Steady State Labs takes electronics from concept to production for product companies that need senior-level circuit design, PCB development, bare-metal firmware, and root-cause failure analysis, but not a big-firm engagement to get it.
Design work is the core of the business, hardware and firmware alike. The Root Cause Sprint is the fast, bounded way to start when something is already broken.
Full product electronics development, from requirements and architecture through released documentation.
Firmware written the way constrained products need it: lean bare-metal C, designed alongside the hardware it runs on.
A bounded diagnostic engagement for a product that is failing in the field, failing in test, or failing to behave.
Ongoing support for released products and extra senior capacity when your team is over its limit.
Intermittent field failures. A board that passes every bench test and still dies at the customer. A product everyone on the team has a theory about and nobody has evidence for. The sprint replaces theories with data. And since the stubborn failures tend to live on the boundary between hardware and firmware, it helps that the engineer holding the probe can also read the source.
Failure history, symptoms, environment, and what has already been tried. We define exactly what question the sprint answers.
Hands-on diagnostic work: instrumented testing, fault reproduction, and elimination of suspects, on your floor, in the field, or in my lab.
A written report with the root cause, the evidence chain that supports it, and a recommended fix your team can act on.
If the fix needs design work, that becomes a separate scoped engagement. No obligation, and the report is yours either way.
Open-ended debug billing rewards slow work. A sprint has a defined question, a defined duration of one to two weeks, and a price agreed up front. You know the cost before anyone touches a probe.
Sprints are diagnostic and advisory engagements with a written findings deliverable. Implementation of recommended changes is scoped separately.
The point of a small consultancy is that you get the senior engineer, not a project manager and a rotating bench. The business side is set up so procurement says yes quickly.
The person you scope the work with is the person who does the work, on the schematic and in the source. No handoffs, no juniors learning on your dime.
Time and materials for design work, fixed fee for the Root Cause Sprint. Pricing is quoted per engagement after a scope call. Simple MSA and SOW, or I can work on your paper.
Registered Michigan LLC with W-9 and banking details ready for supplier onboarding. General and professional liability coverage is bound before work starts, with certificates issued to your procurement team on request.
A well-equipped electronics lab for design, bring-up, and debug work, so small and mid-size projects never wait on your bench space.
Work product is assigned to you on payment, documented in the SOW. Clean records, clean handoff.
If a job is outside my depth or better served by a bigger firm, I will tell you and point you at one. A small shop lives on trust.
Electrical engineer in Hudsonville, Michigan, with seven-plus years designing, bringing up, and debugging production electronics. Recent programs include USB Power Delivery and power-conversion hardware, control and lighting integration for commercial products, and bare-metal firmware on ARM, 16-bit and 8-bit microcontrollers, most of it as the only electronics engineer on the program.
That means owning the design from schematic through released documentation, and owning the failures when they show up in test or in the field.
Steady State Labs exists for the product companies in the gap: too much electronics work for the team on hand, not enough to justify a big-firm project minimum or another full-time hire.
The name is a control-systems term. A well-designed system responds to a disturbance, settles, and holds steady. That is the goal for every product this lab touches, and a fair description of how the business runs: measured, evidence-driven, and boring in all the ways that matter.
Based in Hudsonville, Michigan, working with OEMs and manufacturers across West Michigan and beyond, on-site or remote.
Tell me what you're building or what's broken. You'll get a reply from an engineer, not a sales funnel.
Or email directly: logan@steadystate-labs.com