[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
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Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
Amidst the sea of software startups, I'm keen to learn who in our
community is braving the often-quoted "hardware is hard" mantra.
Whether you're working on IoT, robotics, consumer electronics, or
something completely off the wall, please feel free to share below.
Remember, no venture is too small or niche! It's the passion and
innovation that counts.
Author : guzik
Score : 292 points
Date : 2023-07-04 07:31 UTC (1 days ago)
| davidw wrote:
| I worked for a home automation kind of thing a few years back
| and... it's hard. The part I worked on in software was fun, but
| it's just so difficult to deal with the lead times and difficulty
| of updating things and doing customer service.
|
| More power to you if you're making a go of it.
|
| Years ago, I worked on these, and it was so much fun, because of
| the variety of (smart) people involved, from tracing the light
| rays through the machine to motors, firmware, and all the rest.
| https://www.icare-world.com/us/product/icare-eidon/
| jonahss wrote:
| I'm building trading cards made with e-ink displays.
|
| https://www.wyldcard.io/blog/introducing-wyldcard
|
| https://www.crowdsupply.com/wyldcard/wyldcard-devkit
| gigaflop wrote:
| I had an idea that you might be able to build, now that I see
| 'you' again:
|
| Would you ever design an E-Ink "Life and token counter" aimed
| at people who play Commander format MTG? Given the amount of
| time and effort it would take me to DIY, I'd easily pay $50ish
| for a standalone device of the type.
| distortionfield wrote:
| Seconding this, then I wouldn't have to use my phone all the
| time.
| techperson20007 wrote:
| I remember reading your post about this on HN a while back. You
| are creating some sick tech. Hope you can blow up.
| erulabs wrote:
| We make tiny Linux servers packed with real devops tools (but
| also sporting a somewhat-easy-ish-to-use UI) for home-hosting and
| self-teaching: https://pibox.io - works great with Jellyfin!
| atentaten wrote:
| I'll look into purchasing one. My Jellyfin system drive failed
| on an old Dell Optiplex. I just need to replace and re-image
| the hdd, but this looks fun. Is it well ventilated?
| erulabs wrote:
| It does have a small noctua fan which is usually overkill,
| and several users have added low profile heatsinks. I don't
| have any heat problems and mine are stacked in a big pile :P
| Unstylish6010 wrote:
| Two big 'ole thumbs up for Kubesail and the Pibox! Been running
| mine since November of 2022 and it's great. As a complete
| novice I was able to self-host Jellyfin, Bitwarden, Nextcloud,
| Resilio Sync, and Flatnotes pretty much all in a few minutes.
| The Pibox is great, and the folks at Kubesail are wonderful.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| We do warehouse analysis using autonomous robots:
| https://www.dexory.com
|
| Hardware is hard - not just the actual work, but the different
| approaches needed to development, management, and fundraising. We
| started in the consumer space, moved to the retail/customer
| service space, and only really hit our stride when we pivoted to
| the logistics space.
|
| Our series A was announced last week so there's plenty of
| momentum and the industry generally is enthusiastic about
| technology. Ongoing improvements in robotics technology generally
| is finally making this sort of application feasible!
| davedriesmans wrote:
| https://telraam.net/en/S2 Traffic counting by citizens. Counts
| cars, bikes, pedestrians, buses, trucks,... and we sell it to
| cities and other mobility professionals.
| cambel wrote:
| We are making electricity safe for workers:
|
| proxxi.co
|
| Focused mostly on manufacturing, mining, construction and
| maintenance.
|
| We also sell into Telcos and data centers
| geethree wrote:
| If you're looking for a fun hardware project I'd recommend a
| buddy's company. As they don't have a HN account, here is their
| plug:
|
| Exclosure is building a worldwide networks of space monitoring
| telescopes. We believe that space is for everyone, and that
| monitoring is the first step in keeping the outer space
| environment sustainable. We are actively seeking locations to
| host our observatories, and can compensate hosts with good
| viewing locations: https://www.exclosure.io/hosts
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| A couple of good friends of mine spun out hardware start-ups over
| the past five years. Even though I'm a data/software guy, I
| helped out with both, up to and including soldering components
| onto demo boards. Since I've a couple of kids, mortgage,
| temperamental automobile etc. etc. I wasn't in the position to
| work for either startup for low salary/high equity though, and
| I'm kind of glad I didn't TBH.
|
| The first startup should be way bigger and well known than it is,
| but the product/market fit isn't too good and marketing in
| general is poorly executed. This startup looks at electro-
| muscular stimulation to help out diabetic and pre-diabetic folks
| with getting some exercise (and folks with mobility/joint
| issues). To be honest I can't see this company surviving another
| five years unless there's some radical shake up in the way it's
| marketed, which is as a consumer device rather than a medical
| device.
|
| The second startup is a spin out from a medical devices
| incubator, and is a real niche market - basically nerve implants
| to manage chronic pain. The target market is something
| ridiculously small, on the order of a handful of people per 100k
| who may benefit from it. At the moment, the only thing keeping
| this startup afloat seems to be generous research grants, can't
| really see how they can stay going unless the overall plan is to
| drive some hype and hope to get acquired by some bigger fish.
| konschubert wrote:
| I am making and selling an eink smart screen.
