Commissioning electronic product manufacture from an Asian Supplier.

You need a middleman to work with. (IMO). If you are in the US, take a look at Peter Parts.

The only way to protect your product IP is using uC, and load the codes after manufacturing. This will make it more difficult, but not impossible to copy.

Unless you have someone you trust (good luck) over there to watch them like a hawk, what you propose is a setup for failure. Flip burgers, it's a better living.

The trick is to us a uC chip that needs to be programmed in your design. Send them all they need to know about putting the components on the boards etc.. You can use a serial connector on the board when you get them back and place the program in them.

Jamie

Hell, you can make ten bucks an hour just standing on the street corner looking pathetic. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

You can have the pre-programmed micros shipped directly to your assembly house. They are locked so it will not be completely straightforward to extract the code, and the manufacturer will not respond to requests from anyone else to ship parts containing your code.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

But that's a pathetic living.

John

Yeah - I know a guy who schleps a trash bag full of cans and bottles all day and digs through other people's trash to retrieve them. He lives under a bridge somewhere next to the railroad tracks. I'm only the detail draftsman here, but when the work dried up, they've let me stay on as floor sweeper and toilet scrubber.

Hell, it pays the rent.

Thanks, Rich

That can't be all that much work. Considered selling bags of oranges at freeway entrances in your off time?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Nah - the Mexicans have the corner on that market around here. (Whittier, CA).

Thanks, Rich

Sorry, I don't want to live like DimBulb.