I don't know enough about this particular hardware to know. I know when I was tested for sleep apnea, the CPAP machine they suggested for me was set on a very low flow rate. A number of factors contribute to the airway obstruction in sleep apnea. One is muscle tone in the airway: too flimsy of muscle will collapse more easily. One is body fat: too much and it squeezes everything closer. One is airflow itself: if the airway is constricted just enough to create a thin slit, the airflow through it will reduce the air pressure and close it the rest of the way. Snoring is thus essentially the same phenomenon as how reed instruments produce sound. So, the idea with a CPAP machine is not to force air into your longs, it's to create enough positive pressure inside the airway to open it again and let your own lungs do the bulk of the work thereafter.
But they are extremely intrusive to sleep, especially if you have a partner. A better CPAP machine is needed. But I won't give them pre-order money, more because I've seen way too many bad crowd-sourcing projects than out of specific concerns towards this project.
For $3 I'll buy it on a whim and try it out. I'd try a larger one that was significantly smaller than a standard CPAP for $20, maybe even $50.
But whether or not the project is legit is kind of beside the point to me right now. Having done a lot of prototyping of my own, in both software and hardware, it bothers me to see people jump directly to crowdfunding before they've even built a hot-glue-and-wires version of a prototype. Prove the concept. It's not that freaking hard.
All they say they've done is built the shell of the noseplug. They haven't any idea how to get the electronics on the inside. Their FAQ page makes it sound like their understanding of cutting edge electronics comes from Popular Mechanics, or Boing Boing.
People act like hardware is so extra-special hard. It's not. It's no more or less difficult than hacking on software in your free time. The actual, core functionality of your project, whether it's hardware or software, should be possible to validate in less than a month. The rest of what it takes to turn any project into a real product will far eclipse the proof-of-concept work in the level of effort necessary. There's no such thing as "if you build it, they will come".
Okay, no, Elon Musk's Hyperloop can't be validated in a month. A brand-new, hyper-secure, microkernel operating system written in Rust wouldn't be, either. I'm not saying all ideas are possible in a month, I'm just saying the stuff people typically do in the given spaces as garage inventors are on the short-scale for validation.
It just takes up a little to a lot more space. But if you're dedicated, most people can find the space. I'm sure a few adults like supposedly involved in this project can rent out a small warehouse on their pocket cash together. I don't even work full-time, I live in one of the worst areas of the country for real estate prices right now, and even I could scrap together the money for a small warehouse, if I had to.
It's going to be hard if you don't have any experience in hardware. Yeah, but even making a simple CRUD app is going to be hard if you don't have any experience in software. We live in a golden age of hardware development. Nearly everyone and their neighbor in the US has a garage full of tools that could bootstrap a small industrial renaissance in a 3rd world country.
Or you don't even have to buy anything, design a flat-pack vector layout in Inkscape, email it to any of the thousands of laser-cutting services in the country, tell them you're fine buying scrap material, wait a couple of days, and you can make anything the size of a breadbox for about $50.
Need more complexity? Make a 3D model in blender, send it off to any of the dozens of (and growing) 3D printing services, wait a couple of days, and you can make anything the size of an old Walkman for about $50. Seriously, don't buy your own 3D printer unless you want to get into the business of maintaining 3D printers. Outsource that malarky.
But come on, if you don't believe in your project enough to put your own time and money into it, how do you expect us to believe in it? (though, I know that isn't really stopping anyone).
