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Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

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Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#41

Post by civilitty »

logronoide wrote: post #37
nickelpro wrote: post #16

Just like "software" is a huge field with a wide variety of technologies, payscales, opportunities, and niches, so it is hardware. You wouldn't expect someone writing about the opportunities and lessons from the JavaScript/CSS frontend world to have a huge amount of insight into the work and opportunities of firmware developers. So it is with hardware, and personally it frustrates me when software people think they c…

As the author of the blog post, it’s disappointing to hear that you didn’t enjoy it. My article was never about claiming to be a hardware expert, but rather about sharing my personal experience as a newcomer for those interested. What I find concerning is the unwelcoming attitude towards newcomers like myself, prevalent in some hardware and electronics communities. My critique in the article is directed at this exclu…

> Manufacturing Isn’t That Difficult

That’s literally one of your headings. You can’t hide behind the arrogance of the EE community when you say stuff like that, especially if you’re just ordering a four layer board from JLPCB. No offense but you didn’t manufacture anything - you did the equivalent of spinning up an EC2 instance via the web interface, installed nginx on it, and blogged about it as if you were a cloud architect. That tone permeates the post, despite the titular admission.

I would approach any professional community with much more humility. Especially when you’re still learning stuff like ”When assembling parts, you may face delays if some are unavailable.”

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#42

Post by mips_r4300i »

eastbound wrote: post #26

I just would like to celebrate this sentence for one second: > If It Can Be Done with Code, Don’t Do It with Hardware We all complain about why my washing machine needs a connection to Wifi and why my brakes don’t work while I’m tuning the heating on the display (joking to emphasize the craziness of plugging the infotainment on the CAN bus), but our hardware is now so reliable that it’s more reliable to do something…

It's always better to have as much functionality mutable via firmware update. Even if it's a day 1 factory update and it never gets updated again. You have an extra couple months to test and harden the design and prevent showstoppers.

However, anything safety critical or that could potentially hurt the device always needs hardware dedicated to it. As an example, using a couple I2C-adjusted buck regulators. Very convenient, until your i2c gets wedged or you get bit flips due to noise on the bus or a i2ç peripheral glitch with some other device on the bus. Now your 1.2v rail has 4 volts on it. You can't fix that with software.

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#43

Post by mips_r4300i »

imtringued wrote: post #33
babl-yc wrote: post #7

I'm on a similar adventure right now, an ex-software person building a motorized iPhone stand that is Bluetooth controlled. It's been fun to see how with Fusion 360, a 3D printer, and JCLPCB you can build all kinds of devices. YouTube and GPT-4 are excellent tutors for hobbyists entering the hardware space. The 2 week wait for custom parts from China makes you realize the advantage they have over there when it comes…

The two week wait just tells me you don't value your time during the rapid prototyping stage. Why exactly do you need a manufacturing process during prototyping that is exactly the same as your manufacturing process? Ok the domestic manufacturer charges 50€ more for the same PCB (price at 10 units) but they offer rapid turnaround including shipping in three or even less days.

As far as spinning boards goes, you can get bare pcbs back from China in a couple weeks. If you pay extra, that can be 10 days. I use a Korean quickturn when I need the PCB shipped within 3 days, but it costs a pretty penny.

Producing PCBs domestically in the US is a sad joke. There are only 3 types of fabs here:

1. Stuck in the 80s and can't do much more than 2 layers and 10/10mil

2. Super high-end govt contractor ITAR jobs programs. Great quality but thousands for a run

3. Other shops that claim to produce pcbs but actually just farm them out to a partner in China and reship.

So even for protos China pretty much always wins.

As a price comparison, let's take an 8layer board I quoted through Screaming Circuits in the US. $4k. PCBway can do the same board for a bit over $300.

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#44

Post by logronoide »

civilitty wrote: post #41
logronoide wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the author of the blog post, it’s disappointing to hear that you didn’t enjoy it. My article was never about claiming to be a hardware expert, but rather about sharing my personal experience as a newcomer for those interested. What I find concerning is the unwelcoming attitude towards newcomers like myself, prevalent in some hardware and electronics communities. My critique in the article is directed at this exclu…

> Manufacturing Isn’t That Difficult That’s literally one of your headings. You can’t hide behind the arrogance of the EE community when you say stuff like that, especially if you’re just ordering a four layer board from JLPCB. No offense but you didn’t manufacture anything - you did the equivalent of spinning up an EC2 instance via the web interface, installed nginx on it, and blogged about it as if you were a cloud…

> I felt like using Amazon Web Services for the first time in 2006!

