I'm co-founder of Early Alpha Engineering, a small Romanian company that teaches kids electronics. For the past months we've been building a browser workshop where you learn electronics step by step on a virtual breadboard.

What's in it:

• 22 guided lessons, from a single LED to sensors, relays and buzzers • 137 broken circuits: find what's wrong (a reversed LED, a missing wire, a burnt part) and fix it • small projects you can later build on a real board • a 1v1 duel mode, where two people race to build the same circuit

The simulator is strict about the things that matter on a real bench: polarity, current limiting, parts that burn and stay burnt.

Since mid-October over 1,800 people have opened it and more than 900 built their first circuit. Very few made it to the pricing page, so I'd really like to hear from people who sell to makers: would you pay for something like this for yourself or your kid, and what would make it worth it?

The first lesson is free and needs no account, link in the first comment.

Posting this because the CM selection for our second product ate about two months and I think half of that was wasted on the wrong signals.

The product is a small industrial IO device. 6 layer board, mix of SMT and a few THT connectors, box build with cable harness and functional test. Expected first run was 1,000 units with a shot at 10,000 over the following year.

We quoted four houses. Two US based, two offshore. The quote spread on unit price was 2.1x, which told us almost nothing on its own.

What actually separated the useful quotes from the noise.

Response to the DFM package. Two of the four sent back a generic PDF that was clearly a template with our file names dropped in. The other two marked up specific pads, flagged a connector footprint pulled from a bad library, and asked about our acceptance class before quoting the test coverage. That second kind of response is what correlates with how the first batch actually goes.

Willingness to split consignment line by line. One quote called out “turnkey” meaning they would buy the full BOM and bill us. Another meant buying the actives while we consigned the connectors we had already pre-paid. The one we ended up signing (Venture Electronics) was open to going line by line, which saved us about 7 percent on cash tied up during the run.

Test coverage honesty. The two lowest quotes assumed FCT was our problem. The two higher ones costed in a bed of nails fixture and ICT coverage. Once we normalized apples to apples, the price delta compressed to about 18 percent. Amortizing the fixture NRE across two batches was another line that only showed up because we asked.

If you’re at the stage of quoting your first real run, the number to pressure test is not the per unit price. It’s how much of their reply looks like a template.

I've been thinking about a small hardware business idea around making everyday tech easier to carry for people who spend most of their day moving between client sites, commuting, or working outside a traditional office.

The problem I'm interested in is pretty simple: keeping a phone charged and taking calls throughout a long day without carrying too many accessories.

Two products I'm considering for this setup are the Anker MagGo Power Bank 2 Pro magnetic power bank and the soundcore AeroClip 2 open-ear clip earbuds.

The power bank is intended to make phone charging more convenient, while the open-ear earbuds offer an option for calls when you still want to hear what's happening around you.

But I'm not sure whether combining existing products into a practical everyday-carry setup creates enough value to be a viable business idea.

A few things I'd like to get feedback on:

• Would you actually pay for a thoughtfully selected tech kit, or would you rather choose each accessory yourself?
• What matters most in this category: size, weight, battery capacity, call quality, or durability?
• Is there a real unmet need for people who spend 10–12 hours moving between appointments?
• If you were validating this idea, what customer group or use case would you test first?

Disclosure: I'm involved in promoting these products. I'm interested in honest feedback on whether this is a useful customer problem to build a business around, including reasons the idea might not work.

I'd appreciate practical criticism from people who have experience with hardware products, product positioning, or validating a new business idea.

I’m a software developer with no hardware background, planning a small handheld device: camera capture, text processing on the device, audio through a headphone jack, and a few physical buttons. It needs to work offline and run a single app.

I’m choosing between two options:

• A) A generic rugged Android handheld from Shenzhen (5", 13 MP autofocus camera, 3.5 mm jack, physical buttons), locked to my own app.
• B) A custom build: Raspberry Pi 5, camera module, 5" touchscreen, audio board, battery board and a 3D-printed case.

Questions:

1. For a first batch of 10–30 units, which would you choose, and why?
2. If I go with A, how risky is relying on a generic Chinese handheld (silent hardware changes, discontinued models, firmware I don’t control)?
3. Do these manufacturers offer custom cases or button layouts at small quantities? At what volume does that make sense?

Thanks!

current prototype uses existing hub with small modification. totally fine for 20 units. if this becomes 5000, obviously not fine. ive been looking at standard parts and injection molding suppliers on alibaba and custom tooling isnt as impossible as i expected, but still feels early while design could change. anyone been through this? what volume made custom mold worth it for you? probably nylon or ABS depending final load. i dont need super tight aerospace tolerance, just consistent press fit. also how much variation should i expect between cavities on cheaper mold? manually touching up every few parts sounds harmless until youre doing thousands. trying to time custom tooling without doing it way too early.