Supporting Innovation at the Local Level

Creativity drives innovation.  Innovation creates value.  Investing in innovation has created massive fortunes for venture capitalists.  When local governments support innovation the community benefits.  By fostering innovation as a service to the community, like public parks, cities develop a dynamic, entrepreneurial, and competitive workforce while driving value creation through innovation.

Societies that support the spirit of innovation create a platform from which commerce and culture flourish.  Creative people become innovators with access to the right resources (mentioned below). Making these resources available to the masses opens the door for people, who may otherwise have no chance, to pursue their creative dreams.

Since Hatch focuses on custom Android hardware development, this article relates to creating an innovation infrastructure for hardware related projects, specifically in the electronics space.  Driving innovation in the software space requires less physical infrastructure, as the main inputs for that are computers and teachers.

A local government can start to support grassroots hardware development by embracing and empowering key groups.  These groups include engineer associations, makerspaces, and business or academic communities.  People who are passionate about their creative pursuits help spread that passion and experience to newcomers.  Put these people under one roof, like a makerspace, where mentors teach and students undertake demo projects to develop their engineering skills.

In addition to education, newcomers need materials used for product development.  That way they can apply the concepts they learn and experiment new ideas on their own.  Useful materials include engineering tools like soldering irons and measurement tools, electronics like development boards, and electronic components.  The same principles of development apply to many kinds of products.  For that reason the mentors should focus on only 2 kinds of development boards.  Using just 2 different boards will build a deep competency, while providing principles for further development.

After 1-2 years of educating the community, engage local companies to get involved.  They can give students real life assignments and training.  Like an internship program.  The goal is to have the students develop prototypes for experienced companies, under the supervision of the company.  This gives students a goal to work towards and a chance to receive an evaluation of their work.  Companies have the chance to give back to the community, get development services for a reduced cost, or find new employees through their participation.

Empowering creative people to pursue their interests builds an ecosystem of innovation.  Much like Silicon Valley did with the internet and Montreal is doing with video games, prosperous cities must embrace changing workforce needs.  Providing resources to attract creative people and give them the means to exploit their creativity is one of the cheapest and most effective ways for a society to generate advanced competency and prosperity.

2 Tips to expedite custom Android hardware development

Developing a custom Android product, like all new product development, is a process of educated trial and error.  Developers with more experience require less experimenting, but, at an acute level, each product comes with unique challenges to resolve.  The key to faster development is reducing unknowns in the development process.  In this article we’ll look at two ways to remove unknowns that affect the initial stages of a product’s development.

Custom electronics development consists of 3 main engineering disciplines.  In no particular order, there’s the electronics, mechanical (case), and firmware design.  Within these 3 parts, the integration of the electronics with the case requires another layer of engineering attention.

Building Electronics into an Existing Case for Early Production Runs

In China’s electronic manufacturing ecosystem, some companies just sell cases.  These ‘open market’ cases are generally for high volume commodity products (like Android tablets and smartphones).  The case suppliers don’t make the final product, but sell their cases to companies that make the final product.  The case supplier makes assessments about what design(s) will sell well, invests in molds for the cases, and sells their cases on the open market.  Buyers include factories that make the final product or product companies that do their own component sourcing.

Case manufacturers will help electronic engineers design electronics into the existing case.  In this scenario the electronics engineers don’t need to go through the trial and error process of designing new electronics into a new case.  At the same time the company buying the finished product doesn’t need to spend the time and money to invest in making a custom mold.

Easily update the Android OS or individual apps

OTA, the acronym for ‘Over the Air’, refers to pushing software updates to remote hardware over the internet.  This is commonly seen when a new iPhone or Android OS version comes out.  When that happens people using an older phone will get a notification asking if they want to update to the newest OS.  This is an OTA update.  OTA updates are great for custom Android devices.  The alternative is having to manually update each device, which takes substantially more time and money, sometimes making it impractical.

A custom Android device’s firmware and special, embedded, apps also go through an ongoing development process.  Ideally, by the time the units go to mass production all the software is final, but it’s common to discover bugs or have software updates after units are produced.  This is even more true before mass production, during the development process.  Modifications to either the firmware or apps that run on the device happen daily.  Delays in trial production due to finalizing either of these softwares are completely unnecessary with OTA capability on the device.

In summary

Reducing moving parts and uncertainties makes development faster and less risky.  When changes are necessary, which they almost always are, making them as easy as possible also makes development faster and less risky.