Home gateway — all IoT protocols in a single unit
- Situation An established company with no embedded experience approached us to build a home gateway combining all common IoT protocols for integration into their cloud platform. Only the idea existed — no hardware concept, no architecture, no housing.
- What we delivered Together with the customer we defined the overall architecture and selected wired and wireless standards. After multiple housing iterations we developed the complex PCB and made the enclosure production-ready. We built a customised Yocto OS as a starting point for the customer's newly acquired internal software team. After certification, we produced the first 1k batch for fastest time to market while onboarding a contract manufacturer for the planned annual volume of 50k units.
- Outcome Probably the world's most comprehensive home gateway — Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thread, Zigbee, wireless M-Bus, and 4G LTE. All protocols in a single unit, ready for mass production.
- Key components NXP i.MX8M Mini · Ethernet PHY · Wi-Fi 5 + BLE combo · NXP K32W Zigbee/Thread · NXP UBX100 wireless M-Bus · 4G LTE modem · supercap-powered RTC · injection-moulded enclosure
Smart speaker — full electronics redesign for an existing product
- Situation A customer wanted to refresh the electronics of an existing smart speaker product. The current generation was built around an Asian SoM with no software control — integrating the device into their broader product ecosystem required full ownership of the operating system.
- What we delivered A complete SoM-less mainboard designed from scratch around the i.MX6UL, engineered to fit the existing housing. The design includes a dedicated MCU for low-power management, audio DSP and amplifiers, a new battery management board, and an HMI PCB with OLED display and capacitive touch input. We provided a matching Yocto toolchain along with a number of prototypes.
- Outcome The customer implemented their own software stack, fully integrating the speaker into their existing ecosystem. Since the new electronics are mechanically compatible with the original design, no housing or tooling changes were needed — production in Asia continued seamlessly with upgraded electronics the customer now owns the IP of.
- Key components NXP i.MX6UL · ADAU1761 audio DSP · TPA3118 amplifier · IW416 Wi-Fi + BT · CAP1188 capacitive touch · RP2040 MCU · OLED display · Li-Ion battery management
Automotive audio demonstrator — built for NXP on a tight deadline
- Situation NXP contacted us to build a demonstrator around one of their cutting-edge automotive audio DSPs. The platform needed to combine their Linux processor, audio DSP, automotive Ethernet PHYs, and 15 amplified speaker channels in a single development kit.
- What we delivered Together with their team we designed the system architecture, splitting it into a mainboard for high-speed digital components and a separate amplifier board for power electronics. We adapted their Yocto BSP for this dev kit so their software engineers could evaluate audio algorithms out of the box. A custom heatsink was developed to handle the thermal load of 15 amplifier channels.
- Outcome NXP received a fully functional development platform containing all required silicon. The project had a hard deadline tied to an internal milestone — using us as an external engineering partner made sure the tight schedule was met without compromise on quality.
- Key components NXP i.MX93 · SAF9100 audio DSP · IW611 Wi-Fi + BT · TDF8534 Class-D amplifiers (15 ch) · TJA1120 1000BASE-T1 automotive Ethernet PHY · custom heatsink
E-moped — smart dashboard and central gateway for next-gen electric scooter
- Situation A young company with an existing e-moped in production approached us for their next generation vehicle. The goal was to make it as smart as possible — LTE connectivity, GPS, satellite navigation, NFC unlock — and they had started prototyping with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module.
- What we delivered After evaluating the feature set we proposed a dual-processor architecture. The dashboard unit was built around an i.MX6DL driving a reflective sunlight-readable LCD. The central gateway runs on an i.MX6UL and handles LTE, GPS, I/O control, lighting, switches, and separate power management. The split architecture enables ultra-low standby power while keeping the full feature set available on wake.
- Outcome Today many thousands of these e-mopeds are on the road. Riders unlock with NFC cards and navigate on a large sunlight-readable display — features typically reserved for cars, now available on a two-wheeler. The platform proved reliable enough to scale into volume production without architectural changes.
- Key components NXP i.MX6DL · NXP i.MX6UL · NXP NFC reader · parallel LCD (sunlight-readable) · SIMCom LTE + GPS module · dedicated power management
These examples represent typical project patterns. Every engagement is different in scope and complexity.
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