> I’m a developer with an idea for a new type of personal device.

Many sensible recommendations on this thread. The key differences between hardware and software-only projects usually boils down to cost and rate of iteration. Non-trivial hardware projects are capital intensive, plain and simple.

There are also costs and time-consuming aspects that tend to be very foreign for someone not in the space. A typical example of this is making molds for plastic parts and, in general, NRE's (Non-recurring Engineering fees). Sure, 3D printing can reduce these needs for some projects, however, at some point in time, most products require an investment in tooling and production hardware.

Beyond the prototyping stage it might be difficult or impossible to just build one or a few of anything. For example, if your product needs a custom aluminum extrusion you will have to pay for a die and then likely run somewhere between hundreds to thousands of pounds of aluminum through that die as a minimum order requirement.

It sounds like the project you are discussing is multidisciplinary. This could mean that a single engineer is unlikely to be able to help you. You might consider talking to an engineering/product-design company who could cover multiple domains. Also, because there is a software layer, regardless of the fact that you might do that work yourself, whoever you work with has to understand this as well. Unless you have dealt with embedded systems, you might actually need to have them explain how to approach certain aspects of a n IoT project. Here's a couple of options depending on the degree of help you might need:

https://www.starrapid.com/

https://www.algoshift.com/

Bottom line, if you have funding it should not be very difficult to find help. Trying to produce a non-trivial consumer-electronics product without money is nearly impossible.

Kickstarter?

The problem there is simple: If your idea is good, it will be cloned by some Chinese company before your funding period is over. There are many stories of entrepreneurs waking up to a bad clone of their product being sold in the open market for a quarter of the price they need to even begin to justify making it in the first place. I remember talking to a guy who listed an innovative 3D printer on KS. By the time the campaign was over, so was his business. The Chinese cloned enough of it from what he presented on KS that he shipped the units he owed and was forced to printing books about 3D printing. Be careful.

And then there's the regulatory part of every project. You will have to deal with UL, FCC, TUV, CE, etc. This is important and, yes, if you don't want to waste lots of time and lots of money, this requires expertise as well.

This brings me to intellectual property. I have a love/hate relationship with patents. However, in real life, in real business and in some industries, if you don't have them for protection you might as well not even enter. This is a tough realization for most engineers. Patents take time and are expensive to author. Patents might also cause you to delay introduction of your product (Example: If you disclose a product publicly anywhere in the world, you lose the ability to apply for and obtain a patent in Europe). Do you need one or more patents to protect yourself? If so, you might want to pay for an hour with a patent attorney and learn a bit about the realities of negotiating that landscape. The US Patent and Trademark office has a series of really nice webinars from which you can learn:

https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/events

Good timing, it looks like the series on patents starts tomorrow.

Here's a YC company in the IP domain, we've used them, they are good:

https://www.cognitionip.com/

NDA's. Same feelings on my part about NDA's. Sometimes they are necessary. Their relationship to the ability to patent inventions could be important. Sadly, at some point, every entrepreneur learns that having access to legal advice might be just as important as having a good idea and the technical chops to execute. I don't have any real advice regarding NDA's. Randomly downloader boilerplates can be dangerous. It is possible to create an NDA that is legally worthless by not understanding how to write one from a legal perspective. I sometimes get NDA's that are laughable. The good news is that you can sign these all they long because they are barely good as toilet paper.

Good luck.