What differentiates a commercial product from a hobbyist project? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: redgear
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 07:24:00 am
content: Many of the commercial products can be DIYed using an Arduino or something. Cost, grade of the capacitors, resistor and interference filters are what I could think of. What else?

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 07:30:40 am
content: Design-for-manufacturability and having production lines or communicating with contract manufacturers.This is where startups tumble when they have a prototype consisting of Arduino module spaghetti with BOM of $1000 and then they think they can promise delivery in Kickstarter for $1500 in 3 months. No, the whole design starts over, you need to find professional designers to do it from scratch, and then you fail.

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 07:32:44 am
content: Did you build it for the specific purpose of selling, or to resolve a personal goal,For profit = commercial, you expect to be paid for it, or to sell it to othersFor a goal = hobby, if other people want to buy it then great, but you where not thinking of users when making it.Arduino as software is fine, but for the love of your own sanity, check any external libraries, and if your going to make something to sell as its own product, it really doesn't take much effort to spin it into your own board, I have multiple commercial products in the wild that have the QFP package variant of the arduino uno chip, and so far the only thing that killed them was being underwater in a storm surge for multiple days, more than I expected actually survived the encounter, but where corroded.Even lazier you could just have the socket and literally stick the chip in off your dev board

author: redgear
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 07:39:20 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on July 11, 2020, 07:30:40 amBy Design-for-manufacturability do you mean using SMD/SMT packages instead of DIP ones, designing PCBs with PNP machines in mind,etc?Quote from: Rerouter on July 11, 2020, 07:32:44 amI'm trying to build a commercial grade appliance, that people can use without being afraid of safety or other issues. Let's say I'm building a coffee machine. What things do you take care of when you design it for other's to use?

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 07:54:42 am
content: Design for manufacturing generally means things like:selecting components that have high availability, e.g. that SMD resistor costs 3c more, but it usually has half a million in stock for next day shippingReducing parts to the fewest unique values / sizes, the lower the PNP rows you need, the cheaper they are in assemblyRemove all throughole components from a design if they are not required to meet some other requirement, as they usually have to be hand soldered, slowing things downPlan out a testing procedure, so faults can be caught at the factory if your doing a medium compexity orderlook into ordering microcontrollers from the various suppliers pre-programmed, the fee is generally worth less than your timeAs other people are dealing with it, how could someone put it together, or use it incorrectly, e.g. if you have connectors to some sensors etc, make it not possible to fit the wrong plug on the wrong socket, label things, silkscreen is free, idiot check your UI handling, are there undefined states for the machine, how should the machine react if a sensor or motor fails, can it detect it cheaply and reliably? kind of like smoke alarm proving circuitsDesign for an enclosure from the get go, its easier to have the mechanical team give you a space and some mounting holes, than the other way around, and work with them for other constaints such as heatMaking sure things won't break off if dropped form about 1.2m (average height a box is held at by adults) this is where hot snot glue is used generallycost reducing, if the product is only used a few hundred hours per year at reasonable temperatures, you probably do not need it to be built for a 100% duty cycle, so that 10000 hour 105C cap could be subbed in with like a 2000 hour 85C cap if it saves you enough, that 1% resistor might only need to be 5%, you might not need that crystal, the internal RC clock might be good enough, you might flip around some logic so you can use the internal pullups,And lastly, your dealing with something that is around liquids, make sure that can't easily reach your PCB!, both so you can't hurt someone, and so accidents don't easily kill the product, adding a fluid channel is usually really cheap when already dealing with custom mouldings for products.

author: redgear
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 07:56:55 am
content: Quote from: Rerouter on July 11, 2020, 07:54:42 amThank you so much. Very informative!