|
| It can display a google calendar.
|
| You can also point it to any url that serves an image.
|
| Is it okay to post a link?
|
| https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...
|
| I am planning to release more applications for it and I am
| opening the platform for 3rd party applications.
| daredoes wrote:
| Give it Home Assistant integration, or at least MQTT control,
| and I'd buy at least one
| tadfisher wrote:
| > You can configure this beautiful the e-paper display to
| poll any HTTP endpoint for an image. Just paste the URL into
| the iOS or Android app. The image will then be displayed on
| the screen. And when it changes, the screen updates.
|
| Looks pretty simple to do.
| sbdaman wrote:
| I'll purchase once Outlook calendar is supported natively.
| konschubert wrote:
| I'm taking you by your word ;)
| sbdaman wrote:
| I'll email you.
| Vermeulen wrote:
| Love this idea, been waiting for you to ship to Canada and now
| finally purchased :)
|
| Currently your Android app isn't available in Canada yet though
| konschubert wrote:
| You're right, thanks for the hint! I have now submitted it to
| Google to be released in Canada as well. Usually that is
| approved pretty quickly.
| airstrike wrote:
| Do you have docs on the API / integration mentioned here and on
| the website? Would be good to know in broad strokes before
| buying one. Sample apps and whatnot
| konschubert wrote:
| Here is the API description:
|
| https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-
| gallery/blob/ma...
|
| And here is the sample app:
|
| https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-gallery
|
| Admittedly, I am not the greatest technical writer, but I
| compensate by being pretty responsive. So if you have a
| question, just message me :)
| fsagx wrote:
| Just ordered. Looking forward to getting it!
| gouthamve wrote:
| I see that shipping to Europe is not yet supported. Do you have
| plans soon?
| konschubert wrote:
| CE certification is extremely expensive for a bootstrapped
| startup.
|
| Plus there is Elektroschrottverordnung and
| Verpackungsrichtlinie and all that stuff.
|
| You can send me an email at info@invisible-computers.com
| h4ckerle wrote:
| Wait, you are situated in Flensburg but not shipping to EU?
| That seems rather interesting... Do you also manufacture in
| germany or have you sourced that out?
| konschubert wrote:
| The wood is CNC'd in Germany, the metal back cover is
| from Spain. :)
|
| PCB and screens are from China. The final assembly
| happens in my home.
|
| I try to run a short supply chain to limit my inventory
| risk.
| testmasterflex wrote:
| Is it UL certified?
| LeeroyWasHere wrote:
| I'm guessing since it's plugged in, there was no way to make it
| last long enough on a battery?
|
| Love the idea, will bookmark it for the future office!
| konschubert wrote:
| Battery is harder to make safe and harder to certify as safe.
|
| Plus, I like the idea of plugging it in and never having to
| worry about it.
|
| Still, I am thinking about adding a battery about twice per
| week, so it's definitely on my mind.
| bombcar wrote:
| Consider a "bring your own battery" option where you have
| an interface that's moderately standard.
| kkkrist wrote:
| Oh, a fellow hacker from my little home town :-) Greetings from
| the other side of the fjord and best of luck with your
| business!
| Rafuino wrote:
| I'd love to get this but for iCal display. Any chance that's in
| the cards in the future?
| konschubert wrote:
| It's in the cards, pretty high in the stack, but I never make
| promises.
|
| If you can write code and you don't want to wait for me to
| add it to the default calendar app, you can build it and
| release it as a 3rd party app:
|
| https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-
| gallery/blob/ma...
| Rafuino wrote:
| Got it. I'm not the right person to build this
| functionality so I'll just wait to see if it comes and buy
| later if so!
| bobthecowboy wrote:
| Any chance you'll do a larger one? I've wanted exactly this but
| closer to ~13-inch to replace the "family wall calendar".
|
| It looks great, though! Any good place to follow/subscribe for
| updates?
| konschubert wrote:
| So far I only have an instagram:
| https://www.instagram.com/invisiblecomputers/
|
| Larger displays are not excluded as a possibility, but I like
| the current size for placing it on the desk. Also, larger
| displays are disproportionately expensive, and the display is
| already the main cost driver.
| bobthecowboy wrote:
| Totally fair. I hadn't checked the cost of larger e-ink,
| and you're right, I probably wouldn't pay $500 for the same
| thing you're making but 13".
|
| Still going to keep an eye on it, though. I may end up
| talking myself (more accurately, my wife) into a smaller
| display.
| proee wrote:
| Very cool! Are you able to make a full-time living off this
| product yet?
| konschubert wrote:
| Not yet. I'm hoping to, so I can fully focus on it.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you can document how to make this show a calendar from
| Office 365 that would get you so many sales.
| konschubert wrote:
| There is no native outlook support (yet), but it works if you
| sync it via a google calendar.
|
| Here is a guide on how to do it:
|
| https://shop.invisible-computers.com/pages/outlook-
| calendar-...
| bombcar wrote:
| That gets you a sale, bro. :)
|
| Now my family can see my calendar easily.
| moffkalast wrote:
| For the same price one can buy a 10.5" Galaxy Tab A8. But
| still, very cool. I wish e-paper wasn't expensive as hell and
| so dreadfully slow to update, it would cut down on energy usage
| in so many applications.
