Top products from r/ElectroBOOM

> To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

https://sivers.org/multiply
You idea isn't worth anything until you have something in your hand to show off.

If you think you can take on an existing industry then you might want to think about a startup. If you want to be a startup founder, read and watch everything you can find about founders of your favorite company. Then try to find stories of founders that failed. Lots of people write post mortem blogs. This is important, because once again, ideas aren't worth much, and usually aren't that good. However a founder who knows how to run a startup is worth millions. Here are some good starting points of succesful founders.


yCombinator funded and advised reddit & a lot of other succesful companies:

http://playbook.samaltman.com/

https://news.ycombinator.com/

http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

http://blog.samaltman.com/


Some other favorites:

https://sivers.org/

http://foundation.bz/

https://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co-Founded/dp/0393330435 - Woz is an excellent example of an engineer who changed the world but didn't want to be a CEO, he just wanted to be an engineer. He's a success story, but it wasn't perfect, you can learn from him if you aren't interested in being the man in charge, but rather the man who makes things.

As far as making the product, it's unclear what you want to make, but you have to start with a prototype. For hardware/mechanical design Fusion 360 is free, and OnShape has a free account level. Electronics design (I have less experience with) but theres a free version of Eagle (which I've heard sucks) or you can search for alternatives to eagle. You can also buy a lot of useful components for prototyping from Sparkfun and adafruit. For manufacturing there are a few good companies that are good for low volume production, such as protolabs. https://www.protolabs.com/services/suite-of-services/. There are similar companies that will produce electronics. Although any software you will have to write yourself, or get a team of friends on board to help you out (congrats now you have a company). For anything in the prototype stage you're only sending schematics for the parts. They don't know what it does, and they don't care. Their business is making parts. Don't worry about having your idea stolen. The prototype will almost always be more expensive than you think. Of course everything gets cheaper when you scale to 1000s or millions of products, but this is when you can start proving that your product really is cheap. (Or maybe its not, and you have to go back to the drawing board or realize there is no future for your current project). Now that we're talking about cost, you should research all the products that you use in everyday life and find out how much they actually cost to manufacture. Tech gadgets are a great starting place just because theres always someone that wants to know much their $600+ phone costs to make. https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-much-the-iphone-7-costs-to-make/. It's possible the existing products on the market are cheaper than you think to manufacture, but profit margins + employee salaries + utilities add up. Founders might start with a salary of $40,000/yr but a good engineer fresh out of college is 80,000 a year. If you live in NY or SF then in $100,000/yr and thats only the first year, they're gonna want a raise. And they're gonna need benefits, like health care, a free T passes, and free office snacks. Employees also need high end computers, and those fancy standing desks from steelcase that go up and down at the push of a button (I just got one ordered, can't wait for it to arrive)

Finally, every year there's one or two news stories about a genius high school student inventing something (most recent one is that ocean cleaning robot) or discovering something. But really there aren't companies run by teenagers. And most of the time nothing comes of those genius teenagers. I'm not saying this to discourage you. It's just another thing you have to research when you're reading about product design and becoming a founder. Maybe there are lots of teen CEO's and I don't know about them (I'm just a guy on the internet). Or maybe you find out why you're different than other teenagers, and you're product and company will succeed. You should consider that the value of your product is not monetary, if you go through with prototyping it, then maybe it's your ticket into a better university, and/or a good project to show when applying for a scholarship. And/or a good project to show capability when applying to an internship and/or research lab. I have college interns work for me, they all think they know how to make stuff, and they don't. And when they apply to work with me, it's clear they don't know as much as they think they do. Don't be like them, if you go through the entire process of making your product a reality, then someone will believe you when you tell them you know how to make stuff.

-hopefully this is somewhat helpful. Sort of got into rambling near the end... so hopefully it's not read as a put down. Feel free to respond in thread or directly if you want to chat more.

Hi man thanks for answering! I do not have an oscilloscope and I live in Philly. This is the multimeter I bought, I think it does have a Hz function. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MXCROEH/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) How can I proceed? If the usb tester wont work, what can I do? How can I for SURE measure the current and the voltage this thing is drawing? Thanks!

Haha, there you go. Lutron makes a Shunt Capacitor that get installed parallel to the lighting load (either in the switch box or light box and simulates a load but it's only for switches and not dimmers, although a lot of electricians I know have used it on dimmers and it works fine and even lately I've got mixed messages from Lutron itself saying that they can't guarantee it will work on a dimmer.

My problem is with older lighting systems (LiteTouch, and Vantage) since their huge dimming modules were designed to have some voltage which according to one of their engineers is to prevent backfeeding and the only solution for them is to put in a resistive load which isn't always possible...or upgrade to their modern dimming modules which in LiteTouch's case is impossible since they're discontinued and with Vantage you'd need a dealer (which are harder and harder to find) and you'll spend thousands of dollars.

This isn't really anything special, you can do the same with off the shelf gear. The distance you can reach isn't going to be hundreds of KM, but instead closer to a max of 22-28KM if you have both the sending station and recieving station using the same gear. But even then you'll have to have non-moving line of sight, and it'll have to be off the ground about 15-30 feet depending on distance to avoid terrain interference (fresnel zone). You could just purchase these two things to essentially accomplish the same thing:

Antenna
Wifi adapter

i haven’t bought one yet😂 ill tell you how it is around December 5th

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07512KQDW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_o7a4DbKQXW8PN

Read Reviews

Childrens toy https://www.amazon.com/Circuit-Scribe-Non-Toxic-Conductive-Silver/dp/B00OZATJ3A

Here is the module, in case anyone wants to build their own touchlamp touchcat.

Laptop off of 12V power? Absolutely. I run mine off of 12V in my solar powered observatory. I just hacked apart this guy and leave it connected to my 12V distribution panel 24/7. No worries.

Off a "car battery you carry around"? Nah. I mean, yeah...it'd WORK...but as others have said, A) the car battery is a poor choice, meant to deliver LOTS of power for BRIEF period, as opposed to deep cycle/marine/etc, meant to deliver a little power for LONG periods and B) Those things are freaking heavy, wtf wants to carry one around?