What's Next?

I need some ideas for new kits. What would you like to see? I can develop hardware and software for PIC processors so the skys pretty much the limit there. I have thought about doing a survey on what all the other kit people are offering and perhaps there is some hole in the offerings that I could fill. Ideas????

My First Kit - Random Number Generator

I'm very close to productizing my first kit. I'm calling it a random number generator but what it really does and help you pick out numbers for door prizes. So one of the graphics on the front panel says its a "Door Prize Chooser". I'll post a picture. It works in the sort of meeting environment where everyone has to log in when they attend the meeting. Now you have a list of attendees, each with a serial number from the log. For example, you may have 85 people attending the meeting and they are then numbered between 1 to 85. With my product, you tell the box the max number, in this case 85, then every time you press a button you get a random number from 1 to 85.

I don't have the web page for Hill Country Kits up yet but when I do, I'll post the assembly manual on the web. Then you can see the instructions, the schematic, etc.

Search for Kit Related Blogs

I went looking for other Kit related Blogs and came upon this article:http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/1630025963.html. This isn't really a kit blog site. Its from the the Powersource Blog by the Tech Editor for EDN. But its a nice article called: 15 steps to starting your own electronic kit business. Not only was it an article of interest but there were a lot of comments associated with it.

Once I got into it, I found it was really written after the author attended a Maker Faire presentation by Limor Fried, the founder of Adafruit. It looks interesting and I plan to read and comment more on the article. In the meantime, I have discovered that Adafruit has a blog and I'll be subscribing to it also. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/

Oh, I quickly look down through the articles on the Adafruit blog and there seems to be a wealth of information there. Of humorous interest was the Arduino controlled etch-a-sketch! Sum fun, hey kid?

Start O Blog

I suppose if you plan to start a kit business, you should have a blog. In my case, there is a lot I can write about concerning designing a kit product, finding a place to get the boards and box made (if you want a box), buying the components for it at a reasonable price, etc. I will try to document what I do to create and market a kit.

In the meantime, I am also starting up a consulting business and you can find that blog at http://chipcorderguy.blogspot.com/. Between the two,I expect to spend a lot of time typing. See you there.