Path to Productization?

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mrmox
 
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Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2014 6:39 pm

Path to Productization?

Post by mrmox »

Suppose you have got your modest novelty product based on the trinket
working well, and are interested in bringing it to the masses who you
think could benefit from it.

Is there any flowchart (or anything at all) to read about the steps that
need to be taken to comply with the various licenses, and the various
government and non-government regulations to keep it all legal?

Including but not limited to:

Unintentional Radiator Testing?
USB VID/PID strategies?
Publication requirements for FOSS based systems?
Other things I have not listed?

I know a lot of Kickstarter tech products just ignore these aspects,
but are there any good examples where they have not?

Thanks for any pointers!

- mrmox

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2010 2:51 pm

Re: Path to Productization?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

I don't know of any one-size-fits all list of requirements for getting a product ready to market. Each project usually has its own quirks that add or remove items from the to-do list.

WRT FCC certification, you need to look at Title 47, sections 15 and 18: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2005-t ... etail.html The rest is mostly irrelevant to small commercial products, and the parts about noise trasmitted back to the power lines aren't your problem if you use batteries or an external power supply. What's left are RF emissions, and those rules only apply to signals that are above a certain threshold at about 200'.

You aren't allowed to use our USB VID/PID for non-Trinket projects, so you may need to buy your own.

You're bound by the terms of any FOSS licence on software you include with the product, which may include prohibitions on cross-linking to proprietary/closed binaries if you use GPL'd code. All FOSS licenses require inclusion of the license with the code though, so you can read the licenses to see what rules you need to follow.

Beyond that, there's the whole realm of nonregulatory design-for-manufacture issues. Can you normalize part values to reduce the overall BOM? Putting two 1k resistors in parallel is usually cost-effective compared to buying/setting up/placing a mix of 1k resistors and 500 ohm resistors. Are your tolerances wide enough for the product to work when component values are at the worst possible limit of their specified range?

Do you have a set of tests that will indicate whether a device's performance meets your specs or not? Do you have testing jigs and features on the board that will make testing easier? How early in the assembly process can you identify a bad unit and avoid wasting parts/time continuing to assemble something that doesn't work?

If you're going to work with an assembly house, go in and talk to them.. a real sit-down face-to-face meeting. Find out what they expect from you, what you can expect from them, how you can make life easier for them, and how they can make life easier for you. They'll have seen more tricks than any single designer could come up with, and will know what worked and what didn't.

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clearspark
 
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2014 3:20 pm

Re: Path to Productization?

Post by clearspark »

mrmox wrote:Suppose you have got your modest novelty product based on the trinket
working well, and are interested in bringing it to the masses who you
think could benefit from it.

Is there any flowchart (or anything at all) to read about the steps that
need to be taken to comply with the various licenses, and the various
government and non-government regulations to keep it all legal?

Including but not limited to:

Unintentional Radiator Testing?
USB VID/PID strategies?
Publication requirements for FOSS based systems?
Other things I have not listed?

I know a lot of Kickstarter tech products just ignore these aspects,
but are there any good examples where they have not?

Thanks for any pointers!

- mrmox
Hey there, in response to demand on Reddit, I wrote an eBook that covers most of the stuff you're looking for. Here's the link: www.emcfastpass.com/cert-ebook.

Cheers,
Andy.

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