Blog
What human-machine interfaces tell consumers about your brand
Flex companies
We research, source, and develop the latest in audio, human-machine interface, and more. When you partner with Flex, you tap into our cross-industry knowledge to stay a step ahead of the competition.
Flex engineers are experts at using the latest technologies to architect and design your solutions. We’ve vetted fast and reliable ways to integrate them into your product, and we’ll help you keep that integration cost-effective, no matter what industry you’re in.
Human-machine interface (HMI) technologies give everything from cars to smartphones the ability to respond to the user’s interactions. We’ll help you integrate displays, secure keypads, facial recognition technology, and more to build responsive devices.
An Internet-of-Things (IoT) strategy can frustrate and complicate integration. Skip the piecemeal approach and costly delays with an end-to-end IoT platform that’s ready for your product.
Whether you’re using sensors to monitor a patient’s heart rate, detect air quality in a smart building, or avoid obstacles in the path of a self-driving car, our software development kit can speed the development of your IoT products.
Smart audio and voice technologies have myriad applications across industries. We can help take your projects to the next level with new features like gesture control, adaptive beam-forming, better noise and echo cancellation, and customizable microphone arrays.
Our power supply products — including chargers and adapters, battery systems, and advanced power modules — power everything from laptops to data centers.
Today’s consumers expect products to be responsive, intuitive, connected, and easy to use. This has shifted the focus from “nice to have” features to “must-have” features that provided elevated user experiences. Thanks to advanced human-machine interfaces (HMI), humans are now able to engage and interact with machines like never before.
As your strategic partner, Flex provides a one-stop shop for highly advanced HMI-based products manufactured at scale. By combining our extensive HMI know-how, design, engineering, and vertically integrated manufacturing, together with our robust network of HMI component suppliers and worldwide supply chain, we help create differentiated user experiences and get your customized products to market faster.
Flex has been at the forefront of HMI technology for over 30 years, starting out with simple single-input technologies like keyboards, mice, and touchscreens. Today, our HMI Centers of Excellence are actively advancing the field of HMI with technologies such as optical sensors, audio processing, and even holographic inputs. And with the rise of simulation, AI, machine learning, and innovative materials, our teams are continuously finding creative solutions to your HMI requirements. Advances in controls, sensors, connectivity (IoT) and decorative finishes (in mold, over mold, textures, paints, etc.) are revolutionizing how user interfaces are designed and our cross-industry expertise provides design and technology insights that can be incorporated into your products for optimal design, cost and quality.
To accelerate prototype to manufacturing, we work in building blocks. This allows you to easily integrate, try out, and customize market-leading user experiences with off-the-shelf components that are proven to scale into the millions of units. Our expansive collection of HMI building blocks gets your innovative products to market faster, more cost effectively, and more reliably.
Provide natural voice-based interactions to your products with options for customization. Our cutting-edge AI and voice solutions support noisy environments, targeted conversations, and more. Whether you are looking for cloud or edge-based voice solutions, we have you covered.
Consumers seek easy-to-use capacitive touch interfaces across all products — and want them to be easier to clean, work while wet, and hold up to wear and tear.
The addition of vibrating haptic feedback makes capacitive touch interfaces feel more responsive and can replace button sounds to provide a premium experience.
We create cleanable HMIs through protected, unibody displays — and use gesture control, and holographic touch technologies to help design and manufacture touchless alternatives to traditional HMIs.
With our patent-pending techniques, you can now create metal user interfaces that blend seamlessly into the background when not in use. Backlit areas can also be used as touch points for a new interactive experience.
Connected technologies like smart cars, remote healthcare devices, and smart home products are changing how people live, work, and play. Your customers want intelligent products, and we can help you deliver. Our ability to take a product through its complete lifecycle — from conception to end-user delivery — helps your products and solutions get to market quickly and securely.
Whether you want to broaden your existing Internet-of-Things (IoT) product portfolio, or you’re just getting started, we can help you take the complexities, guesswork, and risks out of your IoT solutions.
Bringing new communication technologies to market is a long, costly process that requires adequate network coverage, availability of devices, and funds. For many, the development cycle is too long and the cost of investment too high.
That’s why we created our rapid IoT development platform, iENBL, as a low-risk, low-cost, and fast way to bring IoT products to market.
iENBL combines many sensors and actuators with the latest low power Wide Area Network connectivity technologies, like NB_IoT, LTE-CatM, LoRa, or SigFox, to accelerate application development.
