I dunno. I think my mental model for my hobby stuff is that I'm aiming for a small-run (1000 or less) Etsy store kinda deal.
IE: I'm going to sell something for $150 to $500 in relatively small numbers, that meaningfully helps people with some specialized niche task that big companies are blind to... with a BoM aimed at maybe $30 and an overall production line of 1-hour (assembly time + testing / manufacturing / boxing) time or less, since I'd likely be the only person boxing these devices up and shipping them out.
I mean, ideally maybe like 10-minutes assembly time or shorter really. Depends on how much time you're valuing your labor.
I bought an HDMI lag tester that proved whether monitors for the fighting-game community were 18ms lag or 30ms lag, since the fighting game community is very, very, very particular about tournament setups. There's no way a device like this would make a sale at the large scale, but that's the kind of "Etsy-project" that I literally bought back when I cared a lot of about getting my home setup close to tournament specs.
Or perhaps $300 joysticks custom built to look/feel like arcade sticks, at least before Madcatz / big guys started making them.
In case you're curious: this was a $120 doohicky that was an HDMI output signal that flashed white-rectangles on the top-left, top-right, center, bottom-left, and bottom-right of the screen, .... plus a photodiode that accurately measured when the HDMI-signal went out minus the latency to the milisecond. The last time detected was updated through HDMI output.
This is a project most of us hobby EEs could accomplish and likely sell on Etsy. But we gotta keep costs down below $30 BoM in practice. Its a meaningful project and something good tournament organizers knew to buy and test with.
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I've heard the estimate that for hobby / Etsy store level manufacturing, you're looking at 5x BoM for a fair price. Ex: $20 BoM sells at $100, $100BoM sells at $500. If you can't accomplish this, then your business idea sucks, go think of another more profitable idea. If this niche product exists, then you've got a potential Etsy-business idea.
I think there's a good market for $100 to $500 specialist niche electronic tools like this, taking advantage of the small sizes of communities, small scale of builds, small markets, etc. etc. (If it were a large market, Hasbro or Nintendo or some "big guy" will jump in and likely take your market. If its like 1000 total lifetime sales, that's enough to make the hobby worth it but small enough that no big company would tackle that niche).
If you're talking about $500 parts, then we're talking about $2500 sales price (using the 5x BoM fair price scaling as a mental model), which is likely outside of the hobby/Etsy craft tool for niche subject market.
There's a lot of hobbies out there where $100 to $500 tools (ex: $100 HDMI lag tester, $300 joystick, Replicated Pop'n Music controller), is fair. Going above $500 or $1000 Bill-of-Materials (aka: sales prices in $2500+ range) kind of gets you back into professional tools and you're suddenly a loser.
KRAKRISMOTT
Ah you plan to sell it, I thought you meant just building it for personal use. Yeah for production BOM optimization is an entirely different story.
dragontamerOP
Or at least, I'm pretending that I'll sell it. Lol.
No promises. But if something looks good enough maybe I'll ramp it up to a real production run.
IE: I'm going to sell something for $150 to $500 in relatively small numbers, that meaningfully helps people with some specialized niche task that big companies are blind to... with a BoM aimed at maybe $30 and an overall production line of 1-hour (assembly time + testing / manufacturing / boxing) time or less, since I'd likely be the only person boxing these devices up and shipping them out.
I mean, ideally maybe like 10-minutes assembly time or shorter really. Depends on how much time you're valuing your labor.
I bought an HDMI lag tester that proved whether monitors for the fighting-game community were 18ms lag or 30ms lag, since the fighting game community is very, very, very particular about tournament setups. There's no way a device like this would make a sale at the large scale, but that's the kind of "Etsy-project" that I literally bought back when I cared a lot of about getting my home setup close to tournament specs.
Or perhaps $300 joysticks custom built to look/feel like arcade sticks, at least before Madcatz / big guys started making them.
In case you're curious: this was a $120 doohicky that was an HDMI output signal that flashed white-rectangles on the top-left, top-right, center, bottom-left, and bottom-right of the screen, .... plus a photodiode that accurately measured when the HDMI-signal went out minus the latency to the milisecond. The last time detected was updated through HDMI output.
This is a project most of us hobby EEs could accomplish and likely sell on Etsy. But we gotta keep costs down below $30 BoM in practice. Its a meaningful project and something good tournament organizers knew to buy and test with.
---------
I've heard the estimate that for hobby / Etsy store level manufacturing, you're looking at 5x BoM for a fair price. Ex: $20 BoM sells at $100, $100BoM sells at $500. If you can't accomplish this, then your business idea sucks, go think of another more profitable idea. If this niche product exists, then you've got a potential Etsy-business idea.
I think there's a good market for $100 to $500 specialist niche electronic tools like this, taking advantage of the small sizes of communities, small scale of builds, small markets, etc. etc. (If it were a large market, Hasbro or Nintendo or some "big guy" will jump in and likely take your market. If its like 1000 total lifetime sales, that's enough to make the hobby worth it but small enough that no big company would tackle that niche).
If you're talking about $500 parts, then we're talking about $2500 sales price (using the 5x BoM fair price scaling as a mental model), which is likely outside of the hobby/Etsy craft tool for niche subject market.
There's a lot of hobbies out there where $100 to $500 tools (ex: $100 HDMI lag tester, $300 joystick, Replicated Pop'n Music controller), is fair. Going above $500 or $1000 Bill-of-Materials (aka: sales prices in $2500+ range) kind of gets you back into professional tools and you're suddenly a loser.