My Little Beacon

The brief was a product for people whose daily lives don't include carrying a phone — children, mostly. A single button, a GSM fix, three preset numbers. It had to survive being dropped, swum with, and forgotten in a pocket through a wash cycle.

Most of the engineering work was in the things that never make it to the spec sheet: thermal paths so the board doesn't brown out after ten minutes in the sun, an antenna tuned to survive a rubber overmould, a battery chemistry that holds charge in a drawer for six months. DfM ate half the schedule.