| konschubert wrote:
| But the Galaxy Tab doesn't have a paper-like screen ;)
| moffkalast wrote:
| True, but it can also do almost anything instead of just
| being a calendar and a picture ;)
|
| Any chance of having mini HDMI input to use it as something
| like an Onyx Boox Mira?
| konschubert wrote:
| Probably not, I'd like to keep the device as simple as
| possible. The Onyx Boox already exists and it's great ;)
| nickpinkston wrote:
| We're building Volition [1] to organize the world's mechanical
| components for MechEs, roboticists, mfg. techs, and beyond.
| Imagine McMaster-like UI quality, but ultimately across every
| good OEM / distributor.
|
| I previously built Plethora (automated CNC machining) and am
| happy to help all hardware / manufacturing startup folks. Please
| feel free to reach out.
|
| [1] https://govolition.com/
| algas wrote:
| This looks fantastic. It would be really great to have some
| proper competition to McMaster in terms of making part
| information accessible. I'll keep this in mind for future
| products, good luck bringing it fully to market!
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Thank you! Would welcome any and all feedback you've got!
| myself248 wrote:
| Ever since I first touched Octopart, I've wished there was an
| Octopart for mechanical components. This looks like it comes
| very close, and I love the look and feel.
| hito wrote:
| We are building Hito (https://hito.xyz) - easy to use crypto
| hardware wallet.
|
| I am a solo founder. We've built everything from scratch -
| hardware, firmware, backend, mobile. First year from MVP to sales
| - 200 devices shipped in Q1-Q2.
|
| We are assembling devices in my room in Mission district, San
| Francisco. Feel free to come and say "hardware is hard" to me, I
| would love to prove you another ;-)
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| We have a unidirectional gateway with a complete protocol break.
| Sales are picking up. We're hoping to deliver a guard later this
| year.
|
| Hardware may be hard, but what's really hard are high assurance
| attack resistant systems.
| applied_heat wrote:
| What protocol? Control systems type stuff?
| naushit wrote:
| is it cross domain solution?
| hnfuzzy wrote:
| Working solo on building an Android-compatible device, coming
| from a pure-software background. It's certainly a different world
| than the OSS community and available resources there, but the
| homebrew/hobbyist scene seems to have made a number of things
| more accessible over the past few years.
|
| I'm struggling with how to put an Android-compatible board
| together with just the peripherals I want (similar to a Pi but
| slimmed down), and lining up suppliers/manufacturers who can put
| it together.
|
| Looking for help/guidance on people familiar with any aspects of
| this!
| _benj wrote:
| not an expert by any means on this, but I've worked before with
| the Khadas VIM boards, which are development boards where you
| can install Android and start developing your project. The
| advantage of those is that they use Amlogic chips which are
| very affordable and come pretty much ready as product from
| Alibaba (search for "android box" and you'll find a bunch of
| white-label board/cases that are ready to be used)
|
| Alternatively, if yoou want more control/performance than what
| Android gives you, you can also look into Buildroot, which
| makes it very easy to build a custom linux distribution with
| your application in it, that is, you get a firmware ready to
| burn in your board with linux and your app running in it.
|
| Good luck!
| greatjack613 wrote:
| We develop huge 32" interactive display touch screens for trade
| shows and conferences that allow users to interact with apps and
| websites that a company wants to show. They look amazing and are
| always a show stopper for booths. They run a custom os based on
| AOSP which allows companies to use there pre made android app for
| the display instead of having to build anything custom. We also
| offer a website module that will display your website in full
| glory and interactivity.
|
| For more information or to rent a display you can send us an
| email isaac@bigtopdisplays.com
| hnfuzzy wrote:
| "You solved it, congrats!" :)
|
| Got an email bounce from your address. Would love to hear about
| your AOSP experience!
| greatjack613 wrote:
| Thanks! I Misspelled the email, it's fixed now! Looking
| forward to hearing from you.
| redband wrote:
| We're building an AI tool and die maker. Never officially
| launched on HN but was YC W21 (https://atomic.industries). I
| would argue this is one of the most challenging intersections of
| software and hardware in the world. We are building a vertically
| integrated system that can design and fabricate tooling
| (injection molds, etc).
| contingencies wrote:
| Consider broadening your scope. Your offering appears to target
| a manufacturing stage where it its value-add is relatively
| capped: since tools, materials and processes are already
| specified. While generative specification of mould assemblies
| is powerful, we all know fabrication is the main pain point.
| Other process geometries such as jigs and fixtures can be
| similarly critical and deliver more value more quickly and this
| leads in to questions of flow (handling/storage/palletizing),
| even machine tool worktable systems.
|
| Huge amounts of money are routinely lost on poor process
| investments due to invisible process alternatives. Be any part
| of a general solution there, and you're at the table before a
| factory is built, when it has resource allocation questions, to
| tune maintenance processes, or when it needs new revenue
| streams.
|
| While it's hard to be all things to all people, simply having
| an integrated offering with an MVP in each major process
| engineering zone will help immensely. It's certainly more than
| the big players have tabled (who are addicted to consulting on
| the status quo), and would therefore set you up well for
| acquisition.
| greesil wrote:
| As someone who used to work at an IoT company the consumer space
| is brutal. Unless you've got something you can sell for 10x BOM,
| or there's naturally a subscription based model then it's not
| worth the blood, sweat, and tears.
