Hehehe, yeah admittedly the "actually" part was exaggerated, but it definitely hit a nerve. There is this sort of tacit understanding hardware kickstarters are often late, but obviously not all, as all the good folk who have posted their own on here have shown.
It's probably the number one question we get asked now rebootthesystem, by people in our network who considering KS. It's a catch 22. Aim too low, you can't deliver (unless you get additional capital... which might be the point), aim too high, people don't believe you'll get there, project fails.
It's because of these incompatible goals that projects will keep going to low and keep posting eulogies on HN.
I know what you mean. Around the time of our campaign these guys [1] were on every major news website in Australia (paid ads, not stories). Their marketing budget must have been huge. I've heard Sony launches stuff under different names too just to test the market.
It does have one positive side effect though - more people come to the platform.
For us, it started on OpenWRT blogs, scouring Alibaba and seeing who got back to us. Later it was email lists and the network of our accelerator.
If I was going to custom design, i'd be going to maker meetups in your city, or applying to something like Hxlr8. There are also supplier/customer places that do matchmaking with additional services for a fee (HWTrek for example). I didn't use any.
Also, if you can find a Kickstarter of someone who did something at all related, ask who they used. Lots of creators are very happy to tell you!
Agree zrgiu - we were able to avoid the hardware design aspect, but the projects you mentioned certainly couldn't - that is their whole point of existing.
Thanks! The vetting was a process of of evaluation really. From initially being responsive, to shipping us demo units promptly, providing assistance when we had problems etc. When it came down to actually placing the order, we felt they'd already put in enough effort that it was genuine business relationship.
Wrt getting ripped off, we were advised very early on: "If you make anything in China, it will be copied". It's for that reason our software on the box is a very thin layer. The smarts are in the cloud and on the smartphone apps.