Adam Drewery
As an Embedded/Electrical Engineer, my focus is primarily on the physical electronics within the IoT solutions we design. I particularly enjoy designing and advising on PCB and wire harness design. This ranges from designing and prototyping circuits, schematic capture, PCB layout, interfacing with vendors throughout manufacturing, and supporting firmware and software design. I also enjoy working on embedded C/C++ firmware when I get the opportunity.
Agile Hardware Leveraging Open Source Designs
When developing an IoT product, the most useful feedback comes when the end user has the product in their hands and when the product is paired with its intended user experience. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to hardware development don’t get to that step until late in the development process, making any changes expensive and time-consuming.
For example, just turning on an LED remotely requires a user experience both in the interaction with the physical product and with the remote interface. The electronics at minimum include a microcontroller, a connection path to the internet, an LED, and some way to provide power to it all. Then firmware on the physical device and software on the server and remote interface on a phone or computer must all interact with one another to deliver the necessary data and commands. The user experience can easily feel disjointed when all of these pieces are not considered and designed simultaneously.
In this talk, you’ll learn how combining agile development practices with open source and/or reference designs can change the narrative on how quickly custom IoT solutions can be developed. Ultimately, this approach provides a higher degree of confidence when the time comes to spend thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars on hardware.