TechTonic: From Prototype to Production

Date: Tuesday 24 March 2026
Time: 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Location: BG-110, Bournemouth Gateway Building, Saint Paul’s Lane, Bournemouth
Free pizza, drinks & networking included

This month we’re joined by Ben Hargreaves, Managing Director & Co-Founder of Dorset-based Drone Spraying UK, to look at how autonomous agritech platforms transition from early builds into solutions that must work reliably on farms. Ben’s talk will dive into both the software and hardware aspects – autonomous control code, embedded systems, reliability considerations, control loops, safety, and field deployment.

But this event isn’t just about drones. It’s about the practical work involved in shipping products where software executes in physical devices – exciting things like robotics, industrial machinery, IoT sensor networks, edge computing platforms, connected products, and systems that operate outside controlled environments.

We’ll explore what changes when code must run on real hardware, interfaces with sensors and actuators, and is depended upon by users in the physical world.

Building Autonomous Agritech Systems

Ben has over 10 years of experience in the aviation industry. Previously working for British Aerospace, he brings deep technical knowledge of unmanned drones and applies this expertise to building advanced agritech systems here in Dorset.

In this session, Ben will explore the architecture behind commercial drone spraying platforms and the engineering realities of moving from concept to operational deployment.

• What changes between prototype and production systems
• How engineering decisions evolve under real-world constraints
• Reliability, compliance and operational considerations
• Integrating hardware, embedded systems and software into deployable products
• Lessons learned once real users and environments are involved
• Practical insight from builders who have been through it

• Developers building beyond MVP
• Engineers working in robotics, IoT, hardware or complex software systems
• Technical founders scaling early-stage products
• Students interested in applied engineering and real-world deployment
• Anyone curious about how complex systems actually get shipped

TechTonic is about practical knowledge sharing in a relaxed setting.

Arrive from 6:30pm for food and informal networking.
Talks will run mid-evening, followed by open discussion and more time to connect.

Expect a technical crowd. No sales pitches. Just engineers and builders sharing experience openly.