Been there, done that. Terribly underestimated the challenge.

In 2013 I wanted to create a simple time-lapse camera: 3 intervals (every minute, hour or day - rotary switch), store on SD card, recharge via solar, weatherproof;

"Can't be that hard", I thought and started interviewing potential clients and because of the nice 3D renderings and eventual 3D prints I got back "So cool - I want one" and naiv as I was I registered a business and collected a few hundred pre-orders at $150. Even had a cheap startup booth at CES in the basement next to the washrooms one year.

When they say "Hardware is hard" they are sugar-coating it. I could rant for days about the things that happened over the 2 years that it took to ship the first camera. We underestimated everything: Optics for example and what role condensation plays when deployed outdoors for long periods of time, or the impact of temperature on batteries. Also, just having a "cool" product was not enough to launch a sustainable business. Without recurring revenue, customer support was a pain.

I was lucky that some of our early clients were enterprises who wanted to pay monthly fees for extra services, otherwise we would have gone bankrupt trying to make consumers happy.

Eventually I decided that for us "only a camera that generates MRR is a good camera" and stopped selling to consumers. But it sure makes me happy still seeing recently made videos on social media from cameras I assembled myself.

Anyway, times have changed, maybe someone wants to give it another shot, happy to share more of the experiences I had.

Be aware though, manufacturing electronics is even harder these days. I know because we still make cameras. They are a necessary evil to get the kind of data our customers in Agriculture and Construction need to operate.

I am Michael Schwanzer of Toronto based ZEITDICE INC. Happy to be contacted via LinkedIn or our website.

I wonder if there's any way to do crowdfunding for products that don't exist yet. I don't mean kickstarter, in that case there's someone who wants to make the thing already. I mean for things where there are a lot of people who want it to exist, and could pledge some cash to motivate someone to make the damn thing.

One I've been waiting for since 2008 is a general purpose epaper tablet / laptop, and I see its nonexistence lamented here at least once a year.

>One I've been waiting for since 2008 is a general purpose epaper tablet

Although this might be not 100% what you want - you are aware that decent epaper Android devices e.g. from Onyx have been available for a few years now? Have a look e.g. at the BOOX Note Air2. Of course they are marketed as e-readers, and are quite pricey.

I think many useful product idea creators will not share their ideas because it would suck to see someone turning your idea into reality and potentially make money. And average people with no tech or creation skills come up with the worst ideas.

Potentially a DAO

Bonus fun idea: I think if you used a synchronized array of about a dozen of these you could use photogrammetry to make an animated 3d model of plant growth, which I would love.

Not exactly what you’re asking for (at least price wise), but there are solar power adapters for trail cams: https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/tactacam-external-solar-pane...

Yep, I've seen solar trail cams, just none that have a setting for taking a picture at the same time each day.

I expect if you eliminated the need for taking video and motion detection, should be able to get away with smaller panel and battery. Most trail cams also have IR modes, don't need that, which would drop cost as well.

this should work as long as it supports charging while in use (hook up solar panel to usb and done): https://www.brinno.com/time-lapse-camera/TLC120

Or roll your own: It's overkill, but lots of solar-powered battery-backed raspberry pi systems out there. If it only needs to run for a few minutes/day. You can undersize the solar if you can skip cloudy days when there's not much growth anyway.

Maybe an old laptop with webcam or some digital cameras with 'remote' triggers could fill the role.

An RTC chip with alarm function could send a power-on signal every day and at least a pi can self-shutoff once the job is complete.

"Not all RTC chips have alarm functions but a few that do are the DS3231 (Maxim Integrated), MCP79410 (Microchip) and ISL12026 (Intersil). Here, a DS3231M is used to construct a simple, but fully functional, RTC building block and, further, to construct an example RTC-based switch."

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/projects/build-programmable...

Raspberry Pi Zero with a camera module and case? Plus solar panel and battery, and maybe some waterproofing. Hmm, a RasPi would probably be too power-hungry...

I'd buy this!