General > General Technical Chat
Possible to invent an electronic device without capital have any here done this?
jmelson:
--- Quote from: jpanhalt on September 25, 2021, 03:15:14 am ---Many of the well known names in electronics begin with very little. I would say that was without capital, but of course, they did need some money.
Here are four names that come to mind:
Bill Hewlett (Hewlett-Packard)
David Packard (Hewlett-Packard)
Michael Dell (Dell Computer)
Varian brothers (Varian Associates)
--- End quote ---
I'm certainly not in the same league as those guys, but I am running a small business from home, mostly making motion control boards for small shops/home shops. See http://pico-systems.com/osc2.5/catalog/index.php
to take a look at the kind of stuff I make. I have never used outside capital or borrowed against my home. None of this stuff required very serious lab development, however. Just a concept, skecth up a schematic and design a board, buy some parts and build a prototype.
Jon
westfw:
--- Quote ---So right now I have two great ideas [dog finder] and [(cheaper) shot spotter]
--- End quote ---
"Inventing" is seldom a viable "business model." You have to provide what the customer wants. In the examples of your ideas, customers don't want plans for a dog or shot finder; they want a service that finds dogs or spots shots. Those are much more complex to provide. An actual product. Manufacturing. Pre-sales support. Sales. Installation SUPPORT. Post-sales SUPPORT, reliable SUPPORT. Oh - no deserting the people with shot-spotters to go off and find dogs, either; if you're going to support LE and/or Military, they'll want some evidence that the tech providers are going to be around for at least a decade.
I too have an idea for a cheap shot spotter. It's just an audio detector, an arduino-class CPU with GPS (gets location and does time sync), plus a comm link to central computing that can take a set of of "bang heard at x,y at t=h:m:s.us" and triangulate. Easy Peasy. Fits in a lunchbox. The compute part can happen on your phone. Shucks, you can use a phone for the "comm" part and do the calcs in each unit, too.
The fact that real units are apparently more complex than that PROBABLY means that I don't fully understand the problem(s) involved. I mean, "how much are those weatherproof housings and microphones? Oh Crap!" And what does it take for its logs to be legally admissible? (is that even necessary?) (Is someone going to sue me for violating 4th amendment rights? Listening to and locating their noises? (https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/716248823/court-says-using-chalk-on-tires-for-parking-enforcement-violates-constitution )) WTH costume do I wear to impress LE and Military during the sales meetings? And wait - does someone already have patents on the underlying ideas for this? (how many?) How many LAWYERS am I going to need?
I've got several Arduino-like designs "out there", and I'm painfully aware that I can't actually manufacture ANY of them at a "price that the market will bear", not to mention that I really have no interest in doing manufacturing and sales and related business stuff. So I'm happy if ever ONE other hobbyist orders PCBs from China and builds one for themselves... I'd be ecstatic if some vendors "stole" the design and it started to show up on Aliexpress at prices I could never hope to achieve.
As for "intellectual property protection" - One of the effect means to protect an idea is to PUBLISH it. That prevents other people from patenting the same thing. If you're lucky, maybe some company will approach you to license the idea for one-time-cash or maybe royalties (less likely. Having to pay royalties really sucks, from a company perspective.) Maybe they'll offer you a job. If you're unlucky you might get a cease-and-desist "we already OWN that idea, and we think you're leaking trade secrets!" :-(
The whole "I have a great idea but don't want to say anything about it" is probably the WORST IP PROTECTION EVER.
ejeffrey:
In terms of getting investment capital: there is plenty of it out there (too much by some accounts) at pretty much every scale from a a $10,000 kickstarter project to $100M venture capital investment to a $500M SPAC.
Everyone else has covered that you need more than an idea, you need a prototype and eventually a product and a business. However there are a couple other things you need, especially if you are going to raise capital.
First you need the product people want. Obviously people want to find their dogs and people want to avoid gunfire. That is great. But you have to make sure that your product will actually solve their problem. It has to work in the conditions they want, at a cost they are willing to pay, in a way that makes sense to them. and it has to be better than the alternatives they are currently using. Too many "brilliant" inventions are technically clever but solve a problem different than the one their customers actually have. VCs will want to make sure you understand your market and your customer.
Second, raising money is a skill and it is different from engineering. Most engineers are bad at it and many of them don't even realize it is a skill. You need someone who can both do the financial analysis of your product and present it in a way that makes sense to investors. This is mostly basic stuff like how bit is the potential market? How much would people likely pay for this? How much will it cost us to produce? How easy would it be for someone to undercut us? How big of a team will we need to run this operation and how much money do we need to raise to have a shot at succeeding in the market? Investors want to know this, and they want to see that you have done your homework and that you have the experience that your projections can be trusted.
I have a friend who invented a dog toy. It's nothing special, but he built prototypes, gave them to friends who gave good reviews, worked out how to manufacture it, patented it, and trademarked both the name and appearance it and made industry contacts. He eventually sold it to a major pet toy manufacturer and at least for several years it was sold at every petco in the US, it may still be. It's possible to do this, but it takes a lot more than just having an idea.
Beamin:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on October 10, 2021, 12:41:31 pm ---
--- Quote ---My "Shot spotter" would also work in cities with devices on telephone poles to alert police. I really want to make this before some one else realizes how easily It could be done
--- End quote ---
This is already being done, isn't it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator
--- End quote ---
This is implemented differently It uses 95% cheap off the shelf components/systems and combines them through software. So the parts are already made, like instead of rolling your own PSU (See eevblog"worlds crappiest tablet" where dave cant stop laughing at a medical device made to be a real production product. Not even duct tape but cheaper scotch tape hold together the custom PSU where it had to have been much more parts and labor then buying off shelf PSU's, GTW one of my fav videos. Its like the crosby record players: to save about 0.01$ per unit on screws they hold the whole thing together with not even hot snott but low temp. hot glues) you just buy a lambda PSU with the specs you need.
So even if someone already has the idea this is better because of production cost and taking hard, specific custom hardware thats; expensive, hard to test and assemble with a high BOM uses software to tie it all together. That really the idea its making a better wheel WAY cheaper and have run flat tires.
--- Quote from: wikipedia ---In general categories, there are environmental packaged systems for primarily outdoor use (both military and civilian/urban) which are high cost and then also...
--- End quote ---
So you could sell this to the afgan army who cant afford other systems.
ALSO doesn't it suck waking up at 3:00AM with an awesome idea only to find some one just created it within the last few years, AND got rich off of it? The storyof my life. Like I got a second place invention award in elementry school to the kid that invented the little plastic thing that attaches your cap to your car so dizzy drivers dont leave it on the pump or pump. Thats a patent that you can get rich off of just licensing it.
Ben at applied science youtube said "And like every good idea I seem to have , I look it up and someone just patented it"
PlainName:
--- Quote ---waking up at 3:00AM with an awesome idea only to find some one just created it within the last few years
--- End quote ---
Been there, done that. Had a brilliant idea (non-electronic), ran up prototypes (actually, cooked them), grabbed the appropriate really clever domain names, etc. Tried it out on friends who were mostly positive, then found out it'd already been an ongoing Thing for some while and I just wasn't in the right demographic to come across it before.
Also had a great idea to fix a problem a new way using better technology than the practice du jour but made the mistake of discussing the issues with a user/purveyor of the old way. Decided to patent it only to find the git had beat me to it, even though he didn't know anything about the technology (he basically patented every method I'd vaguely mentioned). Still got a patent out of it, though, which suitably impressed my folks (one thing patents are good for).
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