Case Studies
From "Nice Story" to "Decision Proof". Real numbers, real outcomes.
Toy
Voice-first educational toy
Customer Context
- Industry
- Consumer Electronics / Toys
- Target Volume
- 50k units / year
- Key Risk
- Privacy (COPPA) & Battery Life
- Hard Constraints
-
- Target BOM: < $20
- Latency: < 1s
- Battery: 10h+ active
- Compliance: COPPA / GDPR-K
What Tau Labs Built
- Board
- Custom PCB w/ Low-power ARM SoC
- Stack
- Hybrid Voice (Local Wake + Cloud Offload)
- Factory Changes
- Implemented secure key injection station
Outcome
- BOM Cost
- Reduced from $22 → $15
- First-pass Yield
- 96%
- Latency
- 30ms (local)
- Battery Life
- 12+ hours active
- Time to Pilot
- 32 days
Smart Home
Voice-Controlled Home Assistant
Customer Context
- Industry
- Smart Home / IoT
- Target Volume
- 10k units (Initial Batch)
- Key Risk
- Cost & Connectivity Reliability
- Hard Constraints
-
- Target BOM: < $18
- Latency: < 500ms
- Battery: Mains powered (backup only)
- Compliance: FCC / CE
What Tau Labs Built
- Board
- Custom ESP32-S3 w/ Dual-Mic Array
- Stack
- Local Wake Word + GPT-4o via Websocket
- Factory Changes
- Automated audio testing rig
Outcome
- BOM Cost
- $15.00
- First-pass Yield
- 98.5%
- Latency
- 200ms (voice-to-text)
- Privacy
- 100% Local Wake Word
- Time to Pilot
- 45 days