Surfaceink’s electrical engineering team has a deep background designing and developing cutting edge, consumer and industrial IoT products. Our team has in–depth experience taking products from concept through production within a fully integrated product development environment utilizing skillsets that span nearly all areas of electrical design and development needed for deployment of a high performing, reliable product. 

Our team has worked at both the board and system level for audio, wearable, IoT, industrial and high-end consumer devices in companies throughout Silicon Valley and the world. 

Whether you are coming to surfaceink with an idea or a fully formed product requirements document, our team will work to refine and adjust the needs of the product to the market and available technology. At the outset we work to identify project goals, key deliverable’s and performance metrics, as well as identify risks and technology feasibility, to ensure the client’s product vision is captured. 

After identifying the performance metrics, key deliverables and goals most important to the client, our team work to define the system architecture and rapidly prove out the concept. This typically involves the support from other disciplines within Surfaceink and the use of COTS boards as a jumping off point for validation of performance metrics to prove out key functionalities in order to confirm our assumptions regarding the system. This allows for faster design cycle on the front end to mitigate risk before moving into the custom form factor hardware.

After proving out the system architecture and confidence in our chosen path, our team has moved into the product realization phase, implementing the detailed component and board level connectivity and transitioning the architecture to move into the physical hardware platform that fits the end form factor of the device. We are again working in tandem with our surfaceink ID, ME, EE and Audio counterparts to successfully address the product requirements and conquer design challenges, whether it is miniaturization efforts requiring complex electromechanical assembly techniques, temperature constraints needing novel thermal management methods or working to address potential regulatory issues before moving into pre-production and production volumes. 

In this phase we are heavily engaged with the PCB fabricators, contract manufacturers and vendors that we have identified that best fit support for the given product complexity, volume and cost challenges.  Logistics are being coordinated for product builds and pre-compliance regulatory testing to ensure a smooth transition to high volume builds. 

Confident in the performance of the hardware and with a reliable, repeatable platform, the team works with the identified manufacturing groups supporting the transition to high volume builds. This may involve direct interaction with the regulatory testing groups, establishing test specifications and limits for the manufacturing groups, onsite bring up of hardware at the manufacturing site or simple virtual support should any issues arise, or guidance be necessary. During this phase, we are again working in tandem with our surfaceink counterparts in other disciplines to ensure a successful outcome for our client that meets the vision of their product.