which puts the device at $50 if I use off the shelf components and assemble it myself and give it away for free. I’m not a hardware expert but I imagine some of those components could be integrated. I don’t need a whole Raspberry pi. Any device that can run linux, has wifi and ethernet, and can control a relay will do. Also, there are obviously additional costs that aren’t related to manufacturing but I’m not considering those in this question.
How does one go about finding a manufacturer and getting a better estimate of how much it will actually cost to manufacture the device at scale? Let’s say I want to manufacture either 1,000 or 10,000 of the devices.
Right now I’m painting with very broad strokes so feel free to do the same. Thanks!
First thing you need to do is to make a schematic and board file of an all in one device. Then you can approach board manufacturers for quotes. @pauldg123 has been through the process a couple of times. He might have some good tips for you.
Once you have a board and BOM, you can use circuithub to get an instant quote. I have not used them, but have heard enthusiastic responses from some who have.
There are numerous services that provide prototypes in a couple of weeks from eagle schems.
As @funinthefalls points out you would need a completed product design.
Before you spend a lot of time on prototype I would advise getting a basic business plan together and do an IP check.
Often we makers think only of the technology and the making part and end up spending a lot of time and loosing money.
A good way to test a product idea is to crowd fund it. If it gets funded then maybe there is opportunity if not … risky and expensive.
Doing it for personal use and fun? … then set expectations accordingly.
Selling/Marketing: who will buy this, and for how much? How will it get sold?
What are the selling costs. What similar devices are in the market and what do they sell for? What will it cost to advertise your product and create awareness. Electronics especially in the IOT space is pretty competitive. There are many channels available but getting awareness is not cheap or easy. Will someone else (especially the big guys) have a competitive product by the time you get established in the market? Anything similar in the crowd funding space?
Manuf costs: what are the part costs, what are the manuf & test labor costs. What are the shipping costs. Manufacturing-shipping is usually available from many sources and of course you can always do it yourself.
Price: what can you sell the product for? Why will they buy yours? You can build function vs price model based on the current market and considering elasticity.
IP: Do a patent search, does the product infringe?
Margin: after all the costs of the product are subtracted from the selling price what is the margin. Can you make any money and will it meet your financial expectations.
None of the above is intended to be discouragement just “eyes wide open”.
Crowd Supply has a very good track record when it comes to crowdsourcing. Unlike kickstarter, they are active participants, and last I heard they had never failed to bring a successfully-funded product to the backers. I understand that they help out with all the stages that @donkjr helpfully mentions…
@donkjr Good advice, thanks. I spent a couple hours doing a patent search on the USPTO site and also Google Patents last week and couldn’t find anything but I’m still not sure. I could have just been using the wrong search terms. Anyways, I filed a provisional patent on it but it’s still very unclear to me how well it will work out. I’m kind of charging into the unknown here and fully expecting to slam head first into a few things. There actually are similiar devices that have been very successful and IMO my device is just as good. So there is a precedent for this type of device and I think like if I had a huge marketing team it’d have a strong chance of success. But it’s just me so who knows. …I’m doing the videos right now. It’s hard to walk the line between being genuine and supplying the type of marketing that people seem to respond to. There are so many successful earbud campaigns on indiegogo and when you look at them they aren’t anything special at all. In those cases the success seems entirely driven by marketing. It makes you think.
@cprezzi yep, those are close. I’m not sure if those devices can run Linux but if so yeah, that’d be a great price! …obviously my device is a little different but man that $10 price point is encouraging.
@mcdanlj thanks for the links. I started working through creating an EDA but it was too hard to just do without much effort so I’ll have to swing back once I get closer to creating the campaign. By chance, do you know if they expect you to create the entire board from scratch or do they have pre-built boards? For example, in Blender you don’t have to create every 3D model yourself. You can go online and download models other people have created. It’d be nice if they had something like that for boards. …Sorry if I’m not speaking the lingo properly.
The devices @cprezzi linked to run on an ESP8266; the older 16-bit chip that launched the now-becoming-ubiquitous 32-bit ESP32. No, it doesn’t run Linux. Even the 32-bit version doesn’t; it has no MMU. It does run a variety of operating systems; the official toolchain uses FreeRTOS.
For Crowd Supply, there’s a chat tomorrow that might be interesting to you. I can’t answer questions about their services, but they don’t just collect money, they do a lot more. I think this includes advice.
He clarifies that they haven’t failed to deliver, or in a few rare cases refund, successfully-backed projects. Also that they are selective about what they accept.
