The Process of Shipping Hardware Products: Hardware Tales for Software Engineers
summary
Built a student attendance monitor that reads existing RFID ID cards, moves from a weekend breadboard to PCB and case, and ships a few hundred units via a local contract manufacturer. Development hits include a two-week typical board spin, a missed footprint that hides pads (missing solder mask openings), supply headaches like a 52-week lead time on a microcontroller, and automation with pick-and-place reels, stencil solder paste, BOM management and fixture-based testing to reach manufacturable yields.
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chapters (34)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:30Welcome
- 5:14Hardware is easy
- 7:07Its getting harder
- 9:16Desktop manufacturing
- 10:29Hardware development lifecycle
- 11:50Product development
- 12:48Manufacturing
- 14:04Design
- 14:58Engineering
- 17:08Validation
- 21:12Example Project
- 22:48State to Entry
- 23:14Documentation
- 25:12Works Like Prototype
- 27:18Schematic
- 28:47Surfacemount
- 29:33Automation
- 30:34Selecting Components
- 36:11Bill of Materials
- 38:56Circuit Board
- 40:02PCB Notes
- 42:17Gerber Files
- 45:15Mechanical Design
- 46:41Inversion Cycles
- 48:09Prototyping
- 49:35Penalisation
- 50:00JTAG
- 50:51Testing
- 51:27Custom testers
- 52:00Reference current boards
- 53:21Regulatory and compliance
- 54:06The rewarding feeling
- 54:34Thank you
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