Awesome Hardware Production

List of awesome resources on the interwebs for going to production with a hardware product.

Table of Contents

• Blogs, RSS feeds, and one-off articles
• Components and Procurement
• Design for Manufacturing
• Device Firmware
• Shenzhen
• Teardowns
• Testing and QA
• Standards and Compliances
• License

General

Blogs, RSS feeds, and one-off articles

• Bolt VC - Blog about hardware products and engineering.
• Bunnie Huang - Blog posts on electronics and hardware.
• Crowd Supply Guide - Guidelines on bringing a product from idea to shipping orders using crowdfunding.
• Talk - How to Bring Your Project from Idea to Reality - Mitch Altman's talk from The Next HOPE(2010). Alternate video link from BruCon (2010).
• List of difference between prototyping and production - Gist of the series of tweets from boldport on prototyping vs production.
• Prototyping vs Production - Series of tweets describing the difference between hardware prototyping and production.
• The Prepared - Weekly newsletter, and not-so-regular podcasts about manufacturing.

Components and Procurement

• Dragon Innovation - Google Sheets template on BOM format.
• IC Package types - Comprehensive list of all types of packages.
• Indispensability of Good Documentation - Talk about schematics and BOM for electronics manufacturing.

Design for Manufacturing

• 11 DIY PCB DFM checks anyone can do - Blog post from Seeed Studio.
• Design for Manufacturing Course - Online course on Design for Manufacturing.
• Fictiv's Injection Molding Video Series - 4-part educational video series
• Plastic is Forever: Designing Tomu's Injection-Molded Case - Talk about things involved in injection moulding cases for electronics.

Device Firmware

• ESP Jumpstart - Software guide for writing production grade code on ESP32 and ESP8266.
• Making Embedded Systems: Design Patterns for Great Software - Book on Design Patterns for Embedded Software Development.
• The Practical Linux Hardening Guide - Provides a high-level overview of hardening GNU/Linux systems.
• Buried Treasure and Map Files - Good understanding of map files

Online Stores

E-Commerce websites for buying components.

• Digi-Key Electronics - Electronic component distributor and a broad-line distributor of board level components.
• Element14 - Distributor for electronic system design, maintenance and repair by Premier Farnell.
• Indian e-commerce stores for components - List of Indian e-commerce stores for procuring components.
• Misumi - Provider of fixed and configurable components for the manufacturing industry.
• Mouser - Online distributor of electronic components .
• RS Components - Distributor of electronics and maintenance products.

Shenzhen

• Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen - Book on electronics in Shenzhen.
• Strangeparts - Videos about building things in Shenzhen, factory tours, and more.

Teardowns

Learn from what other people have built.

• Dave Jones aka EEVBlog
• Fictiv
• iFixit

Testing and QA

• Etcher and Etcher Pro - Software and hardware to simultaneously flash images to multiple devices.
• Exclave - A factory test infrastructure, written in Rust.
• Exclave motivations - Blog post describing the throught processing behind making a framework for factory test infrastructure.

Standards and Compliances

• Better IoT - A community-led effort to make a free, accessible, open assessment tool to help design better connected products.
• Checklist for PCB layout and schematic review - An opensource design review checklist.
• Norms to design PCB - List of industry standards for PCB.
• OSHW Certification - Guide to self-certify a product as OSHWA-compliant open source hardware

License