Need circuit designed and built

[billdar]

The analog communications is both transmiter and reciever. (they have to be paired) Mr. Btwiz is correct, there are lots of premade designs.<p>Any good assembly house has a resident engineer that can integrate the analog circuitry with the digital and lay it all out on a single chip.<p>What it sounds like you need, is someone to take your verbal specs and turn it into engineering specs, then take the engineer specs to several design houses to get bidded on. <p>
Please take the next part into serious consideration:<p>Your skills seem to lie in managment, and my experience shows that you can save yourself much trouble and money by surrounding yourself with knowledgable people. The little bit of knowledge you will gain here will give you just enough to get yourself into trouble. Hire an EE consultant, they will have design and manufacturing contacts and will make the process go smoothly and have the least amount of errors. <p>Or if you are a phillantropist, visit your local university EE department and contract out a grad student. They will most likely work for the experience and will be low cost to free.

[MrLister]

Billdar,<p>Very good advice, being a software engineer and dealing with people who have no clue on how to write software, I will tend to agree with you... a little knowledge is very dangerous and leads to very costly mistakes.<p>What I hoped to achieve here is get a ball park figure for what it would take to get a basic design built.<p>It makes it a little easier to pass the initial financial screenings for money when you have some ball park figures than to go in with nothing.<p>Anyways... I thank you for your input and all of the suggestions you have made. Do you know of any good EE firms in the Portland OR area? If not... I will result to the yellow page search.<p>Thank you again.
Mike

[bobsRAC]

I am a student at a university working on a design that is to be integrating with existing RF silicon. We are relatively new at chip design, but have some contacts that will make the transformation from the PLD stage to ASIC. There are other universities that have their very own IC fabrication equipment on campus. <p>The point is, hiring out university professors and their students is a viable consideration. The work is likely more time consuming in many cases, but quality designs can and have been achieved by undergraduate/graduate students.

[haklesup]

Be careful not to re-invent the wheel, you may be able to licence it cheaper than you can invent it. It all depends on you application and potential market.<p>For example: I'm looking right at something that meets your description right now. It is actually 0.8 inches by 0.7" and recieves 4 channels at 35Mhz (3 others available). It is mounted in a toy car not much larger than a matchbox and goes forward, reverse, left and right (4 channels) and it normally off (stopped) if not recieving. The transmitter is bigger but mostly to accomodate the user holding it and pressing buttons. <p>I got it at Narita Airport giftshop for 2980yen (about $30) see www.tomy.co.jp/bit_charg <p>It (the reciever board itself) is a nice piece of miniturization with a "chip on board" and the smallest sizes of SMT parts. It probably uses hardly any power too. The whole car is pretty cool too, I want to get another if I go back that way again.

[MrLister]

Thanks for the advice... but I have contacted quite a few big suppliers of receivers and asked them for something similar to what I need, and everybody that I contacted said there isn't anything out there that small that INCLUDES the power supply and antennae in the space requirements that I need.<p>I would even venture to guess that your car, has leads going to the receiver in order to get the power and a lead for the antennae to receive the signal - I may be wrong... but I seriously doubt that it is ~fully self-contained~ within the space you specify.<p>
Mike

[haklesup]

You are absolutely right, there is a battery and an antenna and the whole thing is about 50% bigger than you specified. In this case, most of the power is consumed by the load (motor) so the battery lasts only 5 minutes per charge but if your load were smaller then you might be able to use a smaller battery and drive your load (LED whatever) directly from the IC rather than buffered through transistors like this board does.<p>Concievably this could be shrunk a little bit more, joined with a more compact battery and a Planar (etched PCB) antenna and come close to your specs. The power supply is the biggest headache, depending on how long you want this to run and what it does, it may be impossible to package just the energy you require in the space you desire with current technology<p>In any case your question had also to do with cost. Try these numbers
Circuit design NRE (non recoverable engineering costs) $1000 to $5000 depends on your requirements and the skill of designer. Includes schematic capture and netlist generation Costs even more if you simulate.
Software/Firmware design (you can do this your a software engineer)
PCB Design NRE (6 layer, advanced technology) $2500 more if the PCB has special characeristics or material
PCB Prototype fab (about 40 boards total, 6-layer, advanced process) $2,500(i.e. micro vias, ceramic substrate, thin film resistors etc.)
IC design+ fab (assuming you can't find an IC with the function you need) not sure but could be $10s of thousands to design and produce debugged first silicon. you would have no choice but to buy thousands at a time.<p>And that's just a prototype and assumes you hire people who already own their own software tools. Next comes debugging, design for manufacture and marketing and distribution.<p>The bottom line is the road to a product is very expensive if all you bring is the idea. With so many middle men (both engineers and sales types)the profits are diminished unless the volume is very high or you can supply some of the expensive engineering or sales skills yourself.<p>Sounds like you may need to make some design compromises to meet the realities of assembly technology.

[MrLister]

Haklesup,<p>Very interesting... sounds as if you are in the industry... do you do this type of work?<p>Mike

[haklesup]

Mike,<p>I design and manufacture test equipment used in failure analysis labs in semiconductor companies. The boards we make are not quite as close to the cutting edge of packaging technology as you would require but the parts we test are often at the bleeding edge.<p>Your problem is not so much electrical engineering, the building blocks are all out there. It's a matter of cramming it into the package you want and have it perform to your specs.<p>MAybe you could use flex circuitry and wrap it around your battery. See /ap.pennnet.com/home.cfm advanced packaging magazine for more ideas or search on "IC package" or "PCB Design" on your favorite search engine.<p>Chris

[MrLister]

Thanks for the hints... I just got in contact with a company that will do the entire thing for me... radio to IC. ( design, test and FCC certify )<p>Wish me luck.
Mike

[Nitro]

Sounds like you need a good "non-disclosure agreement" so you can hire someone who, you can allow all the details of your product to.

[MrLister]

Got one... thanks

[toejam]

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