How to turn an electronic product idea into a working prototype

Having an idea for an electronic product is often the easy part. Turning that idea into something that actually works is where it gets complicated.

Whether you are a founder developing a new product, an inventor with a concept, a researcher building a new device or an established company exploring a new line, you may not have the technical expertise to design the electronics and software yourself. You do not need all the technical answers before getting started, but you do need to know what happens at each stage.

A typical electronic product moves through eight of them: idea, requirements, electronics, firmware, prototype, testing, refinement, production.

1. Start with the product idea

Every electronic product starts with a problem, an opportunity or an idea. At this stage you do not need a detailed technical specification, but you do need to understand what the product is supposed to do and who it is for.

That idea might be a wearable that monitors movement, a sensor collecting environmental data, a smart consumer product, a piece of laboratory equipment, a connected industrial device, a robotic system, a medical or research device, or a custom electronic control system.

You may already have sketches, photographs, research data or a rough description of how it should work. That is enough to begin. The first step is turning the idea into something that can be clearly defined.

2. Define the requirements

Before designing anything, it is worth establishing what the product needs to do. These requirements do not need to be technical, since they describe the intended product from a practical perspective:

• What does it need to measure, and what should it control?
• What inputs does it need? Does it need a screen or buttons?
• Does it need Bluetooth or Wi-Fi?
• How long should the battery last?
• What size should it be, and where will it be used?
• What environment does it operate in, and does it run continuously?
• How many units might eventually be produced?

Some of these will already be known; others get worked out during development.

3. Design the electronics

Once the requirements are understood, the technical design can begin. The electronics are the physical systems that make the product function: processors, sensors, batteries, power supplies, wireless communication, motors, displays and connectors.

An electronics team works out how those parts should work together, creating the circuit, selecting components and laying out the printed circuit board. The PCB is the physical and electrical foundation of the product.

A sensor-based product, for example, might need a processor to collect readings, a battery management system to control power, a wireless interface to send data onward and a USB connection for charging or configuration. The exact design follows entirely from the requirements.

4. Develop the firmware

Electronics alone are rarely enough. Most products also need firmware, the software running directly on the hardware, controlling how it behaves. Firmware is what tells a device to:

1. turn on when a button is pressed;
2. read data from a sensor;
3. process the information;
4. store the results;
5. send the data over Bluetooth;
6. enter a low-power mode when not in use.

It connects the physical electronics to the behaviour you expect from the finished product, which is why electronics and firmware need to be developed together. A change to one affects the other, and developing them as a coordinated system avoids a class of problem that is expensive to unpick later.

5. Build the first prototype

With initial electronics and firmware designed, the next step is a physical prototype. A prototype is not a finished product, and an early one exists to answer questions:

• Does the electronics work?
• Does the sensor produce the expected results?
• Does the firmware behave correctly?
• Does the product communicate reliably?
• Does the battery give enough operating time?
• Can the device physically fit its intended enclosure?

There are usually several prototypes in a project. An early one might use development boards and off-the-shelf parts to prove the basic concept. A later one uses a custom PCB and sits much closer to the final product.

6. Test the prototype

Testing turns assumptions into evidence. A prototype that works on a bench is not necessarily ready to become a product, and it needs to be tested against the original requirements: electrical performance, battery life, sensor accuracy, wireless behaviour, temperature, mechanical fit, reliability, firmware behaviour, power consumption and user interaction.

Testing also surfaces problems that were difficult to see at the design stage. A device may work perfectly on a bench supply and have insufficient battery life on a small cell. A wireless link may work in an open room and become unreliable once the device is inside its final enclosure.

Finding these during prototyping is the point. Several of the most common ones are cheap to fix now and expensive to fix after tooling.

7. Refine the design

A first prototype rarely represents the final version. Development is iterative: testing may show that a component needs changing, the PCB needs a respin, the firmware needs to behave differently or the enclosure needs more space. The loop is design, prototype, test, improve, prototype again, with each pass moving the product closer to its requirements.

How many passes depends on the complexity of the product, how clearly the requirements were defined and what testing turns up. Simple products can be proven quickly; complex ones may need several prototype versions.

8. Move towards production

Once the product has been tested and refined, attention turns to manufacturing. A prototype is designed to prove the product works; a production design has to be built repeatably. The electronics may need optimising for manufacture, components may need reselecting on availability and cost, and the PCB may need to be laid out so it can be assembled efficiently. This is usually called design for manufacture, or DFM.

Alongside it sit component availability, manufacturing cost, assembly process, production test, enclosure manufacturing, regulatory requirements, reliability, supply chain and expected volumes. The move from prototype to production is a development stage in its own right, not a handover.

What if you are not technical?

You do not need to be an electronics engineer to develop an electronic product. A good development process starts from what you want the product to achieve, rather than expecting you to already know which processor, sensor or circuit topology to use. The technical team takes the requirements and works out how to implement them.

For a founder, that means focusing on the business, the customers and the product while the engineering team handles technical development. For a researcher, it means focusing on the research question and the experimental requirements while the hardware and software needed to test the concept get built. For an established company, it adds engineering capacity without needing a permanent team for every new product idea.

What an electronics development company actually does

A development company can take on much of the technical work required to turn an idea into a working product: requirements definition, electronics and PCB design, component selection, firmware development, hardware prototyping, testing and debugging, enclosure development, design for manufacture and production support.

The exact combination depends on the product. Some projects start from a concept and need the whole process. Others already have a working prototype and need the electronics, firmware or design improved before production, and the robotic controller study is one example of the latter.

The distinction worth drawing is that electronic product development is not just designing a circuit board. The hardware, firmware, mechanical design, testing and manufacturing requirements all have to work as one thing.

From idea to working product

Turning an idea into an electronic product is a process of progressively reducing uncertainty. At the start you may only know what you want the product to do. Requirements make the idea concrete. Engineering turns those requirements into electronics and firmware. Prototyping demonstrates the concept works in the real world. Testing identifies problems. Refinement improves the design. Production engineering prepares it to be manufactured.

Idea → requirements → electronics → firmware → prototype → testing → refinement → production.

For founders, inventors, researchers and companies without deep in-house electronics expertise, that sequence is a way to develop a complex physical product without having to become an electronics engineer first. If the question on your mind is what each stage costs, we have written that up separately.