Potting up the board sounds rather extreme; the epoxy might end up costing more than a Pico board...
There was also no wi-fi mentioned, or else the OP can do it like all IoT companies selling gizmos -- tie the operation of the gadget to a server. They all do that -- I can't recall any IoT product that is not tied to a server, save for open-source stuff and really simple stuff.
But, given that there have been armies of academics cheerleading about IoT for years and years, so many people have worked on pushing this IoT thing that I think most product ideas have been tried and can be imitated by copycats. IoT products are generally commodities now, one can't go premium unless your company's name is Dyson or Apple. Or say maybe the OP has created a truly amazing "killer app" IoT use case thingy, in which case everyone else will be looking closely so that they can imitate it.
The ease of embedded project development these days also makes it easy for someone else to imitate your product. But if the OP wants to put in some anti-copying measures, I'd say go ahead, as long as you understand it may be just a speed bump to others. The strategy depends on the value of the product. One can dissuade blatant copycats to some extent, but if the gadget is really useful then others will just imitate. Focusing solely on anti-copying measures for firmware is sort of a red herring; one should look at the system or the embedded ecosystem in its entirety.
There was also no wi-fi mentioned, or else the OP can do it like all IoT companies selling gizmos -- tie the operation of the gadget to a server. They all do that -- I can't recall any IoT product that is not tied to a server, save for open-source stuff and really simple stuff.
But, given that there have been armies of academics cheerleading about IoT for years and years, so many people have worked on pushing this IoT thing that I think most product ideas have been tried and can be imitated by copycats. IoT products are generally commodities now, one can't go premium unless your company's name is Dyson or Apple. Or say maybe the OP has created a truly amazing "killer app" IoT use case thingy, in which case everyone else will be looking closely so that they can imitate it.
The ease of embedded project development these days also makes it easy for someone else to imitate your product. But if the OP wants to put in some anti-copying measures, I'd say go ahead, as long as you understand it may be just a speed bump to others. The strategy depends on the value of the product. One can dissuade blatant copycats to some extent, but if the gadget is really useful then others will just imitate. Focusing solely on anti-copying measures for firmware is sort of a red herring; one should look at the system or the embedded ecosystem in its entirety.
Statistics: Posted by katak255 — Fri Jun 14, 2024 2:44 am