cybermace5's Journal: Money-making Idea

I wish I had thought of this myself.

Currently, I'm rebuilding my senior project. I had boards made, and every evening, I solder on yet another fine-pitch SMD. All kinds of fun, you can imagine. I've heard rumors that surface-mount soldering can and has been done with solder paste and a toaster oven. They don't even bother painting the solder paste on each little pad, they just run a bead along the pads, squish on the part, when the solder melts it beads up and separates onto the leads and even centers the part with surface tension.

However, I'm stuck with a soldering iron, a length of wick, and my patience.

Anyway, back to the money-making idea. I was playing with my little servo camera, and Steve (guy who works next to me) suggested that I could make it available as a kit.

This makes a lot of sense. While my USB-controlled, integrated hub pan/tilt mount would require some decent manufacturing outlay to get going, a kit form of this other unit would be pretty neat.

I would have to do a little redesign...I don't expect everyone to tear apart their webcams to integrate in, and I don't expect everyone's webcam guts to be the same size and shape. I can design a C-mount screw and provide holes for custom mounts.

So...the kit would include:
(3) Cut and bent lucite parts
(2) R/C micro servos
(1) etched circuit board
(1) Socketed microcontroller and support parts
(1) Serial interface cable
(1) USB passthrough cable (maybe)
(1) CD-ROM containing source for microcontroller firmware and control application

The USB cable I'm iffy on. That would be a blatant disregard for USB standards, since the power using components don't report their existence. USB powering is pretty slick, but anything I'd sell probably would require a wall wart. Wouldn't need people calling up mad because their USB port got fried from a bad solder joint.

This is a pretty interesting idea, I will be seriously looking into it. Once my CNC machine is up, it would make production of the plastic pieces very smooth.