Have you designed, produced, and sold your own product?

Although I haven't produced or sold it yet, I am in the process of designing a wireless environmental monitoring system. Part of the documentation for the system did require a look at the business side of the process including selling it etc, as such I thought I'd comment.

The biggest challenge I have faced so far in the design side has been converting the prototype into a final product. As the system was originally designed using a development board (An Arduino of all things), I have faced the challenge of not only converting the electronics to a new schematic (Yes, the Arduino schematic is available, but this produced some licensing issues for me and a couple of other minor things). As a software developer, my knowledge of electronics is a little vague in some areas making that part a steep learning curve and a challenge when trying to spec some parts. Although I have previous experience with preparing the layout of PCBs, doing so with a larger project like this and an unfamiliar piece of software was...interesting to say the least. Thankfully, with the software in question being EAGLE, support wasn't exactly hard to find. I recommend asking people you know who may have experience with the tools or the processes, while a forum may help, they tend not to be as clear as having someone next to you or on the phone/VoIP to talk to.

In terms of preparing the system for production, the biggest problems I encountered were around calculating costs. Although the original report considered costs, it was purely an estimate based upon the cost of the development board and the components attached to it. The possibility of converting this proof of concept to a final product meant that new calculations had to be made. A lack of experience in doing this complicated matters as there was not the local support required to help say what estimates should be based on. For example, should these figures be based on 10 devices or 100 or more?

I also started to face challenges when it came to getting prices for parts. Once a few guesses had been made to the possible number of devices (Starting low in the vague hope someone would actually want to buy such a system from me and not a larger company), the problem came with finding possible suppliers for parts such as the PCBs. Although a search on the interwebs did produce results for manufacturers, the general impression given was that some were either not interested in small runs or were simply trying to get every last penny out of hobbyists. While this may not be the case, once again a lack of experience and support did slow the process and in some cases actually put me off following this route.

These initial difficulties would have easily been reduced had there been sufficient support in the areas. Although there are various forums etc around the place, not all of these were that useful, it always felt that having access to someone with experience who you could discuss things with would be a greater benefit. I have similar feelings about the business side of things. While there are many guides out there on getting started (Business Link, Adafruit Industries etc), not many of them that I found were able to provide relevant advice. Many guides were as generic as possible. While for many queries you may have, these guides may contain the answers, they do have some gaps relating to certain products. For example, there are not many that discuss licensing for things like RF devices, or import/export of electronics. My advice for when you get to this stage is to talk to a business adviser, if you are in the UK check out the BusinessLink site, they can help you get in touch with someone. While they may not be able to help with specifics, they should be able to point you in the right direction or have contacts who can help you. Simply, take every bit of advice you can get from people with experience.

I accept this is all no doubt quite...ranty and confused, but that is pretty much my experience of the process so far! I must agree with you Cabe, there must be a lot of people out there who would appreciate tips, myself included!

Although I haven't produced or sold it yet, I am in the process of designing a wireless environmental monitoring system. Part of the documentation for the system did require a look at the business side of the process including selling it etc, as such I thought I'd comment.

The biggest challenge I have faced so far in the design side has been converting the prototype into a final product. As the system was originally designed using a development board (An Arduino of all things), I have faced the challenge of not only converting the electronics to a new schematic (Yes, the Arduino schematic is available, but this produced some licensing issues for me and a couple of other minor things). As a software developer, my knowledge of electronics is a little vague in some areas making that part a steep learning curve and a challenge when trying to spec some parts. Although I have previous experience with preparing the layout of PCBs, doing so with a larger project like this and an unfamiliar piece of software was...interesting to say the least. Thankfully, with the software in question being EAGLE, support wasn't exactly hard to find. I recommend asking people you know who may have experience with the tools or the processes, while a forum may help, they tend not to be as clear as having someone next to you or on the phone/VoIP to talk to.

In terms of preparing the system for production, the biggest problems I encountered were around calculating costs. Although the original report considered costs, it was purely an estimate based upon the cost of the development board and the components attached to it. The possibility of converting this proof of concept to a final product meant that new calculations had to be made. A lack of experience in doing this complicated matters as there was not the local support required to help say what estimates should be based on. For example, should these figures be based on 10 devices or 100 or more?

I also started to face challenges when it came to getting prices for parts. Once a few guesses had been made to the possible number of devices (Starting low in the vague hope someone would actually want to buy such a system from me and not a larger company), the problem came with finding possible suppliers for parts such as the PCBs. Although a search on the interwebs did produce results for manufacturers, the general impression given was that some were either not interested in small runs or were simply trying to get every last penny out of hobbyists. While this may not be the case, once again a lack of experience and support did slow the process and in some cases actually put me off following this route.

These initial difficulties would have easily been reduced had there been sufficient support in the areas. Although there are various forums etc around the place, not all of these were that useful, it always felt that having access to someone with experience who you could discuss things with would be a greater benefit. I have similar feelings about the business side of things. While there are many guides out there on getting started (Business Link, Adafruit Industries etc), not many of them that I found were able to provide relevant advice. Many guides were as generic as possible. While for many queries you may have, these guides may contain the answers, they do have some gaps relating to certain products. For example, there are not many that discuss licensing for things like RF devices, or import/export of electronics. My advice for when you get to this stage is to talk to a business adviser, if you are in the UK check out the BusinessLink site, they can help you get in touch with someone. While they may not be able to help with specifics, they should be able to point you in the right direction or have contacts who can help you. Simply, take every bit of advice you can get from people with experience.

I accept this is all no doubt quite...ranty and confused, but that is pretty much my experience of the process so far! I must agree with you Cabe, there must be a lot of people out there who would appreciate tips, myself included!