How to do market research for a new product?

Hi All,

I have several ideas for new products, they are all hardware/software based. Apart from speaking with my contacts in the industry I am completely unclear on how to do basic market research to see if there would be any interest in my new product ideas. How does one actually go about doing market research for a new product? I'd be very interested in hearing what did and didn't work from the HN community.

Thanks for reading, FB