If you are not concerned with coverage outside of the U.S. and if you have reasonable documentation as to when you conceived and "reduced it to practice" you might decide to put your efforts and money into actually getting it to the market rather than dealing with patents. A provisional patent that you write and file yourself is inexpensive and can be a reasonable thing to do as long as you do not get a false sense of security from it, in my opinion. This is not meant to be legal advice. ---George