Hardware Prototyping and Product Development for Los Angeles
Prototypes, boards and firmware for Los Angeles hardware teams in aerospace, space, mobility, consumer products and entertainment. A senior engineering team based in Silicon Valley, a short flight north, working your hours and shipping hardware that has already been brought up on our bench.
Three free tools that run in your browser, with no sign-up: a range for the engineering, a timeline from prototype to production, and what the boards themselves should cost.
What Los Angeles builds
Los Angeles makes more hardware than its reputation for screens suggests. The South Bay, from El Segundo and Hawthorne down through Torrance to Long Beach, has been an aerospace center for generations, and the U.S. Space Force's Space Systems Command is headquartered at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo. A newer wave of launch, satellite and drone companies has grown up around that base of suppliers and test houses. Add EV and mobility startups, consumer product brands, and the studios, rental houses and live-event companies that need custom camera, lighting and motion hardware, and you get a region where the hardware problems are varied and the deadlines are real.
These sectors share one trait: the prototype is judged by something other than the demo. A flight unit faces qualification tests, a vehicle module a temperature range and supply transients, a stage rig the shoot day. We plan the first revision around that test, not around the pitch.
Aerospace, space and defense: the test plan is part of the design
For flight and defense hardware, the engineering that matters most happens before the board exists: derating, part selection with traceable sources, and a plan for the environmental tests the unit will face. Vibration and shock profiles, thermal cycling and EMI limits go into the design inputs, using whichever standard the program calls out, commonly MIL-STD-810 for environmental testing, MIL-STD-461 for EMI and RTCA DO-160 for airborne equipment. For anything going to orbit we also look at outgassing of materials, thermal paths that work without air to carry heat, and radiation tolerance matched to the mission.
Documentation discipline is the other half. Programs in this sector expect controlled revisions, a bill of materials with approved alternates, and test reports that someone else can rerun. Our engineers' background includes engineering for Rafael and Elbit, Israeli defense companies where that discipline is not optional, and we bring the same habits to a startup's first board. If your program involves export-controlled technical data under ITAR or EAR, raise it on the first call, before any files change hands, and we will tell you plainly whether we can take the work on.
EV and mobility: wide temperature and hostile power
A module that lives in a vehicle sees roughly -40 °C to +85 °C in the cabin and +125 °C or more near the engine or drivetrain, supply transients that would kill a consumer design, and years of vibration. We design for that from the start: AEC-Q100 qualified ICs and AEC-Q200 passives, protection sized against the load dump and cranking profiles in ISO 16750-2 and ISO 7637-2, and CAN or CAN FD interfaces with proper termination and, where the architecture needs it, isolation. Conducted and radiated emissions are planned against CISPR 25 during layout rather than found in the chamber.
Consumer and entertainment hardware: the date does not move
Entertainment hardware runs on a calendar most engineers never see: a shoot day, a premiere, a show opening, a tour leaving town. The unit count is small, the environment is hot lights, gaffer tape and road cases, and the interface has to speak the language of the rest of the rig, whether that is DMX512 or Art-Net for lighting, SMPTE timecode for sync, or a custom protocol for a motion-control head. We plan backwards from the date and keep a simpler fallback version in reserve.
Consumer products have the opposite problem: larger volumes and a margin set by the retail price, so the board and enclosure are designed for cost, easy assembly and a fall onto concrete from the first revision.
How a Los Angeles program runs from Silicon Valley
We are based in Silicon Valley, with no office in Los Angeles, and in practice that costs less than people expect. The engineering runs on shared CAD, a repository you can read and video reviews with the board under a camera, all inside the same Pacific working day. Boards are assembled and powered on here first, then shipped to you, usually arriving by ground the next business day, or overnight by air when the schedule cannot wait. A flight from San Jose or San Francisco to LAX, Burbank or Long Beach is roughly an hour in the air, so a kickoff workshop, a risky first power-on or a visit to your contract manufacturer is a day trip, and we make it when being in the room actually helps.
What we build for programs like these
- PCB design: schematic, multi-layer layout, power and RF, with derating and test points planned in from the start.
- Embedded firmware: bare-metal and RTOS on STM32, ESP32 and Nordic parts, embedded Linux, bootloaders and secure OTA updates.
- Mechanical design: enclosures, brackets and heat paths designed around the real board, machined or printed for the first builds.
- Rapid prototyping: looks-like and works-like units in parallel, then EVT, DVT and PVT builds; what each stage has to prove is in EVT vs DVT vs PVT.
- Certification preparation: pre-compliance scans and design fixes before the FCC or CE lab, budgeted with the free certification cost estimator.
- Transfer to manufacturing: DFM, test fixtures, build documentation and support through the first production run.
Where a prototyping budget goes, stage by stage, is in How much does hardware prototyping really cost?
Los Angeles hardware prototyping questions
Do you have an office in Los Angeles?
No. inteRFace R&D has one base, in Silicon Valley. For a Los Angeles team, working with us means remote engineering in the same time zone, boards and prototypes shipped to you, and a flight down for kickoffs, bring-ups or factory visits when they are worth the trip.
Can you work on aerospace or defense programs?
Often yes, at the level a startup or subcontractor needs: hardware designed against the program's environmental and EMI requirements, with controlled documentation and repeatable test reports. If ITAR or EAR applies, tell us before anything is shared and you will get a straight answer on whether we can take it.
Can you build one-off rigs for film, TV or live events?
Yes. Small-quantity custom electronics is normal work for us: controllers, sensor and motion rigs, and enclosures that survive a road case. Tell us the date first; everything is planned backwards from it.
How long until we have a working prototype?
For a typical connected product, a first works-like prototype takes a few weeks of engineering plus board fabrication and assembly, and most products go through two to four revision cycles before an EVT build. The free hardware timeline planner on this site lays out EVT, DVT, PVT and certification for your product type, so you can see where the months go.
What does hardware prototyping cost for a Los Angeles startup?
The same as for a team down the street from us: location changes the shipping, not the engineering. Priced in engineering hours; you get a written quote with phases before any work starts. For a planning number before the call, the free project cost estimator gives ranges by project shape, and the PCB cost calculator gives indicative fabrication and assembly ranges for the boards themselves.
Building hardware in Los Angeles?
Thirty minutes with a senior engineer, free. Bring the idea, the board or the deadline, and you will leave knowing what the first prototype should prove.