Capability

Hardware Product Development in Australia

End-to-end product engineering under one roof - industrial design, mechanical, electronics, firmware and manufacturing handover by one accountable Melbourne team. For founders and companies who want the whole product built, not four vendors’ slices of it.

Engineer soldering components onto a circuit board.
Firmware and board bring-up

Scope

What end-to-end hardware product development covers - and what it doesn't.

Hardware product development is the discipline of turning a concept into a manufacturable product that behaves like the pitch said it would. It sits above the individual disciplines (PCB, firmware, mechanical, software) and holds the whole thing together across the phase where most projects break: the seam between prototype and production.

In scope

  • Concept validation and specification: what the product is, what it must not do
  • Industrial and mechanical design (enclosures, ergonomics, materials)
  • Electronics, PCB and firmware development
  • App or dashboard where the product needs a companion
  • DFM, tooling coordination, pilot runs (10-1000 units)
  • Manufacturing handover to Australian or offshore contract manufacturers
  • Certification management (RCM, CE, FCC as the target market requires)

Honestly out of scope

  • Pure marketing sites, standalone apps without hardware, or research projects
  • Owning a factory or doing the mass production ourselves
  • Long-term consumer support operations after handover
  • Fundraising or investor-relations advisory

Outcomes

What you get out of it.

A product program that works is one where the tenth unit off the pilot line behaves like the pitch - and the hundredth still does. What our end-to-end programs consistently deliver:

A working product, not a prototype

Programs that leave here have crossed the prototype-to-pilot bridge. DFM done, tooling paths validated, first units off a real production process.

A single accountable team through the whole arc

From concept to pilot, one team makes the design decisions with the whole product in view. No handoff where the mechanical people did not talk to the firmware people.

Certification cleared for the target market

RCM for Australia, CE for Europe, FCC for the US - designed for from the first layout, and managed to certification by our team.

A manufacturing partnership that outlasts us

Handover to a contract manufacturer with documentation, test procedures and a design language they can maintain. You are not locked into us for production runs.

Process

How a hardware product program runs here.

Four phases with a real deliverable at each gate - you always know what you paid for and what ships next.

PHASE 01

Discover (paid week)

We start from the constraint that binds - power, latency, thermal, certification - and design backwards from it. You leave with a written architecture, a budget range and the risks named, whether or not we build it.

PHASE 02

Design

Schematics, mechanical and firmware architecture proceed in parallel. High-risk blocks get simulated or breadboarded before the full layout commits.

PHASE 03

Build

Iterative revisions against real bench and field testing. You see every revision, not just the last one. Integration is continuous, not a phase.

PHASE 04

Deploy

Pilot in the field, closure with the contract manufacturer, production test procedures, and a commissioning-grade handover pack.

Technologies

What we build on - chosen per constraint, not per preference.

The platforms we reach for most. If a project needs something not on this list, we say so - the tool is chosen for the constraint, never to fit our habits.

SolidWorks / Fusion 360 (mechanical)KeyShot (industrial design)Altium / KiCad (electronics)STM32 / ESP32 / Nordic (firmware)AWS / Azure IoT (cloud where applicable)React / Flutter (app if needed)AU contract manufacturersPCBWay / JLCPCB (prototype)Chinese pilot-run partners

Deliverables & IP

What ships to you at handover.

Every end-to-end program hands over: complete product design files (mechanical CAD, electronics schematic + layout, firmware source), manufacturing package (drawings, BOM with alternates, assembly procedures, test procedures), tooling files if custom tooling was built, certification pack (RCM/CE/FCC as applicable), packaging and label designs, a pilot production run of 10-100 units, and a written handover pack a contract manufacturer can use to continue production.

Case studies

Programs we shipped in this space.

Every entry links to the full case study - constraints, what we built, and what it measured afterwards.

Compliance

Certification and safety across the target markets.

Every product designed for Australian sale carries the RCM; export products layer CE and FCC on top. We design for these from the first layout and manage the certification process end-to-end - test-house selection, sample submission, respin management if the first attempt does not clear. Products with lithium chemistries add UN 38.3 transport approvals; products with wireless add ACMA obligations.

Consumer products triggering the Australian Consumer Law get design-life and safe-use documentation as first-class deliverables. Medical-adjacent or workplace-safety products get the certification pathway laid out honestly, including where certified partners must join us for the process.

FAQ

Hardware Product Development in Australia - straight answers.

A bounded proof of concept: AUD $15,000-$40,000. A working prototype through DFM: AUD $50,000-$200,000. Production-ready with certification and a pilot run: AUD $150,000-$500,000+. Every program starts with a paid discovery week.
Prototype: 3-6 months. Pilot production: 6-12 months. Full certified production launch: 9-18 months depending on certification scope and tooling requirements.
Yes - we do a paid design review that reads schematics, layouts, mechanical CAD, firmware and any existing test evidence, then quote the path forward honestly. Sometimes the answer is respin; sometimes it is a modest revision. Either way you get a written finding.
Yes - industrial design is part of every product program we run, either in-house or with a partner ID studio when the aesthetic scope demands it. We do not treat ID as a bolt-on.
We design for manufacturing and manage the handover to a contract manufacturer - Australian or offshore. We do not run our own factory; we make sure the design survives one.
You do. All foreground design work - mechanical, electronics, firmware, software, tooling, packaging - transfers on payment. You can move production wherever you choose.

Why Incendio

One team, no seam between vendors.

The alternative to end-to-end is four vendors and three seams, and product programs die at those seams. One team here holds industrial design, mechanical, electronics, firmware, software and manufacturing handover - so when a decision needs to be made between two of those disciplines, one person makes it. That is what ‘end-to-end’ actually means.

Related practices: embedded systems, PCB design, firmware development, IoT development.

Start

Tell us the constraint that worries you most.

A latency budget, a power budget, a certification date. We reply within one business day - and we’ll say so if we’re not the right team.