Blog
Writing on IoT product development, embedded systems and AI.
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Fifteen minutes in an olive grove
We installed an Agronode soil node in the Tabipler Agricultural Cooperative's olive grove in Adana. The install took fifteen minutes; the first data changed a years-old irrigation habit.
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tohum.se, renewed
Our website is now faster, simpler and bilingual.
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Stage 8: Launch, Operations & Maintenance (Life After the Launch Button) 🚀
Launch day! You made it from a spark of an idea to a certified, manufactured IoT product. Take a moment to celebrate – that’s a huge accomplishment. But the journey doesn’t end when you ship the…
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Cenk’s Dashboard: The Paradox of AI in the Embedded World
The distilled story of 25 studies. Tuesday morning, 9:14 AM. In a small IoT startup in Ankara, Cenk, a senior firmware engineer, stares at his screen. He needs to set up DMA-based ADC sampling on an…
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Stage 7: Compliance, Certification & Manufacturing Transfer
Congratulations – we’re almost at the finish line of development! Stage 7 is all about preparing for the official launch and mass production of your IoT product. Up to now, you’ve been focused on…
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End‑to‑End IoT Product Development Playbook -Stage 6: Verification & Validation – Did We Build the Right Thing (and Does It Actually Work)?
Introduction to the V&V Phase Welcome to the final boss of IoT product development: Verification & Validation (V&V). This is where we answer two deceptively simple questions. Verification asks, “Did…
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End‑to‑End IoT Product Development Playbook -Stage 4: Firmware & Cloud Software Development
Welcome to the right-hand side of the V! In the classic V-model of product development, the left side is about design (which we tackled in previous stages) and the right side is about implementation…
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End‑to‑End IoT Product Development Playbook -Stage 5: Integration Gates – Making Sure It All Plays Nice Together
Picture an engineer hunched over a circuit board in a lab, carefully checking if the device comes to life. Integration Gates are those suspenseful moments in IoT development when all the pieces are…
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End‑to‑End IoT Product Development Playbook – Introduction
So you’ve got an idea for the next big IoT gadget? Awesome! Before you dive into coding, soldering, or ordering a truckload of circuit boards, let’s take a step back. Developing a cloud-connected IoT…
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End‑to‑End IoT Product Development Playbook -Stage 1: Stakeholder & System Requirements
First things first! Click for previous section: Stage 0 Alright, you’ve decided your brilliant IoT product idea is a keeper. What’s next? You might be itching to jump straight into building gadgets…
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End‑to‑End IoT Product Development Playbook -Stage 3: Electronics & Mechanical Design
The “Left-Hand Side” of the V) Click for previous section: Stage 2 Now we’re getting to the hands-on fun: designing the actual hardware! Stage 3 is all about electronics and mechanical design, which…
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End‑to‑End IoT Product Development Playbook –Stage 2: System Architecture
Plan on Paper Before You Build Click for previous section: Stage 1 With solid requirements in hand from Stage 1, it’s time to switch into architect mode! In Stage 2, we create the high-level game…
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Solar + Battery Power Subsystem for a Remote Agricultural IoT Node
1) Purpose and context This power subsystem is designed for a solar‑powered, battery‑backed IoT node used in agricultural monitoring and remote sensing. The node must keep a microcontroller (MCU) and…
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End‑to‑End IoT Product Development Playbook – Stage 0 – Concept & Feasibility
Click for previous chapter: Introduction “Wait—should we even build this thing?”** Imagine you are standing at the mouth of a dense jungle, machete in hand. You can hear there might be treasure…
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How AI Is Turbocharging Entrepreneurship: Cutting Costs and Saving Time
Imagine turning your big idea into a working prototype—without having to hire a full engineering team. Thanks to rapidly evolving AI tools, what once took multiple specialized roles can now be done…
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Beyond OCR: How LLMs Are Transforming Structured PDF Extraction
Introduction Extracting structured information from PDFs is a common challenge in many industries. Consider a Customs Declaration Form filled with item descriptions, quantities, and values—capturing…
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From Concept to Code: My Iterative Journey to Multiplexing Module with ChatGPT
I started with a pretty straightforward wish. I had an ESP32 with just one accessible analog pin, but I needed to read 16 analog channels. I explained my predicament to ChatGPT o3-mini-high model,…
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Mastering the Embedded IoT Developer’s Toolkit
5-to-1 Scale In today’s hyper‑connected world, an embedded developer must juggle firmware, hardware, radio links, and cloud workflows—all at once. Skip even one piece and that “quick” firmware tweak…
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How Tohum AB Transformed Technical Requirements, Tackled Technical Debt, and Turned Learning into a Career‑Growth Engine
1. Why We Wrote This Story Every start‑up eventually discovers that its technology is only half the product; the other half is the knowledge of the engineers who bring that technology to life. At…
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