanks for trying to
build something real and please share your experiences and help other inventors make their dreams into a
reality.
Recommended Resources
The following are a list of recommended tools, softwares, and template documents to help you in your journey.

Templates & Example Files

TODO: .zip of all examples in this document

• BOM Template Google Doc

• Manufacturing .zip file

Component Research Software

• Upverter Part Search

• Octopart

Discovery & Ideation Software

• Upverter Design Community
• Element 14?
• Nuts & Volts?
• IEEE Spectrum?

Design Tools
Because it’s such an essential part of the hardware design workflow, we broke out our list of recommended design tools into a
separate section. The following is a comparison of the software and tools available for designing hardware.

TODO

Design Viewers & Collaboration Software

• Upverter Import/Export & Collaboration Tools

• PDF Export & Acrobat PDF Viewer
• GerbView For Gerbers

Bill Of Material, Product Lifecycle Management & Component Engineering Software

• Upverter Library Management & BOM Tools
• Spreadsheet Software And This Template
• Arena

Bug Tracking Software

• Asana
• Jira

Crowdfunding & Pre-Sales Platforms

• Kickstarter
• Indigogo
• GrandSt?

Component Suppliers
• Digikey
• Newark
PCB Manufacturers

• PCB-Pool
• APCircuits
• SpeedyPCB?
• Sunstone Circuits
• SeeedStudio / Golden Phoenix

PCA Assemblers
TODO

Full Service Manufacturers, Assemblers & Testers

TODO

Qualification Labs
TODO

Contract Design Agencies

• Tyco?
• Nuvation?
• Fidus?

Southeast Asian Suppliers & Service Providers

• Winstron?

Mass Manufacturing Consultants

• PCH International?
• Dragon Innovation?
Embedded Hardware Design and Development
Embedded Hardware Design and Development is an integral part of product development. These services are intended to
complement the embedded systems design and software design and development services offered. This hardware design is for
microcontrollers and microprocessors or smaller FPGA systems. The hardware design, both mechanical and electronics, is done in
parallel with software development..
Embedded System Hardware Design and Development Overview
The hardware design process involves both mechanical design and electronics design. The basic process starts with conceptual
design during the embedded systems design and requirements specification phase. In this activity the requirements and conceptual
design is explored further to ensure suitability for the final implementation. The following factors need to be considered to ensure
that all elements of the design will come together later. These elements are detailed in the embedded economics - managers
section of the web site.
● Bill of materials (BOM) costs
● Manufacturing cost
● Usability
● Durability
● Power consumption and battery life if applicable
● Fit and finish
● Product image
● Design for manufacture
● Repair costs for expensive devices
● Display visibility
● Heat dissipation
● Noise
● Acoustic quality and properties
● Weight
● Electronics size and configuration with packaging design
Hardware Design Process
The hardware design process is as follows:
● Node Hardware Requirements specification
● Detailed node architecture and design for electronics in parallel with detailed mechanical design and packaging concept
and initial prototypes
● Part selection, schematic capture, printed circuit board design and layout in parallel with mechanical prototype
refinement
● Prototype assembly and further mechanical refinement
● Prototype bring-up, design verification and testing
● Documentation and support in parallel with automated manufacturing testing and end of line testing.
Mechanical Design
The mechanical design of the system should be based on experience of the mechanical, electronic and packaging design team. This
experienced team is critical as many factors can affect the design. RoweBots has a team that has solved problems like this for many
years and has extensive consumer product experience. This experience is critical to a high quality final design.

The next critical element in the mechanical design portion of the embedded hardware design and development is to converge on a
single design that meets all of the overall criteria. By converging on a single approach, the effort of perfecting the design can be
focused on a single design. If there is risk issues associated with the design, these risk items should be resolved early through
research and experimentation.
An example of risk reduction might involve a prototype of the case made with a 3D printer, which might then be stuffed with a
dummy circuit board with an attached speaker and wires which are put through a hole in the case. The unit could then be closed
and the speaker driven by an external source to test the acoustic properties. This would just reduce the risk because the final case
would be different, but it could provide a good measure of resonance problems and other related issues.
The electrical and electronics portion of the design must occur in parallel. Both proceed to completion in parallel. Issues in either the
electrical or physical design can force rework in the other. This is why it is necessary to eliminate risks early as it will minimize the
overall cost.
Electronics Design
From the specifications, the electronics design is undertaken using developers which are as experienced as the project is difficult.
Often for simple single board microcontroller designs, more junior designers are used with an experienced supervisor. In the case of
more complex designs with multiple add on boards, a better more experienced designer is required. Generally though,
microcontroller based designs and small microprocessor designs or simpler FPGA designs do not require the best and most
experienced designers.
As in the mechanical design case, risk reduction at early stages is a priority. An example of risk reduction could involve a trial
hardware layout of the components on the circuit board to make sure that they will all fit. The goal might be to make a 4 layer
board, maximum to keep within the BOM cost range. The trial layout would determine the physical layout, confirm that the heat
could be disapated and all the components could fit comfortably using the preferred packaging approach (ie SMT, BGA, ...) and that
the other constraints were met.
System Integration
The designers will have periodic meetings to ensure that the two halves of the design are working together well. Often with plastic
cases, the main concern is getting the connectors exactly aligned with the case and the case's closing mechanism working well. With
metal cases, issues of shorts between the board and the case can be problematic particularly given that the size of the box generally
needs to be a minimum size.
At the end of the integration process, and after the testing process, a gold unit is achieved. It is this gold unit along with schematics,
gerbers, and CAD drawings (complete with final tiny modifications) which are passed to manufacturing.
Automated Test
As part of the embedded software design and development, and as part of the embedded hardware design and development, an
automated manufacturing load and test system is created. In the project plan components of both hardware and software are
required. It is even possible that the parts are delivered to the manufacturer preloaded with firmware. During manfacturing two
tests are still required:
A test is required to ensure that the electronics which are assembled into the final device all pass tests to ensure they are working
exactly as the golden unit. This test should be totally automated if possible to eliminate any costly handling and potential static
problems at this phase.
A second end of line test is required where the final unit is powered on and tested to ensure that nothing went wrong between the
electronics test and the final assembly. Often this end of line test involves loading the final software. Again this test should be totally
automated to eliminate costly handling.
During this embedded hardware design and development process, problems and issues can forced a regression to a previous step to
correct the problems. It may involve software design and implementation work as well; however, in this case, a common refrain is:
"well just fix it in software". Be aware that this is often not the best answer for maintenance purposes as "hacks" are added into the
software which don't match the original design.
Project Management
The hardware design process can be split many ways. Since it affects the physical device delivered to the end user, it is best to have
client marketing involved to approve the overall and then final approach. The actual work can be split between client resources and
RoweBots resources with the management approach chosen depending on the availability and skill level of the managers.
Client needs Model of operation
Clear and static specifications Delegate project to RoweBots
Tight control with adequate supervision resources Client direct supervision model
Few supervisory resources and/or minimal project knowledge RoweBots team leader solution

All hardware design and development arrangements are determined on a custom basis, please contact us to get a quote.