filed for an LLC, starting making my own designs - since the company I work for 'passed' on my proposal.
<insert fake disappointment>
I have another company lined up as a sales outlet, and I've been meeting with their CEO. I showed him my designs on Friday, and he scheduled an 'emergency meeting' with his design team for Monday. He was going to let everyone off until New Years, but changed his mind and decided the design folks and project managers can come in Monday to meet with me. He wants to make sure they see this before they shut down for the next 2 weeks. Hope they're excited by my ideas, or I'm not going to have any friends in that room.
I'm going to put together some cost estimates for Hardware and write some proof-of-concept software after the first of the year...and then customer interviews starting around the end of January/early Feb. If we get customer buy-in, I'll figure out how much (if any) money I want from outside investors. Still plenty of opportunity for it to go sideways, but things are trending in a positive direction.