The professional choice for ready-for-manufacturing/ go-to-market Product development
When I was asked to sign on as a Developer Advocate for Qualcomm’s DragonBoard 410c, the first thing I did was learn more about the product and then think about its possible applications. As with any developer, I’ve worked with many different developer boards over the years, everything from full-blown embedded PC’s, to the S-MOS Systems Cardio (the first credit card sized embedded PC) to more recently a range of Arduino’s, Raspberry Pi’s, Electric Imp’s and Particle Spark development boards. All have their advantages, and many have disadvantages. One thing common to all of the boards I’ve used is that they are purely for prototyping proof-of-concept’s and rarely make it into an actual product.
The Qualcomm DragonBoard is based on the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 410 processor, a Quad-core ARM® Cortex™ A53 at up to 1.2GHz clock speed per core, capable of running 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems; including supports Android 5.1, Linux based on Debian and Win10 IoT Core. Its advanced processing power, WLAN, Bluetooth, and GPS, are all included into a board the size of a credit card.
For the 2015/2016 academic year I was a project mentor to 4 engineering students, at The University of Hartford’s College of Engineering, Technology and Architecture (CETA), working on their Senior Capstone project.
For this year-long project I proposed the concept to of developing a smartphone connected, aural (ear canal) thermometer containing additional sensors which would enable the diagnosis of common issues of the middle ear, nostril or throat. The product would be aimed at parents of infants & young children, empowering them to determine if/when their child needs to see a pediatrician before wasting time, co-pays, and the doctor’s time. It will also enable parents to share this data with a doctor to make better use of their time, better determining the patients they most urgently need to see. It could also reduce insurance re-imbursements due to multiple visits to the doctor for the same episode.
In our initial project discussions back in October 2015, the students selected an Arduino as the board they sought to build their project on due to its low cost, availability, and ease of use & programming. While the project progressed over the first semester, the students did find some drawbacks to using an Arduino including its lack of program memory space, power consumption, and the ability to adequately transfer/stream data to a smartphone via Bluetooth to a smartphone. In simple terms, the Arduino was not powerful enough to adequately achieve the goal of the project.
As the students and I began to discuss alternatives, of course options such as the Raspberry Pi and Intel Edison were mentioned. While both could have been suitable, I encouraged the students to evaluate the Dragonboard 410c. After careful evaluation and some initial testing the students determined that the project should switch to the Dragonboard 410c, due in part to it having the ability to run Linux or Android (Windows 10 IoT was not a consideration).
The project will likely continue over the summer and into next fall’s semester. At the same time, as an entrepreneur, I have been working on a plan to bring this innovative product to market. This is the first hardware venture I’ve been involved with in over a decade and a lot has changed since the days of the embedded PC. I thinking about a go-to-market (GTM) strategy it became clear to me that, even in the prototype/proof-of-concept stage, selecting the right development board and chipset is paramount to the rapid and trouble free development of any “connected” product. While the Arduino was widely available, inexpensive, and has lots of 3rd party support, it was never going to be suitable for a reliable consumer medical diagnostic device. Therefore, I find that the Qualcomm Dragonboard 410c, featuring the Snapdragon™ 410, quad-core ARM processor is the best development board for any project seriously considering a ready-for-manufacturing (RFM) / go-to-market (GTM) strategy.
Chuck Ward
Project Mentor & Qualcomm DragonBoard Evangelist
University of Hartford
College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA)
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