So, I've had a good idea, and have produced a working prototype. Now what?

[Esposch T. Tapir]

So, as the title says, I've been working a project that I've been planning to crowdfund for close to a year now, and have produced a fully working prototype on a PCB.

The project is basically very similar to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nscope/nscope-a-lab-for-every-laptop/description, but significantly cheaper (The current BOM suggests I can sell it for $20 or less, including shipping, and still turn a profit).

I think it's a cool idea (especially for beginners), and, from a technical perspective, everything seems pretty solid.

But what do I do now?  How do I make sure that the project doesn't get lost under the mountain of other Kickstarter projects?  Should I make it open source?  Is there anyone I can ask for help?

I guess, the question I want to ask is basically this: does anyone have any tips or advice for managing the non-technical aspects of a Kickstarter project? 

I want it to be a success and get into the hands of as many people as possible, but I have no idea where to even start...

Thanks,
~Chris

[miguelvp]

You can do a similar product for $20 BOM but what about the cost of the software?

I can turn a PSoC 5LP into a low frequency scope, logic analyzer and sig gen including ARB with just 1 MSPS, but without a nice UI it's worth nothing.

So I think the software has to be spot on, (probably similar to Waveforms that power the analog discovery) and offers a decent SDK as well:
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,66,849&Prod=WAVEFORMS

I don't think the nscope hardware BOM is more than $10, but they charge for the software development I guess.

Still I think, go for it, but make sure the software is polished and easy to use and if you want to absorb the development cost of the software by the hardware profits that might be good enough, it all depends in the volume I guess.

[Esposch T. Tapir]

Oh, I've already made the driver and desktop software, or at least a rough prototype of it.  Not nearly as in-depth as what Digilent offer, but it does what you'd expect (similar to the interface of the Hantek 6022BE plus control for the other components, but with a few missing features that still need to be added).

[PointyOintment]

No nice GUI like SmartScope? Sigrok compatibility at least?

[Esposch T. Tapir]

No nice GUI like SmartScope? Sigrok compatibility at least?

I have started work on a nice GUI, but Sigrok sounds like a much better idea.  No idea why I didn't think of that earlier...   

[JoeK]

I do really like the idea of a breadboard based oscilloscope, I'm just wondering how yours compares to other ones available. Have you compared your product against the gabotronics xprotolab or xprotolab plain? The plain is a $20 breadboard oscilloscope and the full xprotolab is only $50 and it has a screen and buttons. Its been around since early 2011, based on looking at the forums on its site.

When I first saw the n-scope kickstarter I really didn't understand why anyone would buy it over the xprotolab, other than better marketing. Can you explain why people should buy yours?

[tggzzz]

Oh, I've already made the driver and desktop software, or at least a rough prototype of it.

That's 10% of the work under your belt. Don't forget that 90% of engineering is perspiration, 10% i sinspiration.

[miguelvp]

Oh, I've already made the driver and desktop software, or at least a rough prototype of it.

That's 10% of the work under your belt. Don't forget that 90% of engineering is perspiration, 10% i sinspiration.

I always went with the last 10% of a task takes 90% of the time, but I guess it means the same thing.

[Esposch T. Tapir]

Can you explain why people should buy yours?

Oh, I was aware of the standard Xprotolab but not the Plain.  Looks like a great product.

To answer your question, the main advantage of mine is that it has a power supply built in.  I could also beat them on price (possibly even touching down near $10 retail if the volume gets above 5k).  There's a couple of other differences too, but it's mostly swings and roundabouts.

And yeah, I'm prepared for months of hard work if this thing gets funded.

[autobot]

starting at kickstarter is a skills of it's own. I've seen some online books/courses on it. Google : kickstarter product launch course .

[station240]

Dave did talk about the uCurrent production, costs etc in one of his videos.

If I recall it's along the lines of double the cost of making it, in order to cover:
1. Resellers/retail outlets, who want to take their cut (30% or so).
2. Postage, customer support, etc if you sell directly.

[nscope]

Hey there,

First off thanks for checking out our project. I'll say that we were very much in the same position about 2 years ago with nScope. We had created something cool, actually made a bunch of them, and we wanted to get it into the hands of more people. I'll try to summarize a few of the lessons we learned during our Kickstarter project in hopes that it helps you.

We vastly underestimated the amount of time it takes to procure parts, especially when you want them to be cheap. We thought 4 weeks was good enough to cover all manufacturing (granted we were expecting volume to be about 250 units), but in reality, it's turning out to be more like 16 weeks. If I were doing this again, I'd plan for a full 6 months between having a working designed PCB and actually starting production. It's probably a bit more than necessary, but better to be ahead than behind.

When it comes to pricing, I'd recommend reading this article. http://makezine.com/2013/05/22/maker-pro-how-much-should-i-charge/. It's interesting to note that suggestions for retail pricing range from 2.6x to 5x the cost of goods. I'll say that we started this project hoping to sell it for only $50, and after seeing 2.6x we raised our expectation to $70. (Our BOM is much more expensive than the $10 estimated earlier in this thread). And even after the $70 hope, several unexpected costs kept creeping up.

I would be very cautious about trying to produce a board and ship it to customers for $20. My feeling is that would not only take some very lean design, but I think also high volume and partnership with a streamlined logistics provider. That being said, it's obviously possible to produce cheap boards and sell them to customers, Raspberry Pi being a clear example.

At any rate, I hope you do try to get your project out there, and I wish you all the best. Do you have any online documentation or demo of your project?