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 08:06:37 am
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on July 11, 2020, 07:30:40 ami dont think this is what happened. we dont cost the product near to BOM cost. BOM cost should be much lower. what i think happened is either the funded money is further used on R&D time, fullfilling inventors' lifestyle and living cost, the team's monthly paycheck, or not accounting lead/one time/setup manufacturing cost etc or outsourcing too much works, leaving not enough money or none at all to cover BOM cost alone, let alone the running manufacturing cost. thats why if your team consist of more than maybe 3 persons and/or too much outside influences got in the way, then you'll need an accountant as the 4th person

author: MosherIV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 09:08:35 am
content: Commercial product designers have to consider liability.So all electronic design engineers have to consider the effects of component failure in the circuit, will it cause some dangerous failures. The circuits often have what looks like surplus components but they are actually there for failure modes. For some failures, it is more than just fusing.I think some have already mentioned cost of components. Hobbiest are not worried about more expensive components, quality is more important than cost. Production - cost is king. Companies often have cost down specialist to either modify the design or find the cheapest components that satify the design.

author: redgear
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 09:27:59 am
content: Quote from: MosherIV on July 11, 2020, 09:08:35 amWhen you say more than fuses, what might they be? Are multiple backups included even in non-critical appliances as well?And do you mean DIY products have more quality than a commercial product as result of the expensive components being used?

author: MosherIV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 09:46:43 am
content: QuoteThere is no simple answer. The designer must consider the effect of a component failure, will it lead to a dangerous situation. If so how to mitigate the component failure.For instance, if a component failure leads to excessive heating which can lead to fire. In some cases the current draw is not enough to blow a fuse. Consider what can be done to the circuit to shutdown in the case of component failure.QuoteNot necessarily. Sometimes yes. Commercial products are built to a cost (as blueskul says) but in some cases that does not mean they are worse than if you use more expensive components.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 09:53:01 am
content: Quote from: MosherIV on July 11, 2020, 09:08:35 amIncorporation, degrees of separation and plausible deniability all remove them from liability in a way a hobbyist designer/seller can not. A commercial designer should consider the liability of the corporation, but even though language wise professional is synonymous with high quality ... practically it is not of course. That they should doesn't mean they won't.But they made the more important step of professionalism, they did their best not to be personally liable. The true sign of a professional.So first things first, incorporate.

author: Wolfram
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 10:08:20 am
content: The reliability requirement for commercial products is often a lot higher. For many hobbyist projects, it's not a disaster if the hardware fails after 100 hours of use. If you have tens of thousands of units sold to customers, then even a moderate failure rate in the field can eat up your whole margin and reputation.Then there is documentation, writing a proper user manual for the product can be a lot of effort. Customer support as well. Multiply by the number of official languages in the regions you plan to cover.Packaging of the final product, stocking and logistics can also be a huge effort. Designing a printed cardboard box with foam inserts that protects the product in shipping and looks nice, while not adding too much to the cost, is a project in itself. If the production time is long due to component lead-times, then you need to stock more units to cover the expected demand. This can take a significant investement up-front, and if there are several versions of the product you have to do this separately for each version. The risk here is being stuck with large volumes of product which doesn't sell. You can also add some margin to cover for stuff that gets damaged or lost in transit.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 10:11:17 am
content: Quote from: Wolfram on July 11, 2020, 10:08:20 amConversely, hobbyists can tackle projects that would never fly in commercial life. They can often afford to spend endless resources on a labour of love.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 10:16:53 am
content: Quote from: Wolfram on July 11, 2020, 10:08:20 amnot necessarily.. planned obsolescence is keyword (and professionals are very good at this)... my personal diy stuffs usually outlast commercial product far longer, one example is my real wooden table here, not the wood scum stuffs that can only last for a year. one can argue i probably comparing with cheap hunglow commercial stuffs, fine. commercial products that can last as long as my table here probably costs 10X higher or more than my diy BOM.

author: Wolfram
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 10:38:14 am
content: I mostly agree here, hobbyist projects can be built to standards that would often be impractical for anything commercial, but most of the failures are in the circuit design itself. Lack of ESD protection on external inputs, little to no EFT and EMI filtering, fragile communication interfaces that would fail all common conducted immunity standards, switching regulators cascaded without any consideration to the overall stability and so on. I've seen some truly horrible commercial products too, and some amazing hobbyist projects, so it's not a universal truth, just a trend. I'm trying to argue against the idea that a working hobbyist one-off is anywhere close to being ready for the commercial market as far as electrical robustness goes, unless special attention has been paid to this. At least this is my experience going from doing electronics as a hobbyist, to designing electronics for mass production.

author: aheid
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 10:39:51 am
content: From personal experience, a key difference is that commercial products are completed...

