Marketing and Promotion#

Today I have been thinking about the next steps for Protoworks, and about pushing the hardware and prototyping side of the business further. I feel there is a lot of potential for this kind of work here in Northern Ireland and across the UK more generally.

I have been delivering software and systems solutions for years, but moving further into practical electronics, PCB design, and small-batch open hardware boards is a bit of a pivot for me.

I am not trying to become a large-scale hardware manufacturer overnight. That is not the immediate goal.

What I am trying to do is build a small catalogue of useful, tested, well-documented building block boards that can help with real projects. These are boards that I can use in my own prototypes, write about openly, and potentially make available to other developers, makers, engineers, and small businesses who need something practical without starting from a blank sheet every time.

A rising tide lifts all boats, right?

The first of these boards is the USB-C breakout and 3.3 V regulator board, which I have now published as an open hardware project. It is a simple board, but deliberately so. I intended to use it as a test of my development, production, documentation, and publishing workflow.

Most embedded projects need a reliable 3.3 V rail, and many now use USB-C as the power input. Combining those two pieces into a small reusable board felt like a sensible place to start. It will also come in handy when I build my UART interface board, which is also in the pipeline, for programming microcontrollers.

The next step is working out how best to talk about these boards publicly.

That is partly a marketing problem, and marketing is not something that comes as naturally to me as engineering. I am working on that.

It is also a positioning problem. I do not want to present these as polished consumer products, or pretend that I suddenly have a warehouse full of stock. At this stage, the more honest description is that I am testing demand, building small batches, and seeing whether there is interest in locally available open hardware modules for prototyping and small projects.

My audience for these types of boards will probably include:

  • Makers and tinkerers
  • Embedded software developers
  • Electronics engineers
  • Other prototyping studios
  • Students and educators
  • Small engineering teams
  • Businesses building internal prototypes or proof-of-concept systems

That is quite a broad audience, which is part of the challenge.

A board like a USB-C breakout and 3.3 V regulator is not exciting in the same way as a complete product. It does not solve one big visible problem on its own. Instead, it removes a small but common bit of friction from many different projects.

That makes the marketing harder, but it also makes the idea useful.

The value is not just the PCB itself. The value is in having a tested module, a published design, a clear schematic, a known bill of materials, and some real-world notes about how it behaves under load and during fault testing.

For someone building a prototype, that can save time. For someone learning electronics, it can provide a useful reference design. For a small business or engineering team, it might be a convenient way to avoid reinventing the same support circuitry over and over again. In software terms, it is closer to having a reusable library module than starting from scratch every time.

Why Open Hardware?#

Most, if not all, of my prototype boards will probably be open hardware in one form or another.

I am not a hoarder of knowledge. Like most engineers, I would rather be an enabler of ideas than a blocker.

I also do not view this as “giving away the business”. These boards are building blocks. They are generally based around well-understood functions that could be developed independently with enough time and effort. That is partly the point.

I do not like reinventing the wheel, and I suspect many other people feel the same.

The building block boards idea is not just about selling individual products. It is about providing documented solutions to common points of friction, so that more original and interesting ideas can be explored later.

Do not get me wrong, I would like some payback for the effort I have put in. Hopefully that comes in the form of a few board purchases, useful conversations, and perhaps some future project work.

The bigger payoff, though, is in demonstrating capability, building trust, and getting myself involved in work that can sustain me both mentally and financially.

We all have bills to pay, but I would like to pay mine by building useful things.

Finding the Right Message#

One of the things I need to work out is how to describe these boards in a way that is clear and useful.

They are not development boards in the Raspberry Pi or Arduino sense. They are not finished products either. They are closer to reusable hardware building blocks: small, practical circuit modules that can be dropped into prototypes, test rigs, and one-off systems.

That means the message probably needs to focus less on the individual board and more on the problem it solves.

For example, the USB-C and 3.3 V regulator board is not just a regulator board. It is a quick way to add USB-C powered 3.3 V to a prototype without laying out that section of the circuit again.

The RS485 board is not just an RS485 breakout. It is a way to experiment with robust wired communication, distributed I/O, and 48 V passthrough in small automation-style systems.

The digital I/O expander board is not just a pair of shift registers. It is a way to add practical input and output expansion to small microcontroller projects without using up lots of GPIO pins.

That is probably the angle I need to keep in mind: not “look at this PCB”, but “here is the bit of project friction this board removes.”

What Happens Next?#

The immediate plan is to continue building out the catalogue slowly and carefully.

I would rather have a small number of boards that are properly tested, documented, and useful than a large number of half-finished designs. That means each board needs to go through a sensible process: design, layout, manufacture, inspection, bring-up, testing, documentation, and then publication.

The USB-C breakout and 3.3 V regulator board has been the first proper test of that process.

Other boards are already in progress or planned, including the RS485 breakout with 48 V passthrough, a digital I/O expansion board, and a UART interface board. Each of these solves a different small problem, but they all fit into the same general idea: practical building blocks for prototypes and small systems.

I also need to work out the commercial side carefully.

That probably means starting with small batches, making a few boards available as samples, seeing who is interested, and listening to the feedback. If there is demand, I can keep a small amount of local stock. If there is not, the designs and the learning are still useful for my own projects and for demonstrating the kind of work Protoworks can do.

That feels like a sensible place to be.

This is not about pretending to be bigger than I am. It is about being visible, useful, and honest about what I am building.

If nothing else, it gives me a practical way to show the crossover between software, embedded systems, electronics, documentation, and real-world problem solving.

That is probably the real value here.

I run Protoworks (NI) in Northern Ireland, helping small businesses design prototypes and build custom software. If you have a hardware or software idea you’d like to sketch out, feel free to get in touch.