Hi all, I have some ideas for extremely niche products. Has anyone had any luck getting some custom hardware made, maybe based around a Raspberry Pi + a small battery.<p>I'd be over the moon if I could find a way to get this done for less than $10,000.<p>As a stopgap , has anyone made something like a Raspberry Pi zero, but even smaller( a single USB port would be nice too) ?
Do you want to build a shield for RPi with your project on it, or a complete self-contained PCB with RPi core features? Because one is really easy and the other is nearly impossible with the Broadcom part.<p>This project highlighted on Hackaday might give some inspiration too if you're willing to look beyond.<p><a href="https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/another-homebrew-linux-board-success-story/" rel="nofollow">https://hackaday.com/2022/01/03/another-homebrew-linux-board...</a>
Getting it designed and a prototype 'made' is one thing. Getting a production run is another.<p>Pico and rpi are completely different levels of effort and cost. You should figure out what networking, ram, OS or RTOS, and cpu power you need first.
>> maybe based around a Raspberry Pi + a small battery<p>I'm not sure if this is a great idea (for anything beyond a hobby project) as your customer will have to supply the Raspberry Pi Zero or Zero W.<p>You cannot purchase Zeros in quantity (there are limits imposed).<p>You will be better supported by Raspberry Pi if you go down the Compute Module path (yup, they're more expensive).