| konschubert wrote:
| 10x BOM? Why is the bar so high for profitably?
|
| There are manufacturing costs, marketing and inventory risk.
| But still... what am I missing?
| greesil wrote:
| The math is this: BOM + cost to acquire a customer + cost to
| sell the unit < sale price
|
| Otherwise you don't have a business. Please don't ask me how
| I know this.
|
| 10x is a rule of thumb, YMMV. You just need to make the above
| inequality evaluate to true. You can (maybe) raise money to
| deal with the various non-recurring expenses. Oh and you
| should pay your employees too.
| konschubert wrote:
| :D
|
| I'd love to get your advice, can I contact you?
| greesil wrote:
| Dude, I'm just an engineer who can do basic arithmetic.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Yeah, but you'd be amazed how few people do that basic
| arithmetic!
| [deleted]
| ecks4ndr0s wrote:
| The more 0s you add the closer you get to how Apple prices
| its products I guess.
| reaperman wrote:
| QA/QC is very expensive, _especially for low volume_. You
| send something out to a customer, they claim its broken, you
| ship out a replacement at your expense, maybe the customer
| eventually sends back the broken one, then it sits on the
| shelf for 2 years because you don 't have the manpower to do
| a root cause investigation. Now you've sold 300 units and
| have replaced 50 of these and you have no idea why they're
| broken, what went wrong, and have to a a full validation of
| each one from scratch. Most of them seem to work fine in your
| test lab (maybe it was the customer's fault? But maybe your
| design is incompatible with their production environment?)
| and the rest all have unique problems which each take 1-5
| full days of investigation to nail down a root cause.
|
| Maybe 2-3 share a single root cause, and it's not clear how
| you'd prevent this from happening in the future.
|
| If you're shipping large volumes, this can add 10% to the
| MSRP, but if you're shipping low volumes, $50-100/hr of
| weeklong diagnosis and investigation can easily add 50-300%
| to the price of each unit.
|
| And that's if _everything else is going perfectly_. Which
| means you lucked out and found an amazing Chinese contract
| manufacturer who works with you hand-in-hand to fix any
| design bugs and manufacturing issues, and ensure parts
| availability.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| If you're doing such low volume, yet your service and
| customer relations is based on big corp style, sure you're
| going to have big problems. If you sell only 300 of
| something, and returns are coming in, you should be
| figuring out why ASAP. And probably talking to the people
| before they attempt to send it back.
| Leherenn wrote:
| That's pretty much what they are saying as far as I can
| tell? My experience is pretty similar to theirs, root
| cause analysis takes a lot of time per device, and
| there's rarely once single failure cause for all of them.
| giantbanana wrote:
| [flagged]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The probability and cost of failure? And/or alternative
| revenue streams with lower volatility available to people
| with the skill to pull it off.
| wiskinator wrote:
| NRE into the production line, especially hard tooling for
| plastic is huge. Plus all those things you mentioned,
| especially inventory risk are often underestimated.
|
| Don't forget that any manufacturing run itself is a huge
| risk. Tiny changes that need to be made to address anything
| from RF performance to fit and finish can invalidate a run
| and just burn up hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars
| (depending on scale)
| konschubert wrote:
| Yea, that's why I'm not using plastics for my product.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Supply chain into consumers is brutal: retail outlets mark up
| products by 100% (ie you sell them something for $100, they
| sell it for $200). If you use a distributor, that's another
| 100% markup. 10x BoM on consumer price means that some of
| your biggest sales channels to consumers (BestBuy, Walmart,
| Target) are paying you 25-33% of what they get from
| customers. To get your own markup, you need 8x BoM.
| [deleted]
| nrp wrote:
| We're building hardware, but I also extracted some of the
| business philosophy behind Framework to share what I believe
| "hardware is hard" means: https://eclecti.cc/bytes/what-hardware-
| is-hard-really-means
| reachableceo wrote:
| I'm cofounder and CTO of a self funded , post revenue , pre
| profit hardware startup .
|
| High altitude balloons that are payload agnostic. Working on the
| mass manufacturing process.
|
| Make revenue through consulting and renting out the hardware lab
| when we aren't using it.
|
| Austin Texas
|
| Charles@turnsys.com to connect .
| replicatorblog wrote:
| Our fund, Founder Collective, isn't hardware-focused, but we have
| backed a lot of transformative hardware startups - E.g., Whoop,
| Formlabs, Cruise, Desktop Metal, Kinsa, Running Tide.
|
| We've also backed a bunch that haven't been able to make it work.
| It's a tantalizing space, but wickedly hard. That said, we remain
| ever optimistic and if you're building something in hardware,
| please reach out - joeflaherty@foundercollective.com
| omgmajk wrote:
| We are attempting to make some sensors used in the automotive
| industry, I am currently tied to a client but will start up our
| internal development again during the autumn.
|
| We work mostly with hardware, as in HIL and everything around a
| HIL - it's also these kind of sensors we are trying to figure out
| properly and create a product from.
| kokanee wrote:
| I work on software at a hardware startup that is designing and
| manufacturing a next-generation electrolysis plant for the
| production of green hydrogen. My personal experience has led me
| to believe that opportunities to participate meaningfully in
| climate tech are exclusively available at hardware companies.
