Feature: Hardware design
Make hardware and firmware agree Many hardware failures begin at the hardware-firmware boundary. The schematic and firmware must agree on rail sequencing, reset states, sensor conversion timing, OLED refresh behaviour, charger faults, bus recovery, programming access and the safe condition of every pin. If firmware powers down the display or sensor, the hardware
must prevent I²C lines from back-powering the unpowered device. Firmware must place the corresponding GPIOs into a safe state before the rail is disabled. A failed sensor transaction also needs defined behaviour: retry, bus recovery, stale-data indication and return to a bounded low-power state. Traceability makes later changes manageable. If the display
update changes from one minute to one second, the impact should be visible across OLED current, processor wake time, I²C traffic, battery life and display lifetime. If logging is added later, storage capacity, write endurance and power-fail behaviour become new requirements rather than assumptions hidden inside firmware.
From requirements to an editable schematic Component selection becomes meaningful only after these constraints exist. Candidate parts can then be compared
against supply range, peak current, sleep behaviour, interface loading, temperature range, package constraints and availability. The result is not simply a preferred component; it is evidence that the component satisfies an allocated set of requirements. The same principle applies when automation is used during
schematic creation. SpeedUp is an AI schematics generator that turns a plain-language product brief into a first schematic and an editable KiCad starting point, giving engineers a concrete artefact to open, inspect and continue developing. For this sensor, the hierarchy, named nets, BOM and source files make the brief reviewable at circuit level. The generated project is not verification evidence. Charger
programming, regulator stability, symbols, footprints, sensor accuracy, OLED interface, component availability, PCB layout, firmware, enclosure behaviour, calibration, prototype measurements and compliance still require engineering review. Before layout, each important requirement should have an
owner, a schematic allocation, an acceptance criterion and an evidence plan. When requirements precede component selection, the schematic becomes a reviewable implementation of measurable behaviour rather than the first place where product decisions are discovered.
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