“In the world of product design, a one-man band can’t really encompass all of the skills necessary to take something through to a really good prototype,” says Nathan Ruttley, Electronics Engineer and Co-Founder, Embedism.

Embedism, based in Brixton, South London, was created to offer cost-effective engineering services for individuals and businesses seeking professional prototypes and small-scale production.

Its mission is to make hardware development more accessible by providing fair pricing, industry expertise, and project structures that deliver valuable results at every stage. By keeping overheads low and working with passionate, experienced engineers, Embedism ensures its clients receive high-quality support and insight throughout the process.

Let’s explore some of Embedism’s capabilities:

Hardware

Embedism works with industry leading tools to design your hardware before manufacturing and assembling it. It can then fully test and iterate on the design to ensure that your product or prototype is the best it can be.

Firmware

No matter what your embedded target platform is, Embedism can write firmware for it. Its dedicated firmware engineer is experienced across a broad range of applications and MCUs whilst also having deep knowledge in specialist areas including audio, GUIs, and cryptography.

Design

The design team can create cases and enclosures for your hardware. From concept through to DFM (Design for Manufacturing), its tightly integrated approach leans heavily on the company’s design, mechanical, and electronic engineering expertise.

Production

Getting short runs of your product made doesn’t have to cost the earth. Embedism offer a PCB manufacturing and assembly service that allows you to get some hardware in your hands fast. With production partners in the UK, EU, and Asia, it can facilitate short-run production from one unit to 100. And when you need to manufacture 1,000s of boards, it can hand you over directly to its production partners.

Partnerships

We all know that hiring the right engineers for your team can be hard. Embedism offers retainers on a rolling monthly basis, if you just need its services for an hour a week to bounce ideas off, or you need the team to carry out some lengthy R&D.

Licensing

Embedism’s custom in-house tools and frameworks are available to license during the development and production phases of your product’s lifecycle. The tools can help you iterate faster during your R&D phases and reduce the time required to convert your ideas into production-ready firmware, saving you time and money.

The company website includes its full list of capabilities, but the main focuses that Embedism specialise in are IoT products, low power electronics, and wearables.

To understand a typical project structure, Ruttley explains that they like to build things in stages: “We go through an ideation stage, and that’s kind of workshopping the challenges of a product with the customer and its features. Then we look at the milestones for the product and how to build it per milestone.

“We do a blend of a fixed fee, retainer, or an hourly basis. This is essentially to demonstrate to the customer that we have strong confidence in ourselves. We are trying to develop something with you, not for you.”

The key thing that differentiates Embedism from other design agencies is that the customer owns all of the IP. “It represents a core value of their business,” says Ruttley. “They can go to investors and say ‘Look, we really do own this’.”

It also predominantly uses open-source software, being of the belief that if you have to pay a license fee to even look at your design and transfer it to a manufacturer, then do you really own it, or does the company you’re licensing the software from really own it?

Embedism has worked with some great companies to help bring their product to life. Here are some examples:

Infi-Tex sample sheet

Infi-Tex is a global supplier of textile pressure sensors. The Infi-Tex sample sheet demonstrates the power of Infi-Tex’s smart textile sensor technology by showing all of the different ways that it can be used.

Embedism developed the hardware and firmware required to interface to Infi-Tex’s smart textile sensor. It then produced upwards of 10 units including sourcing PCBs from its manufacturing partners, hand-finishing in-house, and CNC machining the plastic casing.

Limetrack

Limetrack is a disruptive food waste technology company, adding value to food waste by effortlessly capturing data about it. Its smart food waste bins help keep you fully compliant with the new separated waste regulations.

Embedism developed the electronics design, in collaboration with another agency working on the mechanical design.

Gravity Industries

Gravity Industries specialises in developing and manufacturing jet suits, enabling human flight.

Partnering with the industrial design agency who created the look and feel, Embedism manufacture the battery pack and fuel pump for the jetpack in-house.

Get in touch with Embedism to have a chat about your project and to work out how it can help bring your idea to life.

This article originally appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Startups Magazine. Click here to subscribe