“Our design team at Compology considers OrCAD as the industry standard and we wanted to step up from our free PCB software to a robust, professional PCB design package.”
Company: Compology | Industry: IoT & Smart Infrastructure | Solution: OrCAD X
About Compology
Compology develops WasteOS, a dynamic routing and dumpster monitoring system built exclusively for the waste industry. Using rugged sensors and advanced software, Compology enables waste haulers to monitor container fill levels in real time, optimize collection routes, reduce unnecessary pickups, and lower operational costs.
Goals
Compology has developed a complete dumpster monitoring system to reduce unnecessary pick ups by remotely monitoring the fullness of containers. Based on this monitoring dynamic routes are generated daily, saving collectors time and money. A key component of this design was the sensor device that retrofits onto trach recycling and organic waste dumpsters.
Compology’s primary goal was to redesign this dumpster sensor hardware to support large-scale commercial deployment. Early prototypes relied heavily on off-the-shelf components and free PCB tools, which limited scalability, battery efficiency, and design flexibility. As the company grew, it needed a professional PCB design solution that could support advanced hardware requirements while enabling efficient collaboration with external design partners.
Challenges
Compology was faced with several challenges during the design of their sensor device including technical challenges to ensure functionality of the end product, being able to improve upon their proof-of-concept design, and managing the elements and libraries required for production.
Technical Challenges
The redesign effort introduced several technical challenges, including:
- Achieving multi-year battery life
- Integrating custom cellular communications
- Gaining lower-level control of the hardware design
Leveraging Known-Good Designs
To save time, Compology needed to leverage their prototype design and improve it for commercial production. This required a PCB design environment that aligned with the tools already used by its external product development team to avoid redesigns, translation errors, and development delays.
Component and Library Management
Other than the component library created by the external product development team, Compology was starting from scratch with their component models and information and needed to quickly implement the fundamentals of component data management. They needed to ensure component models were accurate, provide access for the designers, and be able to source the components in the quantity and timeframe required for production.
Compology turned to OrCAD X, the industry-standard software for professional PCB design, to help overcome these challenges.
Results
By adopting the OrCAD X PCB design suite, Compology streamlined its entire hardware design workflow.
Component Management
“One of the biggest improvements we have seen in the design process is better control over the BOM by using CIP”
OrCAD X Capture CIS and CIP enabled Compology to manage their component information in a relational database, allowing Compology to create a component database that is easy to sort and search. All engineers could access and work from the same data with an included 5,000-part library to get up and running quickly. For new components, Compology was able to search multiple distributors directly in OrCAD X and use automated methods to add components to the database instead of the typical time-consuming, error-prone manual entry. This coupled with a well-defined new part introduction process to verify database components ensured Compology engineers generated a bill of materials that includes up-to-date purchasing and manufacturing information.
PCB Design
By leveraging the OrCAD X PCB Design suite, designs could be transferred back and forth with their development partner without any redesign or translations required. Additionally, OrCAD X PCB Designer supported advanced layout, routing, and design reuse features, accelerating development time. One of the important features leveraged was placement replication. This allowed Compology to copy a completed portion of the design (that had been placed, routed, and verified) and replicate the circuit in the current design.
Ease of Use
Since OrCAD X is widely used, Compology was able to leverage a number of sources to quickly come up to speed with getting the most out of the software, including YouTube videos. Additionally, EMA Design Automation provides phone and technical support as part of product maintenance, so Compology was able to resolve issues early. Additional learning materials have also been created by EMA Design Automation at EMA Academy including a library of how-tos, free courses, walk-throughs, and more.
“Now that we have finished with the design of our first product, we’ve seen the benefits of using the OrCAD PCB methodology and we’re looking forward to using OrCAD even more with our next design.”
Compology successfully completed the design of its first commercial sensor product, reduced design errors, improved collaboration, and established a scalable PCB design methodology for future innovations leveraging OrCAD X.
Discover more information on how Compology integrated OrCAD X into their PCB design process to manage design variants and improve their product development with the full story here.
