Software best practices in (Hard)ware world!
Chinmay Pendharkar
@GeekcampSG 2022
whoami
- Engineer 🧑🏾💻
- CTO @ Subnero
- Hackware 🪚
- Intersection of Hardware and Software
Software best practices are NOT widely adopted in hardware world!
Definition
Hardware ∈ Mechanical + Electronics + ...
Poll 🙋
Software Only
Software + Hardware
Hardware Only
Can software best practices be applied to hardware development?
- Anyhowly
- Effectively
- Practically
Concrete Example
- Mechanical & Assembly Drawings ✏️
- Electronics Schematics, Layouts, BOM 🔌
- Software code 🧑💻
Concrete Example
- Documents → Versioning + Version Control
- Components → Integration + Testing
Versioning
Versioning
- No standard versioning scheme 🙅♂️
- Everyone makes up their own 💥
../schematics > ls
electronics-rev-010A.PcbDoc
electronics-rev-010_copy.PcbDoc
electronics-rev-010_copy_20180809.PcbDoc
Can I use mechanical assembly v4-MKII with PCB rev-010A?
Semantic Versioning - SemVer
- Pseudo-standard 🤷♂️
- Widely adopted 🙌
- MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH
"we propose a simple set of rules and requirements that dictate how version numbers are assigned and incremented"
Our SemVer
- MAJOR: Changes that affect other components 🙈
- MINOR: Changes that only affect your component 💪
- PATCH: Changes that only affect your component but don't change any functionality 🧹
"understand what changed at a glance"
Version Control
Version Control
- Design Documents need version control 📄
git❤️- Propreitary Binary file formats 😭
Version Control - git
Version Control - git
Version Control - git
- commits + tags 🏷️
- branches and PRs 🌲
- Custom Porcelain/GUI 🚽
Version Control - Allspice
CI/CD
CI - Hardware
CI - Hardware
CI - Hardware
Can software best practices be applied to hardware development?
- Hard but not impossible 🏃♂️
- Extract the essence of the best practice 💧
- Apply in context 🤔
That's all folks! 👋
#Hiring
- Like to work on hard problems? 💪
- Underwater wireless communications? 📡
- Join us!