Apple Accessory Design - Prepared to PAY someone!

[ben_s]

I have an Apple MFi (Made For i) account, which allows me to purchase the authentication chips and connectors for Apple products.

I found a device (http://www.newpotatotech.com/PINBALL_MAGIC/pinball_magic.html) which turns your iPhone into a pinball machine... the game is irrelevant, except it has hardware relevant to what I'm trying to do.

The hardware comprises 4 switches and 5 LED's interfaced to the Apple hardware (dock) interface.

I want to examine this hardware and produce a similar device - 2 switched inputs and (maybe) a vibration output and 6 LED outputs on my own PCB.

The hardware comprises an Apple Authentication chip, a pretty basic PIC and a few dicreets.

Is there anyone on here that can help reverse engineer, design what I need and create relevant circuit & PCB designs?

As I say, I'm willing to pay.

 

[poor mystic]

Hi Ben_S
We get a request like this every couple of weeks - pretty soon we acquaint the fellow with sad facts and he goes away without losing his entire savings, along with those of his wife and her family. We don't even charge for this service, though it is worth a great deal.

Even so we have not colluded in providing this answer and it may be that I am wrong. I say this easily because I have discovered the value of humility.

I want to to inform you as gently as possible that in order to start out as an electronics gizmo manufacturer you're going to need Very Big Money. It doesn't even help much that you have chosen a simple little device, it's going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to get a product to the stage where, with more hundreds of thousands (or millions), you could do a manufacturing run.

For a weeks work in a decent workshop you can expect to pay more than US$10,000. This is not a typo. How can it be true? Yet is is true, the bespoke electronics designer has 10's or 100's of thousands tied up in equipment which must be housed in good facilities. He has trained for years; his personal time is not to be had cheaply. Anyway there are no such persons as bespoke electronics designers, or I never heard of one outside the hobby shop where days' work is accomplished in months alongside the real commitments of a normal life. I guess it's just not a realistic profession.

How many weeks' work are there in this job? Circuits must be analysed and designed, components must be sourced and tested, a PCB must be devised, manufactured and tested. Documentation must be produced. Surely a couple of weeks seems reasonable so far? A year or more to a hobbyist?

The whole must be made to fit into an attractively designed box you can market to the neon-haired. Plastics engineering doesn't come cheap either. More Very Big Money.

Marketing costs so much that I can't think in those terms. Just frickin' heaps and then some more.

What say your device is a success? There are people in this world for whom costs are about 1% of your own. They'll take your idea and sell it under you, and you'll be lucky to get your investment back.

I have heard of people getting things (l.e.d. jewellery and the like) made in Taiwan with some success but the only way anybody I knew ever got was broke. You could try Taiwan, but I wouldn't hold out much hope of profit even then. Nowadays Taiwan has mainland China competing right up against her back door, do you feel capable all on your own of out-manouvering the Chinese?

Such are my thoughts on your project. Make of them what you will - I would be very happy to be proven wrong and I wish you great success.

Mark

 

[poor mystic]

Hey Ben
I just couldn't leave it at that and I did some googlework. Maybe you could try these guys: http://www.hbrindustries.com/asp. They speak your language and are in Silicon Valley; you can bet they'll make a good job.
As an alternative http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/430590985/Prototype_and_Mass_Printed_Board_Assembly.html is probably at or near, or above, the standard of the Silicon Valley guys and they'll be far cheaper and might be very easy to deal with.
I'm very sure that many forum members and guests will be interested in the result of your research. We do get a lot of inquiries on this note and it'd be good to have some feedback from people who try and use these and other inventors' services.
M

 

[ben_s]

Hi Ben_S
We get a request like this every couple of weeks - pretty soon we acquaint the fellow with sad facts and he goes away without losing his entire savings, along with those of his wife and her family. We don't even charge for this service, though it is worth a great deal.

Even so we have not colluded in providing this answer and it may be that I am wrong. I say this easily because I have discovered the value of humility.

I want to to inform you as gently as possible that in order to start out as an electronics gizmo manufacturer you're going to need Very Big Money. It doesn't even help much that you have chosen a simple little device, it's going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to get a product to the stage where, with more hundreds of thousands (or millions), you could do a manufacturing run.

For a weeks work in a decent workshop you can expect to pay more than US$10,000. This is not a typo. How can it be true? Yet is is true, the bespoke electronics designer has 10's or 100's of thousands tied up in equipment which must be housed in good facilities. He has trained for years; his personal time is not to be had cheaply. Anyway there are no such persons as bespoke electronics designers, or I never heard of one outside the hobby shop where days' work is accomplished in months alongside the real commitments of a normal life. I guess it's just not a realistic profession.

How many weeks' work are there in this job? Circuits must be analysed and designed, components must be sourced and tested, a PCB must be devised, manufactured and tested. Documentation must be produced. Surely a couple of weeks seems reasonable so far? A year or more to a hobbyist?

The whole must be made to fit into an attractively designed box you can market to the neon-haired. Plastics engineering doesn't come cheap either. More Very Big Money.

Marketing costs so much that I can't think in those terms. Just frickin' heaps and then some more.

What say your device is a success? There are people in this world for whom costs are about 1% of your own. They'll take your idea and sell it under you, and you'll be lucky to get your investment back.

I have heard of people getting things (l.e.d. jewellery and the like) made in Taiwan with some success but the only way anybody I knew ever got was broke. You could try Taiwan, but I wouldn't hold out much hope of profit even then. Nowadays Taiwan has mainland China competing right up against her back door, do you feel capable all on your own of out-manouvering the Chinese?

Such are my thoughts on your project. Make of them what you will - I would be very happy to be proven wrong and I wish you great success.

Mark

Thanks for your reply.

I am only trying to reverse engineer what I already have into a prototype for internal use rather than a market ready product.

The circuit only has 2 chips, the Apple authentication chip & a PIC. It then has the switches that form the inputs and the LED's that form the outputs. There are some pull up or pull down resistors, and a RC combination that I assume forms the clock for the PIC.

In terms of replicating the design, I don't see it being that hard.

Once we have a design, then a simple PCB that incorporates the 2 chips, the apple dock connector and some pads to fly wires for the inputs and outputs doesn't seem *that* challenging.

There would be no packaging, plastics etc. this is purely a prototype...

I am only suggesting a simple PCB design as I don't know how else to prtotype SMC stuff, if they had legs I'd be doing it on breadboard! Perhaps there is a better way of prototyping things with SMC that I don't know about?

Does that change the game at all?

 

[ben_s]

Hey Ben
I just couldn't leave it at that and I did some googlework. Maybe you could try these guys: http://www.hbrindustries.com/asp. They speak your language and are in Silicon Valley; you can bet they'll make a good job.
As an alternative http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/430590985/Prototype_and_Mass_Printed_Board_Assembly.html is probably at or near, or above, the standard of the Silicon Valley guys and they'll be far cheaper and might be very easy to deal with.
I'm very sure that many forum members and guests will be interested in the result of your research. We do get a lot of inquiries on this note and it'd be good to have some feedback from people who try and use these and other inventors' services.
M

I will enquire to both and provide feedback regarding this project... lets see how expensive they are!