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Who to solicit for a small project? (lemdro.id)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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I'm not in the tech community, but I have an idea for a device I want to get made (just for my own convenience; nothing commercial or for an organization). Is there an existing platform for soliciting someone to build an electronic gadget for me?

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[–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

Hey, wow this blew up! I should turn notifications on. I want a programmable IR volume knob. Just a big, chunky knob to set on the table or couch to control my home theater receiver. No Bluetooth or Wifi or zigbee or anything like that. That's all.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Gotcha. The tricky part with that is gonna be that it's specific to the model of your entertainment system.

    Means that if whoever you have working on it is non-local, they'll need to find a duplicate of your entertainment system to test on to make sure it works, which is obviously not super feasible.

    If a local buddy asked me to build something like that, I had the time, and I charged fair market value for the work, you're probably looking at a couple grand.

    If it was a good buddy and I only charged for parts, it'd probably be only a hundred bucks or so?

    I wouldn't even really consider doing it as a remote job, as getting a copy of your receiver is more trouble than it's worth I think. Depends on the receiver to some degree though I guess.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    That's insightful, thanks. Not knowing the subtleties of it, I imagined they would just need to make sure the thing has an IR receiver and is programmable, which they can test with whatever remotes and associated devices they have around. Then I could program the finished thing with my remote at home.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    Fair. That's a clever solution to getting around the problem of needing to duplicate your set up.

    It is a big step up in complexity though, as you now need an IR receiver as well as an IR blaster, some sort of physical button(s) on the device that puts it into "learning" mode to detect what signal it needs to duplicate (and indicate if it's learning volume up or down), and all the additional development overhead each of those entails.

    You'd probably see a good jump in the parts cost too. Especially as, when adding more controls and sensors, it increases the complexity of the enclosure you'd put all this in, meaning you probably would need some CAD work done as well. Or someone willing to do some precision woodworking.

    All told it's probably about three to five times harder than just knowing the correct IR sequences up front and baking them into the product, so you'd see a commensurate increase in price.

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