How much fund do you need to get a electronic device to market ?
Great to find this great community that I can finally ask this question and may have somebody to answer it.
I have a great idea and already made it true and working flawlessly, in fact I've give it to my friends and open sourced it and it got 150 stars on Github in one week: https://github.com/timj-code/bc7215_ac_matter
I've never thought about to make it a commercial product as I don't think I have the ability to do it, but I do think this will be a very good product, let me introduce it a little bit first:
1. What it is?
It's a small piece of electronic device using cheap components (ESP32C3 $2 for a made module and BC7215 chip for about $0.5 for 1k). It is a universal AC controller for all brands of split systems that having a LCD remote, and it can connect directly to an iPhone or Android making the AC smart.
2. What make me think it will be a great product
- It's plug-n-play, can be used by any iPhone users or Android users with smart devices.
>For iPhone users, they will need nothing else to control their AC, this will connect to Apple Home directly, Users don't need to install any additional App, it's factory built-in.
>For Android users, though it's not as convenient as iPhone, a hub device such as Google Nest or Amazon Dot will be needed, it still have advantage that users don't need to install additional Apps.
- It support all AC brands and needs only one-press pairing.
- It let you continue to use the original remote and sync the operation to your phone.
- Small and low cost
You can see how simple the device is on my Github page, but the problem is, once you want to make it a real product, you need a lot of things to be sorted, the electronic hardware and software is just a small part, you need packaging, licensing, manufacturing, marketing ... and a team.
Does anybody know how much funds will be needed to do it? Again at least for now, I have no intention to do it as I know I don't have necessary such kind of business skills, and as it's already open sourced, anyone is free to do it. I'm asking this just being curious.
If you know the answer or have a thought about the product, please leave a comment.
