

Ask YC:  I have an idea for a physical puzzle requiring electronics - how should I proceed? - amichail

Other than prototyping it on a computer to show how fun/challenging it will be, how should I proceed?<p>I don't have the technical background required for the electronics.<p>Because it's a 3d puzzle, I don't think it would work well on a computer.
======
sharpshoot
Firstly, i think it would be important for you answer the following questions

What are the list of things you need to achieve to make this a physical
reality? What knowledge, skills, expertise do you not have to get there? Where
are the people with those skills, attitudes, and experience found? What
compelling reasons do you have to convince someone to work with you
specifically on this product? ie what can you do that others can't? What is
your ambition or objective with the project? Do you want to turn this into a
company or do you want to just realise it physically for fun.

These are pretty fundamental to answer before you can proceed.

------
ejs
It really depends on what you want to do, electronic design is not (IMHO) much
different then the ideas in software design. My background is EE, my day job
is circuit design including firmware and in my spare time I do web projects,
RoR mostly and some PC software and I think alot of the same principles apply.

There are many ways to design the circuitry as the same for software, many
designs will be 'better' and many will be quicker to market. But you can hack
hardware together just like you can for software (its just much harder to
upgrade a circuit board design).

If you have never done much hardware design I don't think I would recommend
buying a cheap microcontroller and going to town will all the design. It would
probably be much more advantageous to get a development board and try things
out first. Sites like sparkfun.com have a lot of different offerings. These
also give you a schematic of the circuit to start with.

As someone else noted it really depends on your needs and goals, I am assuming
this is something complicated enough to warrant a uC.

Good Luck!

------
aswanson
Do the electronics require a microprocessor to execute the game logic, or is
it an analog based design?

~~~
amichail
Not sure. How can you tell if a microprocessor is warranted?

~~~
aswanson
Great question, and there is always a fair amount of debate in this area. A
way to start thinking about it is to ask how many logical states you need to
store. If it exceeds a trivial amount you are almost always better off using
one. I can't give you a more accurate answer without knowing more about what
you are trying to do.

~~~
amichail
One possibility is to build something that you would plug into your computer.
The object could have touch displays on its sides.

~~~
aswanson
Then we have eliminated 1 design variable; you certainly want to use a
microprocessor with usb support and lcd display capability. The ARM based
at91sam9260 has that functionality and runs linux. Low priced ($6 in volume),
it seems like a good place to start for you.

~~~
dcurtis
Hmm, the first time I've ever been able to use Octopart for something:

<http://octopart.com/search?q=at91sam9260>

Worked pretty well.

~~~
aswanson
They are a definite improvement over digikey. I'll pass this around.

~~~
dcurtis
And a YC company, too!