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 12:57:26 pm
content: Quote from: Wolfram on July 11, 2020, 10:38:14 amIt goes both ways. I've seen enough shit pushed into production because time ran out. Can we pretend it functions? You're done. Ship it.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 01:22:42 pm
content: The overriding principle is as others have noted:amateurs think about how something will workprofessionals also think about all the ways something can fail, and address thoseAnother aspect is that commercial products are created by teams, and in a good team one person's weaknesses are avoided because another person has the compensatory strengths. Amateur products have "suboptimal" aspects that mirror their creator's skills and interests.Not all commerical products are created by professionals, unfortunately.

author: TheUnnamedNewbie
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 01:40:54 pm
content: Next to DFM/EMI and so on, another factor that applies in a lot of cases is that a commercial product will be engineered. (Note that I'm not saying 'built by engineers', nor that hobby projects are not done 'well' or anything).In a hobby project, you have more room to do stuff 'because it will probably be fine'. EG, for RF/high frequency/communication products (my field), in hobby-projects, there are a lot of stuff that is just done 'cause it will probably work. This is not the case in larger commercial products: everything is simulated. Transmission lines? Completly simulated in a 2.5D/3D package. Antennas? Fully modelled, verified with effects of surroundings (case, positioning of device on tables etc,...). Power delivery networks? Simulated, including the parasitics of the different packages. Filters? Full analysis over variability. What about variations due to temperature? Power consumption/cooling? Simulated in a (thermal)CFD package.And there is just more expertise in the design. Not only because most people involved are doing it for a long time and as a job, but because there are more of them. You have someone who focuses on say PCB design. A few people who focus on power-delivery. People who focus on the antennas and transmission lines, etc etc. All together, these people will have much more combined experience than a single hobby designer could ever have.But as always, this is the ideal, or the 'this is how it should be' case, and you will find lots of examples of things not being done like that.Oh, and design-for-test. Especially in the case of ICs, this is a big, big deal. There are entire teams of tens or hunderds of engineers working at the big IC design houses who spend their entire day thinking about how they will make things testable/verifiable. I seem to recall some statistic that showed that for smaller analog ICs, almost 50% of the production cost was in the testing. Not the silicon, not the packaging, not transport - just making sure the thing works.

author: srb1954
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 02:09:18 pm
content: In my experience as a HW design engineer, designing and making a working electronic prototype, to the stage that a hobbyist might do, is a relatively small part of the work involved in getting a commercial product to market.A lot of the additional work that goes into a commercial product is internal documentation for the design, product qualification, product certification, service, component procurement and manufacturing information. When estimating the project budget I used to allow at least 25% of the total budget for such documentation. This can amount to quite an amount of time and money as commercial product development budgets usually work out much larger than anyone expects.Another major cost factor is the mechanical design of the packaging which can be quite expensive and time consuming, particularly if you require a custom plastic case for your product.

author: Tomorokoshi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 02:16:37 pm
content: Expect $100,000 for approvals and testing, along with 4 layers of management for a commercial product.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 02:59:30 pm
content: The biggest difference is that companies will do whatever they can get away with to cut the last cent off the production cost, while hobbyists will gladly pay a few more dollars or more on a serious project if it means getting better performance or an easier time getting it to work.Quote from: Tomorokoshi on July 11, 2020, 02:16:37 pmDepends on whether or not the product deals with high voltages and/or RF, and if it does, whether it uses off the shelf or custom devices to interact with those.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 03:07:22 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on July 11, 2020, 02:59:30 pmI know of the opposite: companies (e.g. HP) prepared to spend alotof money to buy equipment that will help get the product out of the door 3 months earlier. Sometimes hitting a certain market window is more profitable over the product's lifetime.

author: unitedatoms
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 04:50:36 pm
content: The enclosure. It takes 2 seconds to tell if something is made for sale vs for fun.Us hobbyists are not able to think in 3 dimensions to make mechanically sensible things. As long as 2D board is finished the project is over.