| Anyone attempting to solve climate change with software is at
| best skimming value off of the work being done by others in the
| physical world, and at worst creating markets for corporate
| greenwashing.
| rvense wrote:
| > Anyone attempting to solve climate change with software is at
| best skimming value off of the work being done by others in the
| physical world, and at worst creating markets for corporate
| greenwashing.
|
| I've see so a lot of jobs popping up related to SaaS for
| compliance right now, so things like helping companies stay on
| top of regulation and track their own efforts and initiatives.
| I do get the impression that a lot of it is done sincerely, but
| it does have a hint of ye olde 'selling shovels in a gold
| rush'.
|
| Still, if it keeps people out of adtech and cryptocurrency it
| seems like a win.
| fragmede wrote:
| how do you sell shovels in a gold rush insincerely?
| mongol wrote:
| Perhaps if the gold rush is a scam? But if it is real, then
| it is honest work.
| kokanee wrote:
| It's sincere if you tell people that you sell shovels. It's
| insincere if you tell people that you will make all their
| prospecting dreams come true.
| mcsniff wrote:
| All the easy gold has been dug up, and shovels are no
| longer practical.
| samtho wrote:
| > Anyone attempting to solve climate change with software is at
| best skimming value off of the work being done by others in the
| physical world, and at worst creating markets for corporate
| greenwashing.
|
| I fully agree with this assessment and I would love to hear
| more about your product.
| mbgerring wrote:
| I was recently laid off from a climate tech software company,
| and one of my former colleagues and I are now working on
| hardware appliances, solving the problems that our previous
| company's software "enabled" other people to solve.
|
| At best, climate tech software makes the necessary hardware
| cheaper and more effective, or provides important data, but
| pure software plays in climate tech should be considered
| greenwashing scams until proven innocent.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Anyone attempting to solve climate change with software is at
| best skimming value off of the work being done by others in the
| physical world
|
| With respect - I bet a dollar that the folk at Zoom have done
| more to reduce automotive pollution than your startup. No
| hardware startup could have enabled WFH in the absence of
| calendar, messaging & video conference software.
| kokanee wrote:
| This is a fantastic point, but Zoom would never have been a
| candidate for me personally for several reasons:
|
| - As important as reducing our use of fossil fuels is, using
| less energy is not a solution to the problem of a non-
| renewable energy system. In that sense, it wouldn't meet the
| criteria for someone who wants to work on a climate solution.
|
| - While WFH drastically reduces auto emissions, it increases
| gas & electricity use in the home.
|
| - Zoom is not a mission-driven company and (to my knowledge)
| their KPIs are not directed at or correlated with their GHG
| footprint; I would think they see themselves as productivity
| software, not climate software.
|
| - If Zoom never existed we would be working from home at the
| same rate, using any of hundreds of other video conferencing
| apps. In carbon offset terms, their impact does not provide
| additionality.
| ftlio wrote:
| Having worked in climate tech for a few years and also
| following the VCs in that space intently, I believe you've
| completely nailed it. Seriously, this comment is worth two
| trillion dollars.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Please contact me, see link in profile.
| wiskinator wrote:
| This sounds like great tech. Keep at it for the benefit of all
| of us.
| aquaphile wrote:
| We make the world's best baby car seats. https://www.kioma.us
| Fatherly Magazine calls it "The Car Seat of the Future". It's
| been crash tested, flight inversion tested, flammability tested
| and mom tested. It is full of patented innovations to make kids
| safer and parenting more enjoyable.
|
| It required lots of material science, production techniques,
| supply chain adjustments, and a surprising amount of software (to
| model dynamic stress, and to run the robot and CNC trim paths).
| Once you get to the point you can clearly articulate your BOM and
| Specs to a manufacturer for MOQ=50, things get a lot easier. At
| the prototype stage we built everything ourselves, but now we use
| OEM manufacturers.
| sitkack wrote:
| The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be
| attached to the seat brackets individually. Those brackets need
| to be braced and not just bolted through plywood.
|
| Having patents on innovations is necessary, but if you have
| innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to
| make those broadly usable by all.
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US10967762B2/en?oq=1096776...
|
| This this TOS usual for a piece of regulated safety equipment?
|
| Terms of service The legalese.
|
| The KIOMA Car Seat is provided "as-is, where-is," without
| representations, conditions or warranties of any kind, whether
| express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties
| of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The
| recipient or buyer is solely responsible for determining the
| appropriateness of using the KIOMA Car Seat.
| tadfisher wrote:
| > The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should
| be attached to the seat brackets individually.
|
| That's not how our Recaro seat works, nor our original baby
| seat, nor the booster for our older son. Each of them
| attaches to the seat anchors using a single strap with clips
| on either end, one on a length adjuster.
|
| This design looks pretty much the same; the plywood is just
| protection for the car upholstery, and doesn't act as a load-
| bearing element.
| xeonmc wrote:
| The OceanGate of baby seats, perhaps?
| bbor wrote:
| Don't think that's fair - unless they're selling them out
| of a boat in international waters to avoid regulation
| aquaphile wrote:
| Not sure what you are referring to about a strap being a
| single point of failure.
