I don't know if you ever do, but designing with fat tolerances helps. If you're just building something once, it often doesn't cost much more to over-engineer

I don't know if you ever do, but designing with fat tolerances helps. If you're just building something once, it often doesn't cost much more to over-engineer it. Choose a more powerful processor than you need, add more cooling than you need, use more fuses and power-supply filtering than you need. Opto-isolate all I/O. Test it in a hotter/colder/more-humid environment than you'll use it in normally...