Literally I say that manufacturing is like using AWS in 2006…

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#45

Post by nickelpro »

junon wrote: post #30
SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO there is no way to understand _modern_ computer hardware without knowing the old, retro one. Start with basics od digital electronics, then analyze some old computers (Altair, Apple 1, PC XT)then, slowly move on.

This is great advice. The concepts haven't changed much - electricity and physics don't change at all - we just have new techniques and the scale is way larger than before.

Electricity and physics change immensely with scale. The kinds of slop you could get away with at very slow speed and relatively low powers on old hardware are not allowed for with modern high-speed technologies.

In the context of PCB design, even something as simple as decap sizing and placement becomes tricky as clock rate increases. EE students regularly suffer through voltage drops and ground bounce from poorly managing the size and placement of decaps. These are problems that either did not exist or had simpler solutions in the old days.

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#46

Post by sohex »

babl-yc wrote: post #11
wslh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the cost of your project? Could you share more information? I was looking to do something similar.

The individual builds will be pretty cheap: sub $75 with an Arduino, NEMA stepper motor, PCB, a few other parts, and some plastic enclosures. There's definitely some bootstrapping costs to acquiring tools (3d printer, soldering set up, adjustable power supply, Fusion 360 license). That's around $1k-1500 for a nice hobbyist setup by the time you get everything. The real cost is when you decide to quit your software jo…

That strikes me as being a much higher unit cost than I would have anticipated. Are you way overprovisioned on the arduino and the steppers or is there something else fancy going on that's driving costs up?

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#47

Post by lelanthran »

nickelpro wrote: post #16

Just like "software" is a huge field with a wide variety of technologies, payscales, opportunities, and niches, so it is hardware. You wouldn't expect someone writing about the opportunities and lessons from the JavaScript/CSS frontend world to have a huge amount of insight into the work and opportunities of firmware developers. So it is with hardware, and personally it frustrates me when software people think they c…

>> Asking an expert and getting explained is invaluable, but what I found particularly disheartening is the treatment of ‘noobs’ in amateur electronics forums. Being insulted when asking questions is not pleasant. I thought ego issues were unique to software development communities, but they were not. If you need to ask questions on the forums and you’re learning, you better have tough skin.

> So it is with hardware, and personally it frustrates me when software people think they can generalize about the "hardware" space because they printed a 4 layer with JLCPCB and now they know the "hardware" world and its ins and outs.

You appear to be who he is complaining about. I'm an embedded dev, and what he wrote isn't far off the mark - I see more inaccurate posts of about from software-only devs.

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#48

Post by nalydmerc »

logronoide wrote: post #44
civilitty wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Manufacturing Isn’t That Difficult That’s literally one of your headings. You can’t hide behind the arrogance of the EE community when you say stuff like that, especially if you’re just ordering a four layer board from JLPCB. No offense but you didn’t manufacture anything - you did the equivalent of spinning up an EC2 instance via the web interface, installed nginx on it, and blogged about it as if you were a cloud…

> I felt like using Amazon Web Services for the first time in 2006! Literally I say that manufacturing is like using AWS in 2006…

As an EE/firmware engineer working in the field, don't listen to the naysayers. Just because it's not some 10 layer RF board doesn't mean it's not a rewarding project and a worthwhile product. For the record, the products we design and assemble in-house are only 4 layer boards, and our business is doing just fine.There's too much elitism in engineering. I think the article is awesome; you found out a lot of pain points that I deal with regularly. The only nitpick I have is that I wish more people were on the side of open source hardware than patents.

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#49

Post by babl-yc »

sohex wrote: post #46
babl-yc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The individual builds will be pretty cheap: sub $75 with an Arduino, NEMA stepper motor, PCB, a few other parts, and some plastic enclosures. There's definitely some bootstrapping costs to acquiring tools (3d printer, soldering set up, adjustable power supply, Fusion 360 license). That's around $1k-1500 for a nice hobbyist setup by the time you get everything. The real cost is when you decide to quit your software jo…

That strikes me as being a much higher unit cost than I would have anticipated. Are you way overprovisioned on the arduino and the steppers or is there something else fancy going on that's driving costs up?

It could certainly be much cheaper than $75, that's just the ceiling. Arduino Nano BLE is $30 and one stepper on Amazon is $15. Plus other small hardware, plastic and assembly.

Re: Lessons learned by a software guy venturing into hardware

#50

Post by sweetjuly »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #28

The point about "not doing something in hardware if can be done in software", is although mostly true, is less so when one takes FPGA into consideration, where the difference between hard in soft is blurred.

Eh, not really. FPGA folks will tell you the exact same thing. Digital design and verification is much harder and more time consuming than SW. The suggestion has always been to start your implementation in SW and if you just can't make it work (ex. no reasonable uC can keep up) only then do you reach for an FPGA.
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