I originally wrote this post for the Mindtribe blog, which is full of great content.

Back in 2014, a couple of friends and I toyed with the idea of doing a hardware startup. We had a decent idea (I think) and a good deal of hardware prototyping experience. The three of us figured we could make a go of it. We put together an Arduino-based prototype, got some user feedback, applied to a few incubators… and that was about it. At the end of the day my friends had interesting PhDs to get back to, and I had just accepted a job offer from a great company called Mindtribe. So we shelved the startup dream.

The question remains — could we have launched a good product? Ultimately, we’ll never know. But after working at Mindtribe for a few months, I can say that there are roughly 873 important facets of making a real product that I had never considered as a fledgling hardware hacker. I’ll describe a few of them here; so if you have an Arduino and a dream, keep reading.

First of all…

1. You’ll need a PCB

An Arduino is a great prototyping tool, but it will be an actual printed circuit board (PCB) that goes into your finished product. Few colleges teach PCB design, and if you’re a new hardware hacker, you might not have much experience with this.

Laying out a robust PCB is a hard thing to do. Component placement, trace routing, thermal reliefs, signal integrity — all of these aspects of PCB design have pitfalls that could lead to failures on your board. You’ll want to go through a few design guides to familiarize yourself with the important considerations.