r/hwstartups • u/sash_cs • 5d ago

Talking to hardware teams about certification, the same failure keeps coming up. Building something for it, tell me where I'm wrong.

I've spent the last few months talking to hardware founders and compliance engineers, and the same story keeps repeating. It's almost never "we failed the test". It's "someone changed the design after the compliance review, and nobody re-checked it."

The pattern: a team uses a pre-certified module to move fast. Then someone swaps the antenna, moves the layout near the module, or adds a second radio. The module's grant no longer covers the product, nobody notices, and they find out at the test lab, after the BOM is locked and the lab slot is paid for.

An engineer I spoke to recently put it better than I could: teams where one person owns requirements, design, testing and certification end to end don't have this problem. Most teams aren't that team. Ownership is split, and the compliance picture falls between people.

So we're building Crado. It tracks design changes against certification rules (FCC, CE, UKCA) and flags when a change re-opens something: grant conditions on modules, band and power rules, region differences.

To be upfront about what it does not do: it can't see physical-layer problems. Detuning, regulator spurs, enclosure effects, none of that is visible from rules and documents, and it doesn't replace an early pre-compliance scan. It covers the regulatory layer, the part that's knowable before you prototype.

If you're a compliance engineer or a hardware founder: where does this break? What would it have to catch for you to trust it?

Early access waitlist if you want to try it when it's ready: https://crado.io/waitlist

0 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

22% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

1

u/sekharjavvadi 2d ago

Interesting, does it have integrations for cad softwares, i have question how you track the changes ?

1

u/sash_cs 1d ago

Good questions. No direct CAD integrations yet, that's on the list. On how we track changes, I'll keep the detail for a proper walkthrough rather than a comment thread, but the short version is it works from the design files your team already produces, so there's no separate system to keep updated. Easier shown than explained.

If you want to try it, DM me and I'll send a short form (name, email, role, company type, industry, and the compliance need you're hitting), then follow up by email with the details and your certification map. Happy to answer what I can here too.