Our team has decades of experience in developing consumer and industrial products from the relatively simple to the highly complex. We have helped companies ship tens of millions of products worldwide.
Customers today want to be able to connect to and between devices. This is a simple request, but not so easy to implement. Squeezing a network stack into an inexpensive microprocessor, such as an 8-bit Microchip, is not realistic. Even an STMicroelectronics 32-bit chip like the STM32F can be a challenge to squeeze all of the features your customer would like to see within the product.
How small can you go?
Our suggestion is that you start by listing all of the features your product has or may have by the time the Marketing folks finish their plans! Each of those features will require some processing and memory space on your MCU. Budget accordingly! If you can resist the temptation to cost-optimize early in your design phase, you can be more confident that you will have enough capacity to launch your product on time and with all of the features your customers want. Future revisions will allow for cost-optimization.
The stack you select initially may have consequences that are difficult to overcome later in the development process, if you choose poorly.
Selecting a product line from a chip manufacturer can also be complex and have long-lasting consequences. If you choose the wrong chip, do they have a more fully-featured chip that is pin and otherwise mostly compatible? Does a specific chip manufacturer have reference designs that are similar to your needs? If so, you may be able to reduce development schedules.
These are a just a few of considerations that are second-nature to our team. We would like to help make them second-nature to yours!
Customers today want to be able to connect to and between devices. This is a simple request, but not so easy to implement. Squeezing a network stack into an inexpensive microprocessor, such as an 8-bit Microchip, is not realistic. Even an STMicroelectronics 32-bit chip like the STM32F can be a challenge to squeeze all of the features your customer would like to see within the product.
How small can you go?
Our suggestion is that you start by listing all of the features your product has or may have by the time the Marketing folks finish their plans! Each of those features will require some processing and memory space on your MCU. Budget accordingly! If you can resist the temptation to cost-optimize early in your design phase, you can be more confident that you will have enough capacity to launch your product on time and with all of the features your customers want. Future revisions will allow for cost-optimization.
The stack you select initially may have consequences that are difficult to overcome later in the development process, if you choose poorly.
Selecting a product line from a chip manufacturer can also be complex and have long-lasting consequences. If you choose the wrong chip, do they have a more fully-featured chip that is pin and otherwise mostly compatible? Does a specific chip manufacturer have reference designs that are similar to your needs? If so, you may be able to reduce development schedules.
These are a just a few of considerations that are second-nature to our team. We would like to help make them second-nature to yours!