The five decisions that make or break an edge device before it ships

By Bhaskar Kanchi, Head of Engineering India, embedUR systems

From what we’ve seen, many good edge device ideas don’t fail because the idea was bad. They fail because of choices made too early, without thinking through the real-world impact. Picking the wrong parts, skipping tests, or designing for “lab conditions” instead of the real environment can cause delays, redesigns, or a product that simply can’t do the job it was built for.

1. Choosing the Right Computer Core
This is the “brain” of your device, the processor that runs everything. If you pick a small brain, your device won’t keep up. If you pick too big, you’ll waste money, power, and space.

If your device just needs to read a few sensors and run simple controls (like turning a pump on and off), a microcontroller (MCU) will do fine. It’s cheap ...