How do I secure my hardware design?

[bimbla]

I have an application consisting of a quad op- amp, an IC from the digital gate family, a few (<10) resistors, de-coupling caps and a transistor.

How do I secure this design (protect it from being copied)
Without security, I cannot mass market it. It has analog section operating in a linear region, so I cannot convert it to re-programmable logic.

Other than making an IC out of it (would cost a bomb), what other options do I have?

bimbla.

 

[flatulent]

Your best bet is to get to the market in large sales quantities so that all of the customers buy your product and there are none left over to buy the copy a few months later.

Your circuit is simple enough that even if it were totally secret, others could design a similar one to have the same external performance.

 

[eltonjohn]

One option could be to use The Cypress mixed signal PSoC products . Take a look at that family and how to lock the device !.
visit :

http://www.cypressmicro.com/


Cheers

 

[bimbla]

Probably what I am looking at is surface mount assembling on both sides of the PCB, bringing out the reqd. terminals(pins) out for external use and then epoxy coating the whole PBC. Something similar to thick film hybrid ckts.

By chance anybody involved with similar process who will guide me further?

bimbla.

 

[samcheetah]

yes covering the whole PCB in epoxy is a good idea. but if u are going to mass produce it then it should be repairable. for that u shouldnt go down the epoxy route. i would say that repairability is an important issue that shouldnt be neglected. but if u will give a replacement guarantee on every product then that wont be a problem. but that might cost u lots of buck

ive seen some systems in which the engineer has scratched off the number of the ICs. i dont know how they do it but i would require alot of carefullness.

but i wont say that coating the whole thing in epoxy is a bad thing. there are hundereds of applications out there in which coating the whole thing in epoxy is indispensible. like systems that have to be placed in a harsh enviroment with alot of mechanical vibrations.

good luck

 

[FANT]

All depends on the quantities to be produced.
If the quantities are few hundred pieces the epoxy solution will be fine, take in consideration that the epoxy requires a box, curing time, opening the box, repairing, etc.
If the unit has to be produced in 1000's pieces, the approach is very different because you need something fast, for example paniting the board instead the epoxy etc.
About repairng, if the quantities are good, and being the circuit quite simple, in case you receive a failed unit, just replace it with a good one and discard the broken one.
Acthallu a 324 cost few cent, is not worth to fix the board, the time spent for troubleshooting is much higher.

Mandi

 

[bimbla]

I will not go into repairing the boards. Replacement will be the solution. Then again, its in the control section. The chances of failure are almost NIL> It has been tested throughly.

Is it going to be a manual process? For quantities around a few thousand...


bimbla.

 

[mandrei]

HI bimbla

Here is an solution:

Put a an extra "dummy" chip on your board!!!


This chip can be some kind of PLD, ASIC, Resistors_networks ore even an ordinary TTL chip with ALL LABELING scrached out (erased).

This chip will have no functionality in your schematic , it's only purposes is to confuse and discourage every person which would copy your design

 

[klug]

Once I had necessity to open such box under epoxy. Found simple solution - put it upside-down in technological owen, find some high temperature and epoxy will flow down for 10-20 hours. So, you need to add additional component to epoxy.

Long time ago, my friend was making small devices for sell. And he was using method proposed by Mandrei. Only 10% of circuit was real, 90% were false to impress customers and confuse rivals.

You can even connect this false circuit to real by empty transistors. Use low-power well known transistors and burn out their internal connection by high current.

You can use russian ICs or transistors - some of them have another pinout and body. Your rivals will be very confused. These components are available to buy through Internet.

Also possible to use some digital IC's as analog amplifiers and switches. Look for this possibility.

You can hide additional very thin wire under IC's body to connect some pins.

 

[bimbla]

These are all very intersting options. What about some professional methods.
Who does thick film hybrid circuits? Quantities in hundreds only.

bimbla.

 

[sda]

And here's my pennys worth..
How about a triple layer PCB, and a cheap PIC (protected 508-9?) mcu as the dummy chip, or even better, replace your logic gating circuitry with protected pic software.


Forgot to mention that in some cases copying the design isn't the bigest problem, but the concept (idea) itself, and there isn't much you can do in that case.

Cheers
sda

 

[karmicthreat]

I've done some reverse engineering for an automotive electronics supplier. There is basically nothing you can do that would be cost effective to stop someone from figuring out your design. The best you can do is slow them down. One of the best things to do would be remove all markings from the PCB and components. Don't bother with extra chips, you won't fool anyone with that and it will just cost you extra money. Don't bother with extra circuit layers as I would just delaminate the board and look at it that way.

With added cost you could use some form of custom IC that would slow things down quite a bit. I havn't tried to reverse engineer an FPGA or Analog FPGA but I'm quite sure it could be done. It would be a bit pain though since most people would probably need to get a special probing setup for it.

 

[sp]

HI bimbla

Here is an solution:

Put a an extra "dummy" chip on your board!!!


This chip can be some kind of PLD, ASIC, Resistors_networks ore even an ordinary TTL chip with ALL LABELING scrached out (erased).

This chip will have no functionality in your schematic , it's only purposes is to confuse and discourage every person which would copy your design

it is quite interesting,,,the DUMMY....

but will it burden the design?....like increase power consumption,,,increase chip area....cos unpredictable output or bug?...

in practical...hav any1 practice this type of DUMMY.....it is quite creative...to me at least....i hav think of it b4 in my project design to avoid other from copying mine...they cant explain it...


thanxs...

¾λ²