What happens when members bring their designs, their questions, and sometimes their problems into the Hardware Academy.
He'd never designed a PCB, and now he assembles keyboards in-house and ships worldwide. The lesson is about when he asked for help.
Read the lesson2 min readAI produced a confident, complete PCB layout for a wireless tracker. Expert review found two problems it never flagged.
Read the lesson3 min readAI handed him a polished latch circuit twice, and it was wrong both times. An engineer settled it with a simulator.
Read the lesson2 min readA clean-looking schematic hid a 50 amp dead short across the 5V rail. A review caught it before any boards were ordered.
Read the lesson2 min readHis board failed FCC conducted emissions, and the cause was a cheap USB charger with certification marks it never earned.
Read the lesson2 min readCapacitive touch buttons pressed themselves in the field. The module maker had left a two-cent capacitor off the board.
Read the lesson2 min readA Bluetooth module marketed for wearables had an FCC grant that forbade use near the body. Here's how the team found a way through.
Read the lesson2 min readAn engineer in Thailand designed a $50 air purifier, sold out his first run, and nearly sent a scammer his passport.
Read the lesson4 min readRonald pre-sold $64,000 of his smart wall switch before manufacturing a unit, then survived a mold failure and came back with a better V2.
Read the lesson3 min readShort, practical lessons on the decisions that cost the most when you get them wrong.
Use AI everywhere being wrong is cheap. In hardware, a lot of decisions aren't, and here's how to tell them apart.
Read the lesson4 min readDesigning for certifications and paying for them are two separate steps that happen far apart. Most people mix them up.
Read the lesson2 min readA member copied a mistake from one of my old tutorials. Here's what a real design review looks like, round by round.
Read the lesson2 min readA block diagram and a component list are enough to put a real number on your product, long before the schematic exists.
Read the lesson4 min readThe decisions that shape your whole product lock in early. Waiting until you've earned the right to ask for help is the expensive move.
Read the lesson2 min readSecrecy kills more hardware products than theft does. Here's what to protect, when to protect it, and what you can safely share.
Read the lesson4 min readA stage-by-stage look at what hardware development actually takes, and why a 12-month product turns into a three-year one.
Read the lesson4 min readMy own product ended up in hundreds of stores across the US and Canada, but it took too long, cost too much, and I made most of the mistakes I now help people avoid. Four parts.
You've done the research, maybe built a prototype or filed a patent, and now you're staring at everything that comes next.
Read the lesson2 min readI pushed to launch as fast as possible. I was moving faster, just not in the right direction.
Read the lesson3 min readFive things I'd do differently with my product, from building with users to pre-selling before production.
Read the lesson4 min readWhat finally turned my product around, and why I built the Hardware Academy.
Read the lesson2 min readHardware products don't usually fail for just one reason. They fail because the founder was focused on one type of risk and didn't see the others coming. Three parts on technical, market, and financial risk.
Technical risk. The mistakes that get baked in early, and why a design review is the system that catches them.
Read the lesson3 min readMarket risk. How to prove strangers will pay for your product before you spend serious money building it.
Read the lesson3 min readFinancial risk. How to let demand fund production instead of putting everything on the line yourself.
Read the lesson3 min read