Custom development of electronic devices

Of course! You pay for the development, so the design you create is yours.

As a standard, we supply complete editable production documents (schematics, PCB drawings, source codes) for further production and service purposes after the completion of a paid development task for serial production, although it is more than usual that subsequent production takes place at our facility. Exceptions are logically our standard products and elements derived from them and products manufactured in pieces, where we usually do not process the final documentation in the so-called. “bows”.

Some companies in the industry are “sitting on” production bases for development projects that customers have paid for – we consider this to be highly unethical behaviour.

Exceptions among the orders realized are not devices that exist explicitly in a single piece – typically, these are control of special machines (from a rotating plate for photography to aggregates with a power of hundreds of kW), special measuring and testing devices for test laboratories, etc.

We commonly supply complete turnkey installations, often with on-site installation.

We also have experience in the development of devices produced in batches of hundreds of thousands and sold worldwide.

We have quite a lot of experience, which is why our customers often leave the complete technical side of the equipment to us and limit the work assignment to a few sentences – other customers prefer to consult as often as possible, for example by weekly teleconferences, and supply us with detailed assignments of hundreds of pages. We like both approaches.

Usually we need the most precise desired ways of connecting the device to the outside world and controlling it, or to be able to imagine what the device does, who uses it. It’s great to see a competing or older similar device to give developers a feel for the issues. This is why the secretive assignments that appear from time to time are difficult, when we don’t know what the thing will actually be used for.

If you have experience in the field or a company electrical workshop, it is possible to have e.g. just write the firmware in the processor, consult the schematics and, for example, provide the mechanical design of the whole device yourself. We are happy to provide you with consultations – we often consult various applications of “hobby” boards such as Raspberry Pi or Arduino, or we solve the professionalization of designs originally developed on these platforms to achieve the required reliability and robustness of the systems.

Development prices are a very individual matter. The easiest way is to ask, we will be happy to send you a quote…

It is obvious that in the case of piece production, the price of labour will typically make up the majority of the final price of the product, in the case of a miniseries of e.g. 50 pieces of a simple microprocessor control unit, the development cost is usually less than a third of the product price. Of course, it always depends on the specific application: the ratio will be worse for consumer electronics, whereas, for example, the development of a brand new special PLC for a specific automation task can be cost-effective compared to a solution with standard control systems with just one piece. The simplification of installation thanks to adapted cabling and mechanical design, the reduction of dimensions and the professional appearance of the compact electrical part of the device are also significant advantages.

A surprisingly important part of the assignment is the estimation of the number of units to be produced. It is logical that a device that will be produced in single units or units per year will need to use different manufacturing technologies than a device produced in batches of hundreds or thousands. For “one-offs”, we usually try to simplify the development as much as possible, even at the cost of using expensive components, so that the total cost of the device remains as low as possible; on the contrary, in a series of thousands of pieces, it is worth investing, for example, two weeks of work by a developer (approx. 100,000 CZK), if his work allows us to save 150 crowns on a component (150,000 CZK in a series).

When creating quotations, we directly state the final price of the entire development and eventual production, we do not usually use the concept of hourly prices – it seems unfair to us to charge extra hours for unexpected technical problems (and when it comes to the matter, for example, in the case of the need for additional modifications significantly outside the scope of the original assignment, we charge 600 – 900 CZK excluding VAT for an hour of work of a technician, a programmer or HW developer 1200 – 1500 CZK excluding VAT). In the case of development for series production, we fundamentally separate the development and production phases: once the development is complete, the complete production documents are the property of the customer and it is up to the customer to decide whether to have the equipment manufactured by us or elsewhere.