

Ask HN: Have a Product idea (H/w) Best way to start? - vinalk

I have an idea for a hardware product. It would ideally be great for someone like Belkin to make as an accessory. But i dont know if its the right thing to do to give the idea out. Ideally i would like to produce it on my own. But i do not have any experience in field. since it would involve writing s/w for the device plus getting the Prototype ready. 
Also found out that prototypes are pretty expensive.  
So basically need advise to either drop the idea to someone or Launch on my own if feasable.
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astine
It might help if we had some ballpark estimate of what the product was. Is it
a computer accessory? An router of some sort? A wireless device? A new kind of
computer?

If it's fairly simple, you could probably get away with just buying and
assembling the parts to make a rough prototype, and using some free-software
(ie, linux kernel) for the initial firmware.

Once you've got the proof of concept going, you should be able to get some
funding for the project and hire the folks you need.

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ejs
It would heavily depend on what % of the product was hardware dev time vs
software dev time. It might be worth having someone else build the hardware?

Or if you can cannibalize some other hardware/dev boards it saves a great
deal.

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vinalk
would you have information on any company that would get the hardware built.

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ejs
A brief description would be helpful since different companies tend to be
better at certain aspects.

You can shoot me an email (ejschmitt at gmail) if you would rather not
disclose it here.

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vinalk
Well you can call it a netbook it acts as an accessory to a primary device. So
i doubt that it can be assembled easily. :)

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astine
So, something like a mobile terminal to a desktop or similar? I'd probably buy
a netbook and modify it accordingly then. It won't be cheap or easy, but you
should only need one prototype. If it's a good product, it should be worth the
expense.

