Hardware Design Services: From Requirements and Part Selection to Pilot-Ready Prototypes

• Companies defining a new product from scratch: they have the product idea and the market, and need the idea turned into circuits and a complete device that powers on, demonstrates and can go to a pilot run.

• Software companies without a hardware team: algorithms and cloud are covered, but nobody is ready to draw the board, set the power tree or own EMC.

• Clients revising an existing product: an older product needs a new main controller, extra sensors or lower cost, and someone has to take it over and untangle its history.

• Clients whose product must pass FCC or CE certification: hardware decisions need to leave certification margin from the schematic stage onwards.

XTELL's hardware design process covers every step from requirements to prototype: requirements analysis and specification, then part selection and main controller evaluation, schematic design, PCB layout and routing, prototype fabrication and assembly, and finally prototype bring-up and iteration. This page covers the overall process and its trade-offs; individual steps have their own service pages - PCB design covers schematic to manufacturing files, FPGA design covers programmable logic, and PCB prototyping covers fabrication, assembly and iteration. The parent page and its child pages serve two reading needs: how to engage overall, and a deeper look at one step.

The low-power smart watch uses an Apollo2 (Cortex-M4) main controller, heart rate, accelerometer and gyroscope sensors, a 240x240 colour touch screen, Bluetooth 5.0 and WiFi connectivity, and firmware in C on an RTOS, with a companion phone app. The core challenge: conventional smart watches have short battery life and need charging every day. The solution was a multi-level power management strategy - optimised hardware selection combined with tuned software algorithms to implement intelligent sleep and wake, extending battery life while keeping the core functions. The lesson worth stating: battery life is achieved by hardware and firmware together, and working from either side alone is not enough.

The power inspection terminal is built for inspecting electrical equipment, and the challenge was real-time monitoring with precise location-based alarms. Hardware approach: an Apollo2 MCU collects sensor data, a map shows device positions, the alarm system flashes on anomalies, and numbered positioning helps inspectors find the target equipment quickly. Inspection terminals work outdoors for long periods, and power, reliability and locatability pull against each other - the hardware design of such a product is essentially finding the balance between the three.

The smart finger servo control system targets a bionic finger, and the challenge was coordinating multiple servos with precise position feedback. Hardware approach: an Arduino and AVR microcontroller controls the servos, servo.ino sets multiple servo angles, a USB board handles USBASP programming, and the main board integrates the drive circuitry. The project shows that XTELL's hardware design is not limited to screen-based products - small electromechanical systems integrating actuators, drive circuits and control boards are within scope too.

The main controller is chosen by working backwards from product constraints. Two delivered projects both chose the Apollo2: the smart watch needed long battery life and sensor integration, and the power inspection terminal needed low power with sensor acquisition - in low-power applications the Apollo2 is a sound choice. During selection we do three sums at once: are there enough peripherals for the function, can the power budget be met, and can the part actually be bought - the most suitable chip is worth nothing if it cannot be sourced. For projects without a chosen controller, selection is the first item of the service.

For battery-powered products, power management decides the success of the hardware design. The low-power smart watch uses multi-level power management: supply rails are controlled in tiers across operating modes, combined with intelligent sleep and wake, so that unused circuits are truly powered off rather than nominally on standby. Power problems have one unwelcome property: half of each sits in hardware and half in firmware. Hardware must provide the conditions for saving power and firmware must carry out the strategy; missing either half fails. That is the value of XTELL delivering hardware and software together.

This page is the overview of hardware design. Three more detailed steps each have their own page:

• PCB design: schematics, layout and routing, impedance control and manufacturing files - see the PCB design service page.

• FPGA design: Verilog/VHDL, timing closure and high-speed board design - see the FPGA design service page.

• Prototyping and pilot runs: fast fabrication, assembly, DFM review and iteration to production - see the PCB prototyping service page.

The recommended reading path is this page first to settle the engagement structure, then the child pages according to the project's focus.

One XTELL team writes the firmware, the app and the backend. The value on the hardware side: we drew the board and we wrote the firmware, so when a peripheral misbehaves we check the schematic, put a scope on the signal and fix it in the next board revision, instead of emailing a hardware supplier to ask why a line is low. The low-power smart watch's power management was tuned this way, with hardware selection and firmware algorithms in one team - a result that is hard to reach across two companies.

Clients' products routinely need FCC, CE or similar certification, and XTELL supports the related work. Hardware design's influence on certification is fixed early: RF circuit layout, antenna keep-out and power filtering are decided at the schematic and layout stages, and by the time of certification testing they can no longer be patched. Certificates are issued by accredited test labs; our job is a design that passes testing the first time, not repeated board revisions after a failure.

PCB design is done in KiCad, and mechanical design in FreeCAD or MCAD tools generally. The tool is not the point - design quality and measured prototype results are. Delivery scope is agreed per project in the contract.

1. Requirements review: the client provides the product definition, target market and key constraints (power, size, cost range), and we confirm the technical route.

2. Proposal and contract: selection recommendations, block diagram and milestones are written down. Whether design files and firmware source are delivered, and under an open or closed model, is agreed item by item in the contract. Nothing on this page constitutes a blanket commitment.

3. Design and prototyping: schematic, PCB and BOM progress, and fabrication and assembly follow the process of the PCB prototyping service.

4. Verification and delivery: prototype bring-up, issue records and revision iteration. Delivery scope follows the contract; timeline and price are given after assessment, and this page does not fix numbers.

XTELL (Shenzhen XTELL Future Technology) was founded in Shenzhen in 2016. Over the ten years since, it has delivered more than 100 projects, with clients predominantly western B2B companies. Its work covers every layer from circuit board to cloud: PCB design, FPGA, embedded firmware, Linux BSP, device interfaces, mobile apps, backends and IoT platforms.