In this video you’ll learn about the power of the niche and how to find the market you can dominate with your product.
This short video was actually part of a live two-hour workshop that was recently held for members of the Hardware Academy.
As a designer for Texas Instruments, and through Predictable Designs, I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the smartest engineers in the world.
I’ve worked with or hired people from India, China, Russia, the U.K., Germany, Mexico, Malaysia, Canada and others. So, don’t discount a potential engineer because of the country they work in. Don’t assume that hiring a developer overseas is always too risky.
Creating a new hardware startup is an overwhelming process and it can be quite confusing to know where to even start. In this article I want to highlight what your top 6 priorities should be when forming a hardware startup.
Choosing your product’s optimal price is an extremely important decision that should be made as soon as possible. In general, if your product is priced too high then it won’t sell well. If your product is priced too low, you won’t be able to make a decent profit.
My name is Dave Millman and I help high-tech startups find their first customers. John Teel asked me to share some of my first-hand experiences so as to help you avoid many of the first timer manufacturing mistakes.
One of the most frequent questions I am asked is, “how long will it take to develop my new product?”. Everyone, of course, wants to know when they can expect to have their product ready to go on store shelves.
This is a guest post by industrial designer Christian Theill.
The design of electronic devices almost always requires a multitude of professional skills: electronics, mechanics, production techniques, aesthetics, ergonomics, finance, commerce, communication, marketing and others. The conscious coordination of these disciplines is vital for the success of your project.
In a recent blog I discussed the path to market for entrepreneurs with a strong technical background. I started that blog by telling a story about an engineer named Gary, and his marketer friend named Paul. You eventually learn that Gary and Paul are really Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs (I used their middle names).
I’m going to start with a story about an engineer named Gary.
Like many engineers and makers, as a child Gary always loved playing with electronics and computers, so it was no surprise that he ended up with an electrical engineering degree. He spent his free time as a teenager tinkering around with circuit boards and building odd ball things like a dial joke machine.
Developing a new electronic product is never cheap, but in this article I’m going to share with you 12 tips to significantly lower your costs.
Minimizing your costs is even more important in the early stages of development. Goal number one should be getting your product to market as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Microcontrollers are great for implementing the smarts behind a given product. However, one thing that they cannot do is directly control anything other than, maybe, a single LED. That’s because the output drive of most microcontrollers can directly source or sink only about 10mA.
Embedded applications often need to reproduce sound. Whether you need simple prompts, chimes, rings or music clips, having the ability to reproduce pre-recorded audio can greatly enhance the UI (User Interface) of many embedded applications.
An oscilloscope, frequently referred to in the trade as a scope, is an essential diagnostic tool used in any serious electronic circuit design activities.
A scope provides a time-stamped, running clip of a signal at the point of measurement. The signal in this case is simply an input voltage.
An embedded system is a stand alone, intelligent system dedicated to running a set of tasks, or an application, from the moment it is powered on.
This is in contrast to the way an application is started on a desktop or similar device, where the user does not have to specifically load anything.
The ESP32 is a powerful, feature-packed, SoC that can be effectively used in many applications. For all its features, it is surprisingly affordable.
While generally known for its WiFi and Bluetooth ability, it can nonetheless be used as a general-purpose computing platform, due to its favorable cost to benefits ratio. This is the focus of this article.
Given the explosion of Internet-of-Things (IoT) capable products, I wanted to go into more detail on how to add wireless sensors to your new product.
This article describes a simple system, and a communication protocol, that can be used to implement a two-way, low-speed, polled star network. While not suitable for all applications, there is a surprising range of applications where this setup could be used.
If you are a maker or engineer planning to develop your own electronic product, then you’re going to need a way to test, program, and debug the electronics. In this article we will discuss how you can construct your very own lab setup for testing out all your product concepts.
The STM32H7 is the most powerful member of the popular STM32 family of 32-bit microcontrollers based on ARM Cortex-M cores, and offered by ST Microelectronics.
This microcontroller can be clocked at speeds up to 480 MHz with a benchmark performance greater than 1,000 DMIPS. This is one of the fastest, most powerful microcontrollers currently available on the market.
The ESP32 is a very versatile System On a Chip (SoC) that can be used as a general purpose microcontroller with quite an extensive set of peripherals, including wireless capabilities.
Manufactured by Shanghai based Espressif Systems, the ESP32 costs less than $5. It’s quite popular with the maker community, but is also a good low-cost solution for mass production.
There are numerous applications where detecting the presence or absence of an object is required. This article will explore the different methods of object detection, how they are implemented, and their major advantages and limitations.