|
| Patents > We don't work for free, and we can't buy groceries
| by giving away years of R&D. Companies are welcome to license
| our safety innovations, and they know how to reach us. The
| invitation to do so is on our website.
|
| TOS > Kioma seats come with an industry standard 1 year
| warranty. The website TOS are different than the product
| warranty that comes with each seat. Thanks for the heads up
| though. I'll have the marketing team clarify that.
| gizmo wrote:
| "We don't give years of R&D away for free" is a pretty
| flippant response. You make money selling car seats, and if
| another company can produce better seats at a lower price
| then consumers win and lives are saved. Which is ostensibly
| exactly what you want to happen? Otherwise why even be in
| the car seat business?
| bbor wrote:
| Cmon be nice to the car seat people :). Let's say it cost
| $10 to develop this groundbreaking car seat technology,
| and $1 to make a car seat, so the company charges $1.50
| to make up their investment in 20 sales. If they gave
| away their patent, then another company (who didn't have
| to pay that initial cost) could sell the same seats for
| $1.
|
| This is episode 1000 in our favorite series: _why and how
| capitalism strangles innovation_
| aquaphile wrote:
| Thank you for the support. You have eloquently explained
| the innovation conundrum.
| gizmo wrote:
| The flip side is that R&D is a lot easier and cheaper
| when you don't have to worry about accidental
| infringement. But your last paragraph suggests we're
| already in agreement.
|
| In any case, I'm fine with companies making the pragmatic
| choice to pursue patent protection. But being defensive
| and flippant about it isn't a good look. It's much better
| to argue for instance that you put yourself at a
| disadvantage if you're the only business that doesn't
| patent their innovations, and that a patent portfolio
| also has a defensive function.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I mean, you could just be more flippant in response and
| suggest that the best car seat is the one without a car
| in the first place
| prettygood wrote:
| That's a pretty naive way to look at it. A lot of
| patented products have a positive impact on the world,
| should all of these be shared?
|
| What if a small player tries to break into a market with
| a nee solution? They should give away their IP to the big
| player purely because it has a positive impact on the
| world?
|
| Just because their product is more safe doesn't mean they
| automatically have to share this with everyone. They put
| time and a lot of effort into this, and that should be
| rewarded. The world rewards people with money. Sure some
| people might be happy with knowing they saved more lives,
| but eventually most people just want to be rewarded.
| gizmo wrote:
| > A lot of patented products have a positive impact on
| the world, should all of these be shared?
|
| Yes. It's bad to criminalize innovation. Most patentable
| innovations are not so unique but only a logical next
| step given prior inventions.
|
| Also, patents favor the big players in any market because
| they have the money and the will to grind down any
| newcomers with legal action. The upstart with fewer
| resources should always be in favor of a level playing
| field.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you
| should find a way to make those broadly usable by
| all...provided "as-is, where-is," without representations,
| conditions or warranties of any kind_
|
| no, individuals should play by the sames rules of the
| collective as everybody else.
|
| There is nothing wrong with you advocating and/or
| successfully changing the rules of the patent system so all
| players must behave this way, but trying to shame a small
| entrepreneur into being boy scout is ihmo bad for all of us.
| I bristle at all the moralizing people do on the daily.
|
| I'm advocating for "think globally, act locally", just
| without puritanism or maoism.
| nso wrote:
| I wonder if there would be a market for in-built hard modular
| mount points for the back seats. Like, let's say I'm Tesla. I
| build in mount points for the back seats. And then I sell
| accessories for the mounts. Tesla branded baby seats. Child
| seats. Storage/shelf solutions. Dog cages. Pizza delivery
| rack. Who even knows how many things one could put back there
| nsteel wrote:
| Like isofix? I think even Teslas have that. Or do I
| misunderstand?
| aquaphile wrote:
| Your Tesla manual may call it Latch (the US version of
| EU's Isofix). Same thing but different name.
| IndrekR wrote:
| It is called Isofix and most modern cars are have those
| (mandatory in US and EU):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isofix
| sgt wrote:
| We also have a baby seat that can pretty much say all the same
| things. There must be tons of these on the market with swivel
| etc. What makes this better than the rest?
| aquaphile wrote:
| 1. Safety (* see below)
|
| 2. Ease of Installation (* see below)
|
| 3. Bauhaus Design
|
| 4. 1-Hand Operation
|
| 5. Ease of Cleaning
|
| 6. Built in Rocker (a full one)
|
| 7. Quiet (* see below)
|
| * Safety > The US regs are pass/fail so lots of seats on the
| market have mediocre test scores that don't reflect the real
| danger of severe concussions. For those of you interested in
| digging into the obscure world of Head Injury Criterion:
| greater than 390 HIC is linked with severe concussions
| (Source: Proposed limits for HIC From Kleinberger et al.,
| 1998, and Eppinger et al., 2000.) Kioma seats do a number of
| things (crumple zones, etc) to create a lower (better) HIC
| score. By comparison some of the top sellers in the industry
| are at 600+ HIC.
|
| * Installation > The regs don't have standards that really
| address this, but the incredible complexity of legacy car
| seats has led to a lot of installation errors by parents and
| caregivers. This can lead to some really unpleasant outcomes
| and injuries. We designed KIOMA to minimize use and
| installation errors by making things as simple and intuitive
| as possible. This seat is optimized for lap belt use only (no
| base required). The companion base has a number of
| innovations too that make it intuitive and easier to use.
