648 karma · joined February 28, 2018
Solder can "bubble" but this is a line process issue that is easily picked up even in old AOI systems (automatic optical inspections) from 10-15 years ago.
To be frank, this article to me, reads like piece put together by somebody who has no idea what they're on about to generate publicity for their company. Nothing to see here.
There are plenty of different fabrication technologies to suit different scales. Some listed by other commenters.
I agree iteration is good, and good hardware companies do iterate hardware. It's something I have always been a proponent of as a hardware engineer. But also the reality is that everything in hardware land costs 10-100 times as much and takes 10-100 times longer.
To properly develop and iterate on hardware, you need to do upfront investment. You need:
1) Tools for the hardware engineers (scopes, spec-ans, tool shop, test equipment). [In software parlance, download the IDE, debuggers and libraries. You're not going to ask your developers to work without those. That would be ludicrous.]
2) You need to iterate EARLY in the product cycle process and this costs money (but still much less than changing your final tooling). [Software parlance again: You only ever really edit the source code. You would never ask a developer to binary patch a compiler to fix issues in your source code. This is what you're doing IMO when changing final tooling on a product.]
3) You need to account for lead times for fabrication and shipping of a physical thing. [Software parlance again: Compiling takes days to weeks. QA weeks to months.]
I think software majority companies struggle with these because (when compared to hardware):
1) Software tooling is essentially free.
2) You can stop and go back to the source code to re-iterate at any time and the down stream processes to "finish the iteration".
3) Time for iteration is seconds, minutes maybe hours while you wait for a compiler to run.
Speaking about Toyota Production System: This has many misconceptions as nobody ever seems to actually read the source material. One of these myths is iterations. Toyota iterate often and EARLY. You get the part right and THEN you can THINK about final tooling. They don't iterate on final tooling, that is expensive and time consuming.
I would say with some work and trade offs you can save on your product in the 300-500 range. You shouldn't be in the Defense/Aerospace/Medical area unless you are doing something quite esoteric.
As others have stated on the final point (but I will reiterate) no senior software person in the US would be happy with $20 for 30 minutes.
Think of it this way: If current runs through it, you need to cert it. Period.
Edit: I think the Pi might already have FCC so if you are NOT electrically altering the Pi in anyway, then you won't need to re-cert (as you are essentially installing software on it and for a consumer device FCC doesn't have ESD requirements).
For CE, depending on the directive, you'd need to do ESD (adding a box will alter that).
Disclaimer: Not compliance advice.
Broadly and simplified:
Adding a bluetooth module means that, not only is the device no longer "electrically equivalent" (which means you are re-certing), but you have gone from "unintentional radiator" to "intentional", which means you have a different and/or additional set of standards.
A pre-certified module (as in, it has modular approval) under FCC means you do not have to test the "intentional radiator" part the module PROVIDED you exactly follow the instructions of the module supplier AND you don't do anything "stupid".
Under CE, pre-certified module isn't a thing. It will certainly help you pass from a technical standpoint, but doesn't really let you "short-cut" the testing and paper work.
Hope that makes sense and gives a rough idea.
edit Apologies for rehashing what others have already said. I should have refreshed.
I consult on product development and I'd say about 50% the time, software majority companies think you are trying to rip them off somehow when you try to explain everything that is NOT software that needs to be done, what it costs and how long it takes (and how important it is to lock things in early as you can't just "push out a patch" for a $50,000 molding tool or that you can't just "slap bluetooth in later" and not redo all of your EMC certs).
Lots of interesting nitty gritty details. Also raises an interesting point about how lot of labs trying to reproduce LK99 are probably not doing it correctly.
Prices are generally single to low double-digit Euros (even for standards that are hundreds or 1000+ dollars).
If you are a solo contractor like me (and hence only need one copy), DON'T get the single licence copies. You need to use some BS DRM software that binds the file to your computer and is a PITA.
Get the organisation one, pay for two licenses, and you'll be given a regular PDF instead (and still save hundreds of dollars).
You obviously will only get the Estonian specific annexes, but those are normally optional anyway, and generally available for free when downloading the "free sample" of a standard for a specific country.
I thought ML needs huge datasets? This is great for GitHub's Copilot as there is plenty of high quality, production, open source code they've used without authorisation from the creators (and possibly proprietary code).
But this dataset just doesn't exist for hardware development on the internet. Almost everything on the net is hobbyist stuff. Great for hand building 10 on a desk but absolute rubbish for a (even horribly) manufacturable and COMPLIANT product.
Further: an anecdotal, but to me very telling, one liner from the video "the component is "not use for new designs" but we can ignore that because there's 260,000 of them". I have personally sniped larger quantities than that from digikey. "Not for new design" means you don't use it in a new design. PERIOD. And ironically, for something like a Murata cap, they've probably literally changed one letter in the PN because they've made a tiny process or recepie change and its more a "move everyone to the new iteration" process.
I do sincerely wish them success and maybe they can carved out a small bit of the hobbyist market but that's probably it.
Even software I pay for seems to try to screw me at every turn. "You paid for me? Have some ads! I'll scan everything you do and sell it off to the highest bidder! No you can't copy and send this image to a friend, but here's a link to try and lure them into the walled garden so I can data rape them too. Stay in my eco system it's great. You love it here! Click click click keeping clicking. Moar data to sell! Give moar! Data breach! I'm soz (but no compensation for you."
Oh and when you live off grid with little power you learn to hate electron apps. They are such power wasters. Three things cause my inverter to spin up its cooling fans: games, windows updates and electron apps. (And of course if you have "AC" plugged in most apps seem to think its a damn free for all for power. So its more power efficient to charge powered down and only run using battery if possible).
