Gullickson Laboratories

You’re probably already familiar with Tindie (a sort of Etsy for electronics), well they just announced a feature today that might interest you hardware hackers: Tindie Fundraisers.

TrH Meter – Measure hotness & wetness with a cool display for only $25, who could turn that down?

In a nutshell, it’s a way for someone with an idea or a prototype to feel out the market before they order a bunch of parts. It’s kinda like a Kickstarter, except tied to a specific deliverable item (as opposed to a range of “rewards”) and it’s unambiguous about the fact that you’re plunking money down to pre-order on something not just an idea or the intent to deliver an item (if this sounds familiar I wrote about a related topic a few days ago).

Let me tell you, you can never have too many chainable, intelligent stepper motors…

It’s all pretty geeky stuff right now, but it’s not hard to imagine more consumer-oriented devices filling this space soon. I for one have several ideas I’ve considered taking to market but I wasn’t sure if the cost to build would match up with what the market would bear. Now I have a chance to find out!