|
| * Quiet > There are no clicking or snapping or button parts
| that wake a sleeping child (with the exception of the harness
| buckle). This is the quietest baby car seat made.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| Why only lap belt? Isofix is so easy.
| aquaphile wrote:
| You get both: isofix/latch as well as lap-belt. Each car
| seat is sold with an accompanying Latch (aka Isofix) base
| so you can roll with whatever you prefer. However, lap
| belts are ubiquitous and work really well.
|
| Reasons to use a base:
|
| 1) Convenience. It is nice and fast to click-in, click
| out with a car seat. Super fast and easy.
|
| 2) Protect the seat cushions of the car.
|
| 3) More constraints on pitch rotation. Which can be good
| or bad depending on how the seat is designed and rotation
| is used.
|
| Reasons to use a lap belt only (no base):
|
| 1) It is intuitive. Everyone -- including grandma,
| grandpa, and the babysitter -- knows how to use a lap
| belt (as opposed to a latch/isofix base).
|
| 2) It is ubiquitous. Every automobile and plane seat has
| one. So if you're hopping into an Uber, no problem.
|
| 3) Lab belts are designed to stretch which is actually
| really good in a collision. The stretching lowers peak
| acceleration, and therefore lowers the likelihood of
| injury.
|
| 4) Total system weighs less, which translates into less
| force in a collision (F=ma).
| tobz wrote:
| Regarding safety, do you have any links around the test
| results for the Kioma, or other car seats? You've mentioned
| a lot about the safety scores/test results in comparison to
| other car seats, but I couldn't seem to find a single
| mention of that stuff on the website? I also tried to see
| if something like Consumer Reports had a review of a Kioma
| car seat (either the current one or the carbon fiber one)
| but they had nothing.
| bbor wrote:
| Just gonna throw this out there - your pitch is awesome, and
| "mom tested" put me off. Maybe I'm just a Californian but
| "parent tested" is a bit more 2023
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| Looks nice and easy to clean. I don't know why the regular
| "Target car seats" have so many creases and folded layers, it's
| a major PITA to clean :)
| bombcar wrote:
| Some are better than the Target basic ones, but even the
| "good" ones are way too complicated to clean, and it's like
| they've never even considered a kid might barf whilst in one,
| and some of the effluent will disappear into some weird
| crevice never to be revealed again.
| aquaphile wrote:
| Thanks! All the cushions are removable (velcro) so you can
| hit it with a hose and separately wash the cushions. The
| interior chassis surface is smooth, which is a big point of
| pride for us as it is easier to clean.
| gambiting wrote:
| The price is insane man. The best of the best car seat
| according to lots of reviews(Cybex Anoris-T) is "only" PS599,
| your thing is significantly more and I don't see why it's any
| better.
|
| Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to
| justify.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I am always entertained by the extra amount people are
| willing to pay for the tiniest bit of risk reduction (or
| appearance thereof) for baby and kid related products.
|
| For example, paying an extra $900 for a car seat, but then
| taking the kid on unnecessary car rides, which are magnitudes
| riskier than not taking the kid in a car. If you are willing
| to pay that much for such an immaterial decrease in risk,
| surely you should avoid taking the kid in a car unless
| absolutely necessary.
|
| Although, I guess some of it is also showing what you can
| afford.
| mrb wrote:
| It's about convenience. Refraining from taking certain car
| rides to reduce the risk is inconvenient. But for a wealthy
| customer, there is no difference between buying car seat A
| or B, but if A is $900 more and slightly safer, it's
| logical and just as convenient to choose it.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Our risk assessment is as emotional as is logical.
|
| When it comes to driving specifically, my friends will buy
| a 50k SUV to feel safe, but will then buy cheapest plasticy
| tires or refuse to join me in advanced safety class.
|
| That being said - kids are vulnerable, fragile, and don't
| make their own decisions. As a newish parent myself I 100%
| understand the extra pressure that puts to make the best
| possible decision for them.
| reaperman wrote:
| And some of it is buying convenience. The peace of mind
| from knowing you have the safest seat allows risking more
| rides which frees up impromptu errand scheduling. Whether
| the math actually works out is orthogonal to the
| psychological effects.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| What counts as an unnecessary car ride for you? If I'm
| going to the grocery store and there's someone else to
| watch my toddler, I don't _need_ to take her with me, but I
| think the bit of stimulation of getting out of the house
| and seeing a new place, new experience, and new people has
| a benefit that outweighs the almost inconsequential odds of
| a major car accident as I drive there and back on roads
| with a speed limit of 35 MPH.
| aquaphile wrote:
| Thanks, though, for taking a look!
|
| I used to know some of the Cybex people (it was a European
| company), and they congratulated us on beating their best
| safety scores at the time. Now Cybex is owned by an Asian
| conglomerate (Goodbaby).
|
| The Kioma difference in materials quality and performance is
| both quantifiable and qualitative. We have to charge a price
| that covers our work in design and production costs. But I
| completely get it if the Kioma seat is too expensive for your
| preferences.
|
| As a side note, if you want to be blown away by prices check
| out the $10,000 cribs (https://nurseryworks.net/collections/c
| ribs/products/gradient...), $1000 bassinets
| (https://www.happiestbaby.com/), and $5000 strollers
| (https://silvercrossus.com/category/strollers/).
|
| Thanks for the feedback!