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 11, 2020, 06:34:38 pm
content: The extra components other than fuses at efor example safety circuits that make sure the thing doesn't do any harm when software goes tits up. Because if the software failure may cause property or health damage and you product falls under 60335 or 60730 group of standards you need to go for class B software. And external audit for this costs shitload of money and some really massive documentation.You need to do safety FMEA and make sure that the product is safe under single fault conditions. That's why you will see stuff like 2 relays in series for example (makes sure that even if one of them gets welded the other one opens and brake the circuit).There are integrated safety relays that basically have 2 coils and 2 sets of contacts.Some extra components are for EMI compliance.

author: redgear
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 12, 2020, 08:45:00 am
content: Thank you for every one that replied. There is so much to learn from this thread.

author: poorchava
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2020, 03:26:55 pm
content: You'll also see a situation, where there's a CPU running at right below 100MHz. This is because acc. to IEC 55022 / CISPR22 if you have anything cvlocked above 100MHz, you need to do radiated emissions up to 3Ghz, , while otherwise only up to 1GHz (IIRC). If you have something really nasty that you can't remove or it's costly, then sometimes is makes sense to reduce clock rate to not have to scan that range.As for EMC, the most common stuff you'll see are ferrite beads, common mode chokes and capacitors in weird places (eg. between DGND and AGND, which de facto are at the same potential). There are also snubbers around anything switching (fets, diodes etc). In most low power (say <10...20W) the resonanse frequencies go well into 150+MHz range where they get caught by radiated emissions testing.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2020, 05:41:57 pm
content: Quote from: unitedatoms on July 11, 2020, 04:50:36 pmThis is the truth.The design team for commercial products always includes a mechanical engineer to do the enclosure and the thermal design. At the day job, our ME gives me board outlines and envelopes, and this drives connector placement and a whole host of things. I don't have to worry about how the holes and slots will get cut into the metalwork.For my audio home projects, I spend more time trying to find enclosures that will fit, because that drives circuit board size among other things. And I choose connectors and indicators that need easy-to-drill holes rather than require milling. And I keep playing with various front-panel design software so that if it turns out that I want to build more than one or two of something, I can have those metal parts made.And the enclosure seems to be the most expensive part of the design.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 13, 2020, 06:06:15 pm
content: Many commercial products are just assembled board kits , no enclosure at all or just a flat acrylic cover plate.

author: aiq25
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 14, 2020, 03:11:42 pm
content: Others have mentioned great things. One thing I would like to add is hobby projects sometimes have reliability issues and/or do not have an worst case circuit analysis (WCCA) or stack up performed. Working in automotive for example, we need to ensure a robust design and need to have worst case circuit analysis completed as well a through validation testing of the HW (and if applicable SW) before releasing a product.For example, I seen a lot of boards from Adafruit that would fail WCCA horribly. A lot of manufacturers have reference designs that actually don't pass WCCA (Texas Instruments being of them and I have had a lot of discussion with TI about this professionally). Hobby projects typically copy reference designs and don't do much analysis and testing on their own.

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2020, 08:47:36 am
content: Quote from: redgear on July 11, 2020, 07:24:00 amOne word...MeetingsConcept meetings. Design meetings. Project meetings. Customer meetings. Marketing meetings. Planning meetings. Redesign meetings. Governance meetings. Supplier meetings. Subcontractor meetings. Budget meetings. Quality meetings. Reading the minutes from the last meeting meetings. Another change in the specification meetings. We need to change the subcontractor again meetings. The project manager just had another "great idea" meetings. The customer hates it even though it is what they asked for meetings. Why did we have to fly a thousand miles to spend ten minutes meeting these clueless idiots meetings.That's therealdifference.hobby <> salaried

