Consumer Electronics Product Design & Engineering

We’ve helped bring dozens of successful consumer electronic products to market.

From audio & video to connected home, Cardinal Peak helps bring many industry-leading consumer electronics designs to market. Today’s products must be easy to use but also — more often than not — connect through apps, web portals and third-party ecosystems, including voice assistants, to complete their customer promise.

Cardinal Peak is staffed and ready to assist at every stage of electronics product design and development. We help our clients from system architecture through the entire development process, including hardware and embedded, cloud, and mobile software development. Our post-launch support typically includes software updates for feature enhancements, new security threats, and changes in underlying platforms. Cardinal Peak is your end-to-end consumer electronics design partner.

Get Expert Advice on Consumer Product Design

Whether you need feasibility studies, cost estimates or development timelines, our consumer electronics engineers offer valuable insights to help you avoid tedious, time-consuming research.

Consumer Product Design Case Studies

As a leader in connected consumer product engineering, Cardinal Peak supports innovative consumer electronics designs including the projects below.

Engineering a True Wireless Earbud System
Case Study
Audio

Engineering a True Wireless Earbud System

True wireless earbuds require two independent Bluetooth buds, a smart case and multiple sensors to connect and communicate effectively. Our engineer explains how an extensible two-domain state manager solves many of the Bluetooth electronics product design challenges.

Consumer Electronics Designs & Smart Home Products
Case Study
Consumer

Consumer Electronics Designs & Smart Home Products

Cardinal Peak has been developing connected products for almost two decades. Our engineer shares smart home product design challenges and FAQs for designing electronic products, to help you chart your product’s development.

Designing iZotope's Portable Recording Studio
Case Study
Audio

Designing iZotope's Portable Recording Studio

As a talented musician himself, iZotope CEO, Mark Ethier saw a need for a professional recording system where technology didn’t get in the way of a creative moment.

True wireless earbuds require two independent Bluetooth buds, a smart case and multiple sensors to connect and communicate effectively. Our engineer explains how an extensible two-domain state manager solves many of the Bluetooth electronics product design challenges.

Cardinal Peak has been developing connected products for almost two decades. Our engineer shares smart home product design challenges and FAQs for designing electronic products, to help you chart your product’s development.

As a talented musician himself, iZotope CEO, Mark Ethier saw a need for a professional recording system where technology didn’t get in the way of a creative moment.

Connected Consumer Product Design FAQs

What is Consumer Electronics Design?

Consumer electronics are analog or digital electronic devices used daily in our homes. Electronic product design consists of the following steps to ensure functionality, marketability, security and reliability of the devices.

  • Product Concept
  • Research & Business Analysis
  • Design including PCB layout
  • Testing & Documentation
  • Manufacturing
  • Release

What Skills are Needed for Consumer Product Engineering?

As a top consumer electronics design firm, Cardinal Peak can assemble the right team to develop your product. Our 1,000+ experienced engineers draw from their skills in:

  • Embedded Software – Representing roughly half our technical staff, our embedded team is skilled with most SoCs, microprocessors and most flavors of RTOS.
  • Hardware – Mechanical and electrical engineers who design both the housing and the electronics of your product. They ensure the BOM is minimized and the design is optimized for production at the selected manufacturer. In addition, they can manage FCC, CE and any other certifications.
  • Cloud Applications – Our cloud applications software development team helps realize the full vision of your connected product by implementing features for end-customers as well as web portals for manufacturing, customer support, service/installation, and other stakeholders.
  • End-User Applications – Our end-user applications team provides beautiful and functional applications for your customers on mobile devices, laptops, STBs and other platforms.
  • QA – Our QA team starts on day one to ensure your product is well tested and ready for manufacturing. They will even manage your alpha (friends-and-family) testing and beta testing.

Additionally, we have specialty engineers to support FPGAs, DSPs, signal processing, AI, and machine learning aspects of the design. Finally, our project managers are the perfect bridge between your product owners and our deep engineering resources.

How Much do Consumer Product Design Services Cost?

Because each consumer electronics design is unique and has different requirements to execute the final product, we do not have a set price on our service. To get a rough idea of the cost involved with your electronics product design and development, please contact us and we will discuss your project’s needs. By comparing with other products we have developed, we can generally provide you a ROM estimate very quickly. We can also help you understand what features are driving the costs so that you can make more informed decisions.

How to Select a Consumer Electronics Design Partner?

When selecting a design partner, look for relevant experience, transparent communications, proven results, and goal alignment. What makes Cardinal Peak different from other consumer electronics design companies is that we’ve formed industry partnerships with some of the top companies in the world, including:

See some products we have developed.

Consumer Electronics Product Development Articles

The Problem with Generic IoT Platforms
AWS

The Problem with Generic IoT Platforms

While generic IoT platforms sound like a great idea, the problem is these "one-size-fits-all" platforms tend to only deliver about 60% of a typical IoT solution. By the time the remaining 40% of the problem is solved and productized, the solution has actually evolved to a bespoke application for that customer.
Migrating from an IoT Platform to Bring Tech In-House
Connected Devices and IoT

Migrating from an IoT Platform to Bring Tech In-House

Though an end-to-end IoT solution provider may be the fastest path to market, such solutions force IoT devices to be coupled to the external dependencies of a single provider. Our engineer highlights how tapping the expertise of a contract engineering company can decrease time to market without increasing staff during migration.

Amazon IoT 101: An AWS ExpressLink Overview
AWS

Amazon IoT 101: An AWS ExpressLink Overview

Recently quoted in an Amazon blog post announcing ExpressLink’s general availability, one of our embedded engineers put together this overview of the new AWS IoT offering, highlighting what AWS ExpressLink is, how it works, its advantages and disadvantages, and various use cases.
While generic IoT platforms sound like a great idea, the problem is these "one-size-fits-all" platforms tend to only deliver about 60% of a typical IoT solution. By the time the remaining 40% of the problem is solved and productized, the solution has actually evolved to a bespoke application for that customer.

Though an end-to-end IoT solution provider may be the fastest path to market, such solutions force IoT devices to be coupled to the external dependencies of a single provider. Our engineer highlights how tapping the expertise of a contract engineering company can decrease time to market without increasing staff during migration.

Recently quoted in an Amazon blog post announcing ExpressLink’s general availability, one of our embedded engineers put together this overview of the new AWS IoT offering, highlighting what AWS ExpressLink is, how it works, its advantages and disadvantages, and various use cases.