Column: Embedded design
The mythical “Swiss Army knife” product
By Myk Dormer, RF Engineer and Director, Smallwireless Limited Sure, this type product can be made
to work: just look at all the Raspberry- Pi- or Arduino-based “maker” projects. But, it isn’t going to sell if compared with a properly-designed wireless device in a competitive market, because it’s carrying too much “bloat” and is weighed down with unused features and parts. Then it fails in the market against a proper design, which incorporates only what is needed, and it is smaller and cheaper. USB interfaces are a great example.
W
e all know when a client can have a bee in their bonnet. I had this type of
situation, recently. Every time the client framed a product description for a new radio, he couldn’t resist trying to slip in a few extra features, or another interface, or another operating mode … and it didn’t stop at one addition. He claimed that “Swiss Army knife” products are needed to fulfi l the skills of a cohort of “new engineers” who are (I am told) unable to sort out hardware designs and are “afraid of soldering irons”. T e big problem with selling a
product to well-intentioned but in hardware terms untrained “designers” is that you will only ever end up selling a few prototypes.
10 October 2026
www.electronicsworld.co.uk
The product isn’t going to sell if compared with a
properly-designed wireless device in a competitive market, because it’s carrying too much “bloat” and is weighed
down with unused features and parts
Could you have a simple ISM band data modem module with a USB port? Yes. Change the processor and throw a lot of software development in, add some extra interface parts and, bingo, you’re there. But, compared to a simple serial interface design, you’ve doubled the current drain, added a couple of quid to the bill-of-materials, and swamped the RF signal under digital noise. Let’s be clear: I am not against
having a variety of interfaces and functions; but, you can’t afford to add them randomly into the same product, to achieve the said Swiss-Army-knife effect without bloating it. If a customer needs multiple parallel
I/O pins, then a wireless product with that facility can be created. This, however, doesn’t mean that there is any value in adding an extensive parallel interface to every single product.
This column on embedded design prepared by Myk Dormer continues in the next edition of Electronics World
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