Dream Watch: Design and manufacture HELP

[ppyxmw]

Hi guys,

I am trying to design and build my dream watch, and would like some advise on how to make this happen. Initially I want to make a sample and test it to make sure it looks proper, then I want to make a batch and getting it to market. I am sort of flexible on some changes, but ideally I want it to be a simple basic watch with 3 tally counters that are VERY easy to use, without steps and barriers between them. Then I need to be able to transfer that data to a phone.

Here are the details of what I want to do:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cYKVrKaTiYlv27EA4FMYHDopdRYeN1DNI3vMHOJrvIE/edit?usp=sharing

All help is welcome. I have talked to some OEMs on Alibaba but I have been going around circles for 4 months and getting nowhere.

[ajb]

Welcome to the forum! 

It looks like you've designed a watch to solve a very specific problem (or set of problems).  Unfortunately that means the market for this would also be very specific, and therefore quite small.  That makes it a lot harder to recoup the cost of putting it into production, and your watch looks like a fully-custom job with unusual features (like NFC and touch buttons on the display), which would require a lot of development work.  Just to get a useful sample, you'd need to do most of the design and development work required for series production, and no reasonable OEM is going to do all of that work for a sample unless you're willing to pay for all of it up front (and possibly not even then without a volume purchase commitment).  I don't want to be too much of a downer here, but I'm not surprised you haven't gotten anywhere with the OEMs you've talked to.  They're probably looking for customers who want a customized case, or maybe a slightly different LCD layout, and what you're asking them for is orders of magnitude more work for something that will sell in uncertain volume.

Your desired functionality honestly looks like a better candidate for a smart watch app rather than a dedicated hardware device.  That's something you could probably do yourself -- it will be a very slow start if you don't already have experience with app development or writing software in general, but certainly doable and the only hard cost would be a smartwatch to develop on, if you don't already have one. 

Alternatively, you could try to develop a hardware device yourself, but that will be harder -- you'd still need to write the firmware for it, and possibly a phone app too, plus all of the challenges of designing and building the electronics (making them efficient enough for battery life isn't exactly trivial, not to mention the size) and the housing (making it durable and waterproof, if that's desired, is also not trivial).  Getting the custom LCD made would still be somewhat expensive (you will still need to commit to buying at least a few hundred, probably), but not as bad as a whole custom watch.  On the whole it's certainly doable, but will be a ton of work, especially if you want something you can sell as a consumer device.

[Kim Christensen]

It's great to have an idea, but generic ideas have no value at all.
You need to design something that sort of works before asking for help.

[ppyxmw]

Hi Ajb,

Thank you so much for your time and reply. Makes a lot of sense  and actually allows me to be more flexible with what I should do or not. I was hoping to produce around 500-1000. If the total cost comes to no more than $5 each. Do you think that is doable?

Thank you,

ppyxmw

[ppyxmw]

My understanding is that it is better to do all the theory and changes before building something to reduce cost. Unless you mean as part of the ethos of EEVblog, it would be better to show something more developed?

[Kim Christensen]

Yes... I assume you've got the concept figured out.
ie: How it's supposed to look and function.

Or are you still looking for concept ideas?

[ppyxmw]

Ah so right now the core functionalities. and how I want it to look (but I am flexible on that if it simplifies manufacture on some aspects). So one of the things I want it to have is a VERY non-smart watch vibe. It needs to be more basic LCD. The main modern technology it will have is NFC or Bluetooth. I am also talking to the manufacturers of the what I edited in the doc I shared, to see if they can make the slight changes to their current watch

[I wanted a rude username]

This might not be what you want to hear, but: don't try to have a custom LCD manufactured.

The main reason for this is not that it's expensive (although it is), it's that most cheap manufacturers' LCDs utterly suck. Even Casio LCDs are poor (slow and limited viewing angles). If you think you can get Timex quality from a random OEM ... no, you can't.

Instead, just do what even major manufacturers like Garmin do and use a Sharp Memory Display. Transflective, excellent contrast, and you don't have the complexity of driving an LCD directly (just SPI plus a 2 Hz pulse). Spend more time developing the actual firmware, which is in many ways the hard part. Rebranding an existing watch with custom firmware that implements your piedea could be the path of least resistance, but there are perception implications.

[ajb]

I was hoping to produce around 500-1000. If the total cost comes to no more than $5 each. Do you think that is doable?

No, I don't think that's even close to doable honestly.  If you were making more like 10k, maybe you could get the bill of materials down to $5 per unit, but that still leaves assembly cost and, more importantly, the initial development and production engineering costs to cover.  Those could easily add up to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on what exactly you're making.  The tooling for a custom injection-molded case, for example, could easily cost >$10k on its own.  But development labor is probably going to be the biggest upfront cost -- again, depending on what you end up making.  Finding something close to what you want and having it lightly customized would be a lot less expensive, but I don't know how close you'll be able to get to your concept that way -- and I don't think you'll get to your target price that way either, unfortunately.

[ppyxmw]

This is a great idea. Been looking around to see how much they are and they aren't as cheap but seem to make a lot of sense. Thank you.

[ppyxmw]

Wow. yep, so I think my options are really to get an existing product and change the segments on it and the firmware. And maybe exclude any NFC or extra buttons. I can simply use the existing buttons even though that won't be as user friendly