Electronic Products Blog

Anthony M asked:


My friend and I have an idea for a product. It’s similar in complexity to a fancy alarm clock. However, we don’t have much experience in electronics and none in business or manufacturing.

We are obtaining some items to start a prototype. We could probably learn basic electronics and my buddy is a computer science major and he thinks he can handle the code, but we aren’t even sure what kind of logic chip and programming board to use.

The custom casing is also one of the biggest challenges as tooling can be expensive. However with the internet and how common and cheap CNC has become we think there should be something out there for us somewhere.

I’ve heard of some people who are selling simple analog electronic devices for guitar effects making contact with contract manufacturer’s and having them do all the work. Those aren’t a huge selling item, more of a cottage industry which is where our product fits, so these contracts can’t require an inordinant amount of cash outlay.
Problem is we don’t know where to go to start this kind of relationship.

We don’t know how much we should attempt to do ourselves or if we really should be looking to pay for someone to develop this product.

We are extremely motivated to get this off the ground, but we feel like we need to make some connections and network with some people who can point us in the right directions.

Can anyone mentor us a bit?

Or point us in the right direction as to who we should be contacting?

Jose