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2020, 11:39:25 am
content: Commercial products are, first and foremost, designed to meet a business need. They exist to make a profit for those people who design, build and sell them.If that business requirement can be met by lashing together a few off-the-shelf boards and hiding the mess in a box, that may be just as valid as something engineered to the 'n'th degree and signed off by a dozen committees before going into a million safety critical products. It's simply not possible to say that "commercial products all require... <thing>", because "commercial products" is such an enormously wide category.For some, the component cost is a complete non-issue. In others, shaving off every fraction of a cent is essential. There's no universally applicable rule.The same goes for documentation, process and sign-off. If you're making an automotive ECU with authority over engine and brake control, then of course the design must be completed according to prescribed procedures, documented, tested and so on. On the other hand, if you're making (say) a protocol converter for laboratory use, with the expectation of selling a few hundred a year, then no, it won't have been through any of that.It's perhaps more useful to look at what defines a hobbyist product, and there are some common elements:- designed primarily for the fun of it, not because it's expected to be commercially viable. Profitability is a nice-to-have, not essential.- overall scope limited by the time and resources available to the person developing it.There are plenty of other attributes which people might be tempted to apply only to hobby projects, but they're not really differentiators...- likelihood of containing egregious design errors due to lack of knowledge and experience - definitely not limited to hobby projects only.- poor quality of documentation - though commercial projects tend to suffer more from bad translations and an excess of unnecessary warnings, rather than simply not existing at all.

author: dbctronic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2020, 12:36:49 pm
content: Ah, yes, there is the labor of love factor.I am spending almost all of my retirement hobby time making something that may have no chance at all of actually working, but I'm doing it because it's forcing me to learn a great deal about two things I've wanted to pursue for a long time: magnetics and achieving somewhat precision machining with inexpensive tools and handmade rigs. I'm also learning a lot of electronics, designing and building custom devices. It has most certainly achieved these goals, and continues to do so. And of course, any serious learning effort always leads you down unexpected learning avenues. No telling what you may discover when you aren't rattling down the old standard pathways to immediate success.For example: want to make a simple graticule for a motion observing telemicroscope? Sending out artwork to an optics production lab is expensive. Try making lines on glass or plastic by various methods--the results tend to be just horrible, wandering grooves with chipped, raised edges and gouges. Or--1. Clamp a straightedge bar at least a half inch tall onto a piece of plastic.2. Stand a single edge razor blade up against the straightedge.3. Press down very lightly, and move the blade about 1/4 inch.Beautiful, perfectly straight lines--look professional at 120X magnification! Wouldn't likely have discovered it if I were under time constraints.

author: H713
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2020, 05:43:40 am
content: Age also matters here. Some products, like the famous Phase Linear 700, had almost no protection in them. Output device shorts (pretty common failure in these amps)? Here's 90 volts to the speaker terminals. This is not an uncommon thing to see, and even into the 90s many amps had little more than speaker fuses for protection. And these are technically consumer products, in many cases.

author: dbctronic
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 19, 2020, 12:25:55 pm
content: The comment above about meetings is true. About the only meetings I have in my workshop are when I grab a flyswatter and go after the horseflies!! When I was a tech writer, I had to meet with programming or engineering staff from time to time. But I watched the daily parade of drained engineer and programmer faces coming down the hallway, with that half mile stare that said 'another meeting over with!'As for documentation, I write drafts first (black box specs), then go in for a rough design and first round testing (white box specs). Then, add important reference data as appendices. Then document the math needed for the design in more appendices. Then revise the white box specs, and re-revise and retest the design. By the time I have the project done, I have a pretty good document too. It's the only way I can keep track of all that stuff! My current main project already has a stack of handwritten notes almost an inch thick, not counting the stuff I've rewritten, condensed down, and thrown out. And it has several side projects to go with it, all also documented.My approach isn't great for impulse gratification, but it's a real sanity saver, and as I get older, the memory aid becomes increasingly important. It definitely preventslotsof do-overs.