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>1. Design with your factory. Finding a good supplier is important but the real work starts once you've shaken hands. Your factory is your greatest resource as a presumably inexperienced hardware designer. It's like having an expert-level consultant work on your project for free, so take advantage of it.

Your first lesson applies not only to small teams launching on Kickstarter, but also to the best and biggest manufacturing companies in the world. The feedback loop between the production team and the design team was the most important step in the design process at Denso.

Yes, I've shipped a hardware project on kickstarter, and (just) on time - the original article is a tad unfair, as if they were the only ones to ever ship.

And I designed my own hardware ..... the trick is to design your hardware BEFORE you announce your kickstarter, not after ....

Mind giving a link to your project?

oh sure here it is:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moonbaseotago/onerng-an...

Ah, nice writeup about the production, too!

Yeah, I thought the title was a little exaggerated, too. They aren't the only Kickstarter to ship hardware on time. I shipped my hardware Kickstarter on time, and I did all the hardware and software design, and made the product in the US. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/synthino/synthino-xm-po...

Hehehe, yeah admittedly the "actually" part was exaggerated, but it definitely hit a nerve. There is this sort of tacit understanding hardware kickstarters are often late, but obviously not all, as all the good folk who have posted their own on here have shown.

I think it's a good idea for inexperienced creators to design before the Kickstarter launch, but I wouldn't want to exclude the genuinely riskier ideas that require funding for R&D. Kickstarter's a perfect venue for that, assuming everyone knows the risks.

What level of fidelity (e.g. self-made prototype, small batch of manufactured prototypes, etc.) would you recommend before going on kickstarter?

it really depends, I have my own pick&place and can do small production runs at home. Before I announced my kickstarter I'd run ~50 prototypes and was running a (free) beta test with a small interested group

I think you need to have something real to show people, absolutely NO handwaving.

The Lexan inlays are laser cut to a precise, water resistant fit (from Rideye campaign page)

A little off topic but the Epilog guy told us never cut Lexan or any polycarbonate plastic because it makes a chloride gas thats dangerous to humans and destructive to the laser. But lexan rocks as a building material... So FUD? or does it require special considerations?

Sounds like you might be mixing two bits of advice. There are many materials you never cut with a laser cutter, such as PVC or vinyl (makes chlorine gas) or ABS plastic (makes cyanide and melts). Thick Lexan shouldn't be cut with an infrared laser, not necessarily because it produces harmful materials but because it will scorch and burn rather than cut. You might be able to cut it with a different type of laser cutter. And some other forms of polycarbonate may cut better (materials informally called "Lexan" sometimes aren't). You would need some detailed knowledge of the exact material and laser cutter, and thus some expertise.

See http://atxhackerspace.org/wiki/Laser_Cutter_Materials for some details.

I'm literally going to print that page and hang it over the cutter. Thanks.

Note: That page does say in the second paragraph: "It is not always obvious which materials will work - for example: Polycarbonate/Lexan produces flames and lethal chlorine gas which will rapidly corrode this $40,000 machine into uselessness and which is extremely hazardous to the health of people nearby." That sounds like its in shouting distance of the Epilog guy's warning.

Which is exactly why I ended with "You would need some detailed knowledge of the exact material and laser cutter, and thus some expertise."; cutting any kind of polycarbonate sounds like a bad idea if you don't know exactly what you're doing.

Polycarbonate doesn't have any chlorine at all in its chemical formula. Maybe the usual types of Lexan contain plasticizers/flame retardants/other additives that contain chlorine?

The London Hackspace Wiki has a little write up on how to test plastics for Chlorine: https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Laser_Cutter/Instr...

Chlorine, not chloride.

Even before you commit to a factory, you can get useful information out of their production engineers, who will often tell you a thing to change to make your part manufacturable, or cheaper. But you will burn them out if you don't commit.

Harder to burn out is ProtoLabs' automated quoting/DFM site. Upload your 3D file and it'll tell you what you're doing wrong in a few hours.

The Rideye looks great. Is that based off the keychain cams widely used in R/C video? Like the 808 #16 or the Möbius?

That was the original design intent, since the 808 camera provided all the video recording functions I needed. I thought I would just buy a bunch of cameras and make some carrier boards for them. I was just out of college at the time, and my coworkers recognized my naivety. They suggested I contact the 808 manufacturer for a custom board spin, and that opened my eyes to the world of mass manufacturing in China. To make a long story short, I completely redesigned the product for scale [1] and that's the version I shipped to my backers.

In retrospect, the original version which I presented on Kickstarter would have been a miserable failure of a product. I was lucky to have backers who supported me and provided invaluable feedback through a few months of delays while I finished the redesign.

[1] http://www.rideye.com/

You could make this a dashcam? AFAIK most dashcams have terrible battery life and so have to be plugged in to the car charger

Oh, your first plan was to actually build a board to frob the buttons on the 808? If so, it was a good idea not to do that. I've used 808s in R/C and they're very finicky, they will just error out for no reason sometimes. The Mobius is more robust but throws off a lot of heat.

So did you end up using the 808/Mobius manufacturer in the process at all, or completely do everything from scratch? Is at least the lens module + camera controller chip a self-contained module? Would be interested to hear which vendors you used.

Out of curiosity, did you end up shipping to the rest of your Kickstarter pledgers for [1]?

Yes, all pledges were fulfilled and the product is now shipping through our website and retail channels.

Awesome. I asked mainly because after being hit by a car, I'm definitely in the market for a product like yours.

Email me at cedric@rideye.com and I'll send you a coupon code!

Are you finding any significant amount of "post kickstarter" orders?

Yes. Ideally, Kickstarter orders should be the tip of the iceberg for you. The number of people who will pledge real money for an in-development product on Kickstarter is a tiny subset of those who will buy it once it's available for next-day shipping on your website.

I'm in that boat— I've been watching RidEye since early in the Kickstarter, but don't really count on hardware Kickstarters until V1 is shipped and reviewed, especially after hearing about the infamous espresso machine Kickstarter, which was run by some of my girlfriend's classmates.