Next-generation products, from smart home appliances to self-driving cars to industrial equipment and beyond, rely on multiple sensors working together to provide more intelligence and improve the user experience. Sensors enable advanced functionality to capture, synchronize, and process data in real time.
We’re experts in the physics and functionality of sensors. With a library of 40+ sensors ready for prototyping, we’ll help you develop a combination of sensors unique to your application.
Our expertise in sensors is complemented by our manufacturing know-how, so we can help you design an end-to-end sensor fusion solution with manufacturability in mind. And then we can help you scale it into markets around the world.
Choosing the right sensor from a trusted vendor can save you development time and money. We’ll help you make the right connections through our global network of more than 16,000 suppliers. Take advantage or our advanced sourcing and planning, and rest assured that the sensors we source for you come fully validated.
We partner with industry leaders to develop a long-term vision. So we can anticipate your product needs both today and in the future.
Combine data streams from multiple sensors in a machine-learning model to provide accurate detection of physical events. As computing technologies advance, more robust machine-learning models can be used at the edge on smaller, more cost-effective processors.
Capture sensor data and test your hypothesis quickly using our flexible sensor and prototyping library.
As products and sensors get smaller, the complexity of their electronics grows. Our knowledge of microelectronic packaging and System-in-Package (SiP) helps you manage multiple silicon dies in the same package.
The result? Higher performance and lower total system cost in a more compact sensor node design.
Designing your sensors in a prepackaged system gives you increased flexibility — whether it’s IP segmentation or modularity for a range of applications. You’re equipped with an all-in-one system that takes up minimal space, and the freedom to seamlessly integrate new features across a product line.
Our experience with managing data from multiple sensors positions us as your ideal partner for developing an autonomous vehicle solution. More sensors mean more chances for your system to run into processor or connectivity bottlenecking and system strain. That’s where our automotive sensor fusion models come in to consolidate multiple outputs and simplify data processing. So even the most critical applications, such as autonomous vehicles and image processing, can run smoothly.
Detect live glass break and intrusion in a variety of environments such as a home, store, or car with the Integrated Alarm System (IAS).
Flex, Infineon, and QuickLogic collaborated to develop IAS, which uses a fusion of pressure and audio data to offer the most intelligent and reliable glass break sensor on the market.
Our sensor integration development kit contains more than 40 sensors managed by a processing system to help speed your hardware and software product development. The kit is configurable and makes it easy to combine and test your specific sensor needs, no matter what industry you’re in.
Streaming audio, voice assistants, gesture control, adaptive beamforming, enhanced noise and echo cancelation, and customizable microphone arrays — it’s quickly becoming the norm to see technologies like these in any industry.
As the market for both standalone and embedded audio and voice solutions grows, you need a partner who can keep pace.
We know system architecture, wireless protocols, mechanical design, acoustic tuning, voice and RF technologies, design for excellence, and testing. And we’ll tap into that know how to help you stream popular audio cloud services, integrate leading voice ecosystems, cancel out the background noise, monitor your heart rate, and much more.
Integrate audio technologies faster through our joint design and manufacturing (JDM) partnerships and manufacturing services. When you partner with us, you’ll have access to experience in voice and audio solutions that span industries.
Whether you need to build or integrate, we can help get you to market quickly while also managing your costs. Take advantage of our validated reference designs for voice solution modules, TrueWireless™ Stereo Plus earbuds, smart speakers, over-the-ear Bluetooth®, and Wi-Fi headphone platforms.
This compact design features fitness monitoring, TrueWireless Stereo Plus, and up to five hours of play time.
This first of its kind reference design introduces Wi-Fi, in addition to Bluetooth®, to the premium headphones market through a proprietary RF solution. In addition to freeing the user from their phone, the design also includes active noise cancellation, touch UI, and up to 16 hours of play time over Wi-Fi.
This design is built with our own voice module and microphone array, supporting popular voice ecosystems such as Amazon Alexa™. Available with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it also comes with options like an integrated camera for video recording and gesture control.
This all-in-one design supports Android-based video conferencing solutions and includes a 4K camera and features such as facial detection, zooming, beamforming, speaker tracking, echo cancellation, noise reduction, and advanced connectivity.
