Embedded System Development Process

• What all stages an embedded system development process should have?

• Ideation/purpose of the product
• Technical specification
• Architecting the Solution
• Component section & design finalization
• Test Plan
• Design implementation
• PoC / Prototype Development
• Field Trials
• Final Product Improvements
• Product Release
Embedded System Development Process
Embedded System Development Process

• 1. Ideation:
• This is the stage where an idea is discussed with all the stakeholders and brain-stormed to
conclude if the idea is worth taking to the development stage.
• Market data is collected from online research, interviews with customers, prospects, other people
facing market to make a case with two important points:
• Problems the product will solve. All features of the products could be segmented into urgent
needs, good to have and luxury. More you are solving urgent needs better the response from the
market would be for the product.
• The price at which the customer would be willing to pay for solving the problem. The cost of
manufacturing & selling the product should be 50% of the actual price to the customer at <1000
units volume as a thumb rule. For higher volumes, the price will be less.
Embedded System Development Process

• 2. Detailed Technical Specification:

• A detailed technical design requirement specification document should be created. Product spec
should cover the main things like the purpose of the product, block diagram, main features,
environmental conditions, manufacturing requirements, etc.
• Technical Specification should have the following details:
A) Purpose of the design/product
• What is the purpose or idea behind this product?
• What is the problem is it solving?
• This information helps team members get a perspective and then, they can start thinking about
how to design.
B) Block diagram
• Start with a rough block diagram (hand-sketch) of the product to define different sub-blocks and
keep refining as the discussion progresses. This is important to have a good high-level overview of
the project.
Embedded System Development Process
Embedded System Development Process

• C) Prerequisite Design Requirements

• C-1) Environmental Conditions
• What will be the operating & storage temperature range (eg: 0 – 50 Degree C)?
• What is the operating humidity range (eg: 5 – 95 RH%)?
• The level of vibration the product may face
• What will be the type of installation, is it indoor or an outdoor?
• What is mount type like DIN rail mount, wall mount, pole mount, will be kept on the table?
• Is the environment corrosive (chemical fumes, gases, etc)?
• Is waterproofing required?
• Is the product need to operate near the Sea?
• C-2) Expected Production Volume
• For high volume production, consider making a design that is faster to produce. Like, use all
machine solderable SMD components, penalizing the design. If possible, eliminate any manual
process during production.
Embedded System Development Process

• C-3) Product Availability

• Engineers should know the availability/expected life of the product. If it is for 1 or 2 years, they
might not need to give special attention to the component’s EOL(end of life) and alternates. But,
if the product will be available for 5 years or more, It is important to consider long term
availability while selecting various.
• C-4) Warranty
• Information about the warranty is useful to understand the reliability needs. This helps design
engineers to take special care while selecting components and designing circuitry. Design for a
warranty of 1 year and 10 years could be entirely different.
• D) Main Features
• D-1) Hardware
• Hardware spec will mainly cover all the detailed requirements related to various features as given
in the block diagram. Some of the example specs could be as mentioned below:
• It should have WiFi connectivity.
• It should have a display which the user can see from 5 feet.
• Easy interface to configure via a keypad(4×4).
• One LED to state power ON, another to show if GPRS is active or not.
Embedded System Development Process

• It should have one RS232, two RS485 interfaces.

• It should have 4x Digital Inputs, all should be 24V compatible.
• It should have two relays to control external equipment.
• It should be powered by 5V DC input.
• The whole product should not consume more than 5W peak and 2W typical.
• D-2) Hardware Protections
• List all the protections required in various parts of the hardware. For example, DC input voltage should
have over-voltage, over current, surge protection. All IO interfaces should have ESD(Electrostatic
discharge) protection. Industrial Interfaces like RS232, RS485 should have Surge protection, isolation
based on the requirement.
• D-3) Firmware
• Create a high-level flowchart and discuss with the team the high-level code execution plan.
• It is good to create the structure of the code keeping modularity and reuse in mind.
• For an LCD, define the screen layouts.
• For the communication interface, define a clear command-response packet structure.
• Analyze if an RTOS is required?
Embedded System Development Process

• D-4) Field Upgradable Firmware

• Project timelines are always tight and limited time is available for testing. Also, it is quite
impractical to test all field conditions, so there might be a need to fix a bug or provide a feature
update to improve the user experience when the product is already in the field.
• D-5) Software (PC/Mobile)
• Is there a need for PC based configuration software, how the user will use it, which all OS it
should support?
• If there is a mobile app required, which all Mobile OS it should support?
• Define functional details and screens.
• D-6) User experience
• Today, it’s not just the features & reliability of the product but the entire user experience which is
driving the sales.
• List down user experience needs. Make a list of features that will improve the whole user
experience while operating the product.
Embedded System Development Process

• E) Production
• E-1) Manufacturing
• This section should answer if the design is manufacturable?
• Various considerations from the manufacturing point of view w.r.t to the available manufacturing
ecosystem should be listed as design inputs to the engineers.
• E-2) Validation & Production Testing
• More testing you do better you know the reliability of the product.
• A proper test plan need to be created both for the validation and for the production testing. A
proper plan will help designers ensure that the product is easy to test in both scenarios.
Embedded System Development Process

• 3. Architecting the Solution:

• After finalizing a detailed technical specification document, it’s time to architect the solution.
• On a high level, how the design will look like, what are strategies you will use to build a solution,
which type of power supply, which type of wired or wireless connectivity you will use, how the
firmware design will look like, Mobile App/PC software/cloud-based application design needs to
be decided.
• 4. Component Selection & Design Finalization
• Once the architecture is done, engineers need to look at each block in the system and select the
components and finalize the design (application circuit).
• An engineer in this stage will decide, for example, a power supply which type of power supply
needs to be designed like using a linear regulator or using a DC-DC switching converter or with
something else and then which power chip need to used and its application circuit, everything is
decided here.
Embedded System Development Process

• 5. Creating a Test Plan

• Hardware & Software Testing is very important to check the reliability of the product. Customers
pay for the working products and get frustrated with the product which does not meet the
expectation or fail in the field.
• Companies spend a huge amount of time testing their products so that their customer does not
experience any issues.
• For any embedded product, you need to define a proper testing plan, it should cover the
following:
• Hardware design validation
• Software design validation
• Production level product testing
Embedded System Development Process

• 6. Design Implementation:
• This is the core engineering stage of the implementation. Here the architecture is converted into
the design.
• For hardware: schematic capture, PCB layout will be done.
• MCU firmware & if any software is required will be developed.
• Enclosure design work will also come into this stage.
• 7. Field Trials
• You might have heard engineers saying that their product works well in their lab but has issues in
the field.
• Field conditions are different, engineers need to think through what all conditions their product
will go through in the field so that they can reproduce those conditions and check the
performance of their product even before sending their product out in the field. Not only field
conditions but the user is also different. Engineers need to think of how a layman will handle their
product in the field.
Embedded System Development Process

• 8. Final Product Improvements:

• After field trials are done for several weeks and months, all the improvement needs to be
incorporated in the design based on the feedback.
• If during field trials some issues are found, you will need to also improve the test procedures you
follow during the design validation/ production testing stage to ensure a flawless product comes
out of production.
• 9. Product Launch:
• Before launching the product, several other things need to be put in place other than the product
itself like:
• Various product certifications based on features it has and the countries it will be sold in.
• Documentation: Product page on the website, Quick introduction video, Datasheet, User guide,
Setting up the Support channel, etc.