Very clever, and maybe I'm a bit jealous (I'm in electronics myself, working for the man though), but it seems rather ambitious for these three, perhaps over ambitious?
$60k isn't a lot, and it can be sunk pretty quickly in development - even if they are trying to do without taking salaries into account and are using all that for project funding.
They have a great concept, but they've spent their time on the housing and sourcing a rather large lens, fair enough. Making a mould will eat probably R80-200k of that depending on where they go. Similarly, they just took an 808 cam out its housing and used that, and are planning on developing their own PCB and electronic platform. That comes with its own difficulties. Perhaps they're firmware geniuses and can hash this kind of thing out quickly, but the hardware is no easy feat. Getting it to be low enough power so it runs long enough off batteries is a monster challenge. But lets say hypothetically they get that right, what I'm more concerned about is the EMC testing and requirements. EMC testing is highly costly, and when exporting, is absolutely a necessity. A simple product can go through multiple revisions of boards, and testing. Each costing tens of thousands. This board will not be simple, and will have high speed noisy tracks all over the place.
My point is, this is no easy task...and I just think $60k isn't nearly enough. Perhaps they can prove me wrong?