But yeah, sometimes find it almost violating in a way, especially when its that typical PM line "hey did you read my email?" (that was literally sent 10 seconds ago).
It just feels like someone coming over to my desk and pushing, monitors, scopes, everything off and smashing it on the floor, then walking off.
Now I have both unrealistic deadline AND a mess to clean up.
I don't know where I'm going with this comment. Just venting I guess :)
I've also ever used Chrome and I never will. Also never used IE either. Netscape was way better.
I actually found a copy of the Firefox 1.0.14 (I think) installer when going through an old hard drive a few months ago. That was a cool little discovery.
I'm sorry to be so terse (and it'll probably get me horribly downvoted) but: What the absolute f**? Just ... What? Huh? Housing crisis ... Fixed? Who paid you? And how much?
It most certainly, absolutely, positively is NOT fixed.
And if I recall correctly, the recommend changes that are linked in TFA were not adopted because of a NIMBY backlash and Auckland council caved (like they always do). All they ended up doing was scrapping the "green belt" border allowing the awful urban sprawl to resume full tilt.
The only "maybe" meaningful change that has happened was by central government at the end of 2021 by tweaking the RMA Act and essentially forcing councils to allow denser builds. (https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/457924/resource-managem...)
And that won't be enough. Deep structural changes have to occur: economically (introduce capital gains tax), politically (both major parties are currently useless on the matter) and culturally (everyone pours money just into housing rather than more productive investments just because the stock market detonated in 1989) to have any chance of fixing this.
I also love how there are no graphs on incomes, house prices, housing affordability, immigration, crime, homelessness, the massive price inflation during covid, or the current housing bubble deflation that's occurring.
I'm sorry. This article is a giant load of insulting rubbish. I can't figure out if it's just very poorly researched or some sort of propaganda piece.
edit grammar
A $5k temperature chamber running over night or weekend would have caught this.
They wasted resources on fixing what they "thought" was the problem. That money would have paid for some nice chambers and other equipment.
Next thread: "We learned our robot doesn't work when sitting in a shipping container at -40C for three months because customs was being difficult."
Thread after: "Hardware is hard! We learnt about EMC compliance."
You'll find that their values are almost exactly: stated_value+/-tolerance rather than a range of values.
i.e a 100k 5% resistor will be almost exactly either 105k or 95k not some number in between.
* I graduated as a Computer Engineer.
* Worked as EE/EEE entire career (currently almost 14 years).
* Half of my class of EEs and CEs went into other careers immediately after graduation because money was better.
* 10 years later my best conservative estimate (based on sampling from friends from my year) is that at least another quarter has left because money.
* I have mainly worked in companies that make embedded devices, which is a market that is supposed to be exploding. So I should be getting paid better right? Have always been paid worse than my SE peers even though there's x5 - x10 as many of them.
* Know lots of SEs who moved from EE because money was better (chief complaint from them is that SE is easier but they don't care because job less stressful and again more money).
* Have never met an SE moving into EE.
* I am now at a junction point in my career where I will either: Leave EE completely and work in something else (probably SE or IT), start my own EE business, consult in compliance of EE products (had one gig for a while and it paid well). Why? because money.
And I don't want fast cars or huge houses or any of that absurdity (although A house would be nice). Just living comfortably would be nice. Having the salaries of my SE and CS friends would be amazing.
To those commenters who say that you need to be bright to be an EE, it is very flattering, but I am obviously not very bright :D
(edit: formatting because, again, not very bright :) )
Anything important I get from a physical store. For cheap crap or stuff I am happy to gamble on, I'd rather cut out the useless price gouging middleman, and go straight to the source.
I've actually had very good customer service from AliExpress vendors. A NUC form factor PC I got had issues using a certain brand of RAM. They churned out a custom BIOS overnight to try get it going.
To clarify, I support the problems trying to be solved but a lot of the ideas are just the wrong way to go about it. I've thought of weighing in, but the way some other dissenting commenters get beaten down means I self censor and move on to other threads.
I personally wouldn't give the CCP that much credit, at all.
In my experience, the signs for this crunch in supply were there. The unusual part is maybe the speed at which it took hold and now the amount of time the shortages are lasting.
I was arguing for building inventory when the situation was (in my eyes) clearly getting bad, the business chose not to. Now its much much worse. A 5-10USD lithium charge controller goes for about 100USD (one seller had it for 500USD).
At least this way, the smaller businesses that get ignored by the big suppliers in times like these, can get supply if they can pay.
It's also not all just brokers. The outfit we use in China for PCB fabrication and population saw the signs and stocked up on inventory on their one initiative. They are the only reason we can make anything at all.
Fundamentally ICs are NOT a Just-in-time-able part. And if people actually read the book on JiT they'd understand that fact, and they would keep inventory.
When you see this time and again like me, it's hard to have sympathy for businesses that get caught out. (I do have sympathy for those that came prepared and are now stuck though).
Next crunch time (and there always is a next time in this business), I seriously think I'll just invest in IC inventory. Because honestly if I did this time, I probably could have retired early.
Another speedtester you can try: https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
I learnt this at a talk I went to about 10 years ago. At the time, in the speakers opinion (who from memory was involved in surveillance testing of these products), some countries did regulate stuff like vitamin supplements, but Australia was the only country that "did it properly". And a major component of this was that their regulations covered ingredients and the supply chains.
A quick search turned up this article: https://www.tga.gov.au/blogs/tga-topics/how-are-vitamins-reg...
Finally, a word of caution given by the speaker: many companies/suppliers try to trick consumers online by selling cheaper versions with identical labelling but no AUST number and shipped directly from overseas so it technically counted as a consumer "importing" on their own. Idk if this loop hole still exists.
2022 is when I'll be trying my hand at bootstrapping and also working on my reoccurring back pain.