As someone completely new to this sort of thing, I have zero idea of the scale required for production. How many devices do you need to sell before it's realistically worth mass-producing in China or so? http://www.screamingcircuits.com/ say their sweet spot is 5000 so if that's "prototyping" I assume "production" is much, much more. Below 5000, what are my options? Will they do 5? 50? 500?
Other angle completely: how capital & time intensive is the bureaucracy involved with selling electronic goods? I'm thinking of the regulatory bodies, like the CE mark, I guess the FCC in the US, etc. Anything else that needs to be sorted before selling this stuff to consumers?
I have a friend who can help me out with the electronics side to some extent, but he's not exactly nearby. Do you have any tips (books?) on getting up to speed with modern electronic components? I've got the very basic stuff down: I studied physics (i.e. I know Ohm, Kirchhoff, capacitors, semiconductors, AC circuits, etc. on a fundamental level) and tinkered with electronics as a kid; building simple circuits with OpAmps, 555s or basic logic gate ICs is as far as my knowledge goes. Beyond that I've been using pre-assembled microprocessor devkits which have all the ports and boot-up infrastructure ready to go. The software side is no problem for me. The gap is everything in between though, things like how I'd go about adding extra ADCs and DACs or external digital I/O that's electrically isolated to protect the processor (optocouplers? which one? etc.).
To produce in China you need to be spending at least $50,000 - $100,000, otherwise they won't deal with you. Screaming Circuits also does small runs of 10-20 which is enough to do certification, programming, and testing.
The bureaucracy involved in electronics is why I got out, I had to close my last company because of new idiotic regulations passed by Congress that skyrocketed my costs. The certification process is pretty easy if you have a partner in China, they will take care of it for you.
The hard part of selling is getting into the sales channels, most large retailers require whats called a Dun & Bradstreet Rating (a credit report for business). It will take quite a while to get and you must already have a couple million in sales. Target, Wal-Mart, and Best-Buy all operate the same way which makes getting started a little difficult.
As for learning electronics, I am self taught. My education was in Mechanical Eng, Biomedical Eng, and a MBA, while I had a couple electronics and programming classes most of what I know was self taught through trial and error. Then if there was a device I wasn't comfortable designing, I'd hire it out.
As someone completely new to this sort of thing, I have zero idea of the scale required for production. How many devices do you need to sell before it's realistically worth mass-producing in China or so? http://www.screamingcircuits.com/ say their sweet spot is 5000 so if that's "prototyping" I assume "production" is much, much more. Below 5000, what are my options? Will they do 5? 50? 500?
Other angle completely: how capital & time intensive is the bureaucracy involved with selling electronic goods? I'm thinking of the regulatory bodies, like the CE mark, I guess the FCC in the US, etc. Anything else that needs to be sorted before selling this stuff to consumers?
I have a friend who can help me out with the electronics side to some extent, but he's not exactly nearby. Do you have any tips (books?) on getting up to speed with modern electronic components? I've got the very basic stuff down: I studied physics (i.e. I know Ohm, Kirchhoff, capacitors, semiconductors, AC circuits, etc. on a fundamental level) and tinkered with electronics as a kid; building simple circuits with OpAmps, 555s or basic logic gate ICs is as far as my knowledge goes. Beyond that I've been using pre-assembled microprocessor devkits which have all the ports and boot-up infrastructure ready to go. The software side is no problem for me. The gap is everything in between though, things like how I'd go about adding extra ADCs and DACs or external digital I/O that's electrically isolated to protect the processor (optocouplers? which one? etc.).