We offer a design review service which can be a great time and cost-saving measure to have a second pair of eyes go through your electronic project before manufacturing. Losing a manufacturing run due to “show stopper” errors like mis-wired connections can lose months of engineering time as the product is debugged and re-manufactured or painstakingly re-worked. From our past 20 years working with electronic circuits, we’ve made all the beginner mistakes so you don’t have to.
The output of the design review will be a list of notes detailing the issues found in the design, the criticality of the issue (i.e. “show-stopper”, “suggestion” or “please double-check this”), and suggested changes. Usually we will also have a 1 hour debrief meeting with your engineers to go over the list and answer any questions.
Below describe some of the things we check, depending on the parts of the design you want us to review:
System architecture checklist
- Check that high-level requirements have been determined
- Check that component selection satisfies the high-level requirements
- Component interfaces are compatible ( i.e. if a component needs an I2C bus, make sure one is available)
- Verify bandwidth of busses are sufficient for the devices on them
- Verify power supply domains can power dependent devices
- Verify noisy devices are not sharing busses and power domains with noise susceptible devices
- Verify MCU resources (CPU, memory, DMA) are sufficient for the needs of the application
- Check that industry-standard design paradigms are being used
Schematic Checklist
- Check functionality against high-level requirements (if provided)
- Pin names and numbers according to data sheet for devices
- Proper bus termination
- Supporting circuitry is properly implemented according to data sheet
- Correct connection of communication interfaces between devices, logical connections & voltage levels
- Main MCU consider internal architecture when deciding external pins to use
- Power supply analysis, capacity and noise consideration
- Suggested testpoints and debug interfaces
- Suggested connection of auxiliary lines such as IRQ pins
- Power saving: Ensure power domains can be switched, analog inputs are clamped
Layout Checklist
- Copper trace widths & clearances are adequate
- Check efficient routing
- High-speed busses are protected
- Differential signals are routed correctly
- Check for crosstalk between high speed interfaces or digital<->analog
- Check for dead-end radiator traces
- Check ground plane connectivity
- Check locations of bypass capacitors
- Check silkscreen printability
- Check ease of manufacturability & debug
- Check fitment
- Check external EMI susceptibility
Manufacturing files
- All Gerbers needed for PCBA exist
- Gerbers line-up with each other, drill file, and pick & place file