Release Management

Browse our resouce library to learn more about releasing your design and generating the necessary manufacturering output files.

Communicating Design Intent with Manufacturing Outputs No one wants to do a board respin because of inaccurate or incomplete manufacturing outputs confusing design intent. This webinar Watch Video

Designing a Home Automation IoT device

Designing a Home Automation IoT Device In this article Ari Mahpour walks you through how to create your own IoT connected device and control other smart home products. Read Article

Getting Started with ESP8266

Getting Started with ESP8266 A project overview on getting started with the ESP8266 device. Expert Ari Mahpour reviews the benefits of using a device such as the NodeMCU board from HiLetgo and how to get up and running with a few examples. Read Article

Getting Started with MQTT

Getting Started with MQTT Check this out. This is a new project overview demonstrating MQTT by expert Ari Mahpour. In this article, Ari answers the What and Why of MQTT, and gives guidelines to get your project started. Read Article

Low-Cost Verification for Digital and Analog Filters

Low-Cost Verification for Digital and Analog Filters In Low Cost Solutions for Automated Hardware in the Loop Testing, we reviewed the idea of using low-cost testing devices to validate our hardware designs. In this article I want to zoom in on a specific application that can have a high barrier to entry when it comes to verification: Digital Signal Processing (DSP), specifically signal filtering. Rather than belabor the topic of DSP I will define it simply as “digitizing signals that come into Read Article

How to Navigate the Perils of PCB Design Review

How to Navigate the Perils of the PCB Design Review Process: An Overview Whether you’re a first-time designer or a hardened veteran, the integrity of your designs relies heavily on inspecting a product for design errors before production. What can be done to identify design flaws while staying productive? Before a new design is sent into production, it's critical to put the design through a PCB design review so that design errors can be identified before manufacturing. In many cases, a design will pass rules checks Read Article

PCB design reuse

Complete Guide to PCB Component and Design Reuse in the Cloud Isaac Newton once said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." Not all designs need to be remade from scratch, and if you organize your designs properly you can easily reuse your old design data in a new project. PCB design reuse practices are great for cutting down design time and ensuring all your products live up to the same level of quality. It’s all about making sure the knowledge you’ve gained from building Read Article

Design data management system

The Search for the All-in-One Design Data Management System In this article we discuss the pain points of using a single design data management system over linking many together. Read Article

Automated Mirroring Between Concord Pro and Your Git Server

Automated Mirroring Between Concord Pro and Your Git Server You can create a Git server mirror of your Altium Concord Pro server. This gives you a simple way to create a backup for projects from an on-premises Concord Pro instance. Read Article

Continuous Deployment: An Implementation Using Altium Designer

Continuous Deployment: An Implementation Using Altium Designer In Continuous Integration and Deployment in ECAD we discussed the concept of Continuous Deployment within a build system. In this article, we will take a deeper look at how to set up continuous delivery and deployment systems so your team and vendors can enjoy a continuous stream of updated ECAD packages for review. Continuous Deployment/Delivery: Revisited In Continuous Integration: An Implementation Using Altium Designer we went through the Read Article

Continuous Integration: An Implementation Using Altium Designer

Continuous Integration: An Implementation Using Altium Designer In a previous article, Continuous Integration and Deployment in ECAD, we discussed the concept of Continuous Integration while testing within a build system (leveraging Git). In this article, we will take a deeper look at how to set this up and run these “tests” against one’s PCB design project. Continuous Integration Tests: Revisited In Software Engineering, the purpose of implementing Continuous Integration into a workflow is to prevent one’s Read Article

Continuous Integration and Deployment in ECAD

Continuous Integration and Deployment in ECAD Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment have become widely adopted practices within the software world. The concept of Continuous Integration and Deployment don’t need to be limited to just software - they can be extended into the ECAD world as well. In this article we will address both concepts and how they can be leveraged in ECAD tools. Continuous Deployment Designers will frequently make changes to their code and check it into the Read Article

EMC Certification and Your Product

EMC Certification and Your Product I’ve spent most of my career in electronics working with or for small businesses and startups, and helping them shape ideas into a physical product. Some recurring misconceptions I faced with almost every client were regarding Electromagnetic Compatibility compliance. Many had no idea that their products would need EMC testing, some were unaware of the duration of time and cost of certification, and others were unaware of how requirements applied Read Article

Requirements Management and Quality Functional Deployment

Requirements Management and Quality Functional Deployment “Ending up in the wrong place is the result of bad directions, not bad driving. Product failure in the marketplace results from errors in requirements, not implementation.” - Thomas L. Musto, Chairman, IBM Corporation (Retired) A definition of QFD: Quality-Functional-Deployment (QFD) [literal translation of the Japanese characters] is an analytical method to help you transform customer needs (the voice of the customer [VOC]) into engineering Read Article

Benchmarking Practices and Process for PCB Designers

Benchmarking Practices and Process for PCB Designers Benchmarking is a company-wide process for analyzing company performance against industry leaders. Companies use it to better understand how their top products perform and allows them to develop plans to improve or adapt specific technologies or practices. Benchmarking uses a set of metrics to measure performance, such as cost per unit of measure, productivity per unit of measure, cycle time of x per unit of measure or defects per unit of measure Read Article

Why PCB Prototyping in the U.S. is a Crucial Element For Success

Why PCB Prototyping in the U.S. is a Crucial Element For Success Within today’s global design and manufacturing environment, moving PCB manufacturing offshore is our industry’s de facto product development process. Many believe that PCB prototyping could and should be moved offshore to take advantage of the rising skill and capability levels of the offshore resources in Taiwan, China and Korea. This has led to a crisis in the U.S. PCB prototyping industry. U.S.-based companies find it difficult to stay in Read Article

How to "Git" Collaborative with Altium Designer

How to "Git" Collaborative with Altium Designer Getting collaboration right with any ECAD tool can be rather challenging. For most of us we tend to stick with the “old school” methods: Work on your design Send a zip package via email to another Other works on the design and sends a zip package back to you for review You work on your design and send back to the other Repeat forever This method not only clutters up your inbox but it also forces you to work in a serial fashion. The solution to Read Article