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Comment by olympus | Hacker News Reader

Not that you asked, but here are some ways I think you could go about releasing this to the public and make some money off of it (only one method uses Kickstarter):

1. You could do a Kickstarter where you sold a kit that you sourced with hardware from Alibaba and code you wrote yourself. This would be a lot of effort, but could be fairly profitable if the KS succeeds.

2. You could release some how to instructions on how people can make their own panel, and charge for software. You don't even need KS for this, just a PayPal (or other money transfer company) account.

3. You could release your code on GitHub for free and let people pay you out of the kindness of their hearts, either through PayPal, Patreon, or Gratipay.

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> 3. You could release your code on GitHub for free and let people pay you out of the kindness of their hearts, either through PayPal, Patreon, or Gratipay.

Please don't do this, you will starve. Very few people are able to make enough money from open source in this way and I don't think this is the kind of thing that's suited to it.

Commercialize this technology, market it, sell it.

Exactly. Corporate and university shops often come off like the rich-yet-freeloader archetype whom goes to the donation-based museum or listens to NPR but never puts anything in... with loads of cash they can afford easily afford it, but they won't it if they can have their maintenance folks can put it together for "free."

The main considerations revolve around:

a. Is it patentable? (OP should contact a former USPTO examiner or a reputable legal shop like Orrick.) Provisional patent a minimum, seems a must, or it's not worth going forward if Mr. Wonderful can knock it off in China.

b. Is it worth the effort to source and offer components which are commodities? Some folks want "batteries included" and will pay for it, so mark those up to where it makes sense to make it worth the while.

Disclaimer: I've worked inside ivy school research and non-research depts and enterprise shops too.

I like #2 & #3 options better than doing a KS. Going to think about this. Thanks, appreciate this.

I could see a product like this with handwriting recognition software for transcripts and the ability to sync with Evernote and other services as very popular in the corporate world.

If you think about the man hours wasted transcribing notes from lengthy whiteboard sessions, you could make a pretty solid ROI argument to execs: "Shorten your meetings, let your employees pay attention, automatically self-document all meetings for future reuse."

You make orders of magnitude more money through Kickstarter than either of the other options. Much more stress too admittedly.

Another payment option for #2 and #3 is Bitcoin.

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