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| You can tell that guy's not a parent, haha. It's a shitload
| of money, but at least in this case I know that I'm getting
| value out of it. It's very easy to piss away a fortune on
| badly-made Chinese plastic trash in the world of baby
| accessories.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| What's the value? Lol I've used the same $250 one for 3
| babies now and 0% of them would have noticed "high end
| materials".
| tetromino_ wrote:
| I am a parent, and in my opinion, spending $1k on a car
| seat is completely unreasonable. (We bought ours used as
| part of a package deal with some other used baby stuff.
| It would have been nowhere near $1k when new.)
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| What do you think about spending $1k on a phone?
|
| My question is why it's $1000 and not $999.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>You can tell that guy's not a parent, haha.
|
| I find it really interesting that you reached that
| conclusion. Me and my wife spent what feels like an
| absolutely insane amount of money on a car seat,
| definitely more than any of our friends have spent(the
| beforementioned Anoris-T, because as far as I can tell it
| is _the_ best seat you can buy) and the idea of spending
| $1000 on a car seat just doesn 't fit in my head. It's
| just too much.
|
| >> but at least in this case I know that I'm getting
| value out of it
|
| Really? how?
| genmud wrote:
| Agreed, my only thought on the $1000 price tag was that I
| already have a seat that is well rated and don't want to
| throw away or donate a perfectly good $800 car
| seat/stroller system.
|
| Like cheap end car seats when we looked were in the
| 200-400 and nicer ones were in the 600-1200 range.
| V__ wrote:
| Will you sell in Europe and does tha car base have an isofix
| mounting?
| aquaphile wrote:
| 1. Yes, it has an Isofix mounting which in the US is called
| "Latch".
|
| 2. We cannot currently sell directly into Europe, though we'd
| love to at some point. If you're a distributor please drop me
| a line!
| Solvency wrote:
| Ok, I'll bite.
|
| I don't want to expose my child to exotic glues, adhesives,
| PFAS, or any other foreign molecules in their car seat.
|
| How does your product stack up?
| lijok wrote:
| Exotic glues? Foreign molecules?
|
| I wonder. Are you aware that keeping your living space
| exquisitely clean compromises the development of a childs
| immune system?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I don't think the human immune system develops against
| offgassing like it does pathogens
| gambiting wrote:
| Why are you driving them inside a car that has literally all
| of these in the first place then?
| fsckboy wrote:
| GP's asking a legitimate question about chemical outgassing
| etc. Parents have concerns like this, and some parents more
| than others.
|
| let me go pedantic and teach: "The customer is always
| right" does not mean that no matter what a customer says,
| you give them a false smile, and pretend you agree with
| them.
|
| "The customer is always right" means _" you are hearing
| actual feedback from your target audience; somebody giving
| attention to your product is experiencing friction and
| wants information or reassurance, and is taking the time to
| let you know"_
|
| Do you know how valuable that is? Most people exposed to
| your product (ads, PR, etc.) just move along. Customers who
| don't like your product generally just disappear.
|
| Free market research should not be ignored. This customer
| is not only right, but is representative of a whole class
| of customers that you need to learn to win over.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>GP's asking a legitimate question about chemical
| outgassing etc. Parents have concerns like this, and some
| parents more than others.
|
| Obviously, and outgassing happens _a lot_ in any car
| especially if it 's brand new. So I'll ask again - why
| drive kids in a car at all if this concerns them this
| much?
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _why drive kids in a car at all if this concerns them
| this much?_
|
| do you want to be right and nyah nyah nyah the guy, or do
| you want to sell him a carseat that you worked hard on
| that's safer than any other car seat you know? If your
| car seat is made of the same materials as every other car
| seat, or if by chance your car seat is actually safer
| than other car seats, why wouldn't you want to let them
| know rather than you telling the guy "you're an idiot for
| putting your kid in a car!"
|
| all car seats go in cars. Wouldn't it be nice to have a
| car seat that did not add to the danger?
| gambiting wrote:
| >>or do you want to sell him a carseat that you worked
| hard on that's safer than any other car seat you know?
|
| I don't want to sell him anything. Have you confused me
| with the OP maybe?
| lijok wrote:
| >> why drive kids in a car at all if this concerns them
| this much?
|
| Because they have to
|
| Genuinely confused what stance you're taking here
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Genuinely confused what stance you're taking here
|
| That a car is going to expose your child to an order of
| magnitude more "chemicals" than a baby seat ever could -
| it's like asking how much sugar is in your coleslaw that
| you're having on the side of a large five guys milkshake.
| Probably some, but if you're concerned about sugar you
| have much bigger things to worry about.
| Fyrezerk wrote:
| >This customer is not only right, but is representative
| of a whole class of customers that you need to learn to
| win over.
|
| That's not always true. If a certain subset of customers
| wants something ridiculous, they can either go elsewhere
| or learn to adapt. For better or worse, companies often
| times have the ability to drive public sentiment just as
| much as they have the responsibility to pander to it.
| When Apple removed headphone jacks from all their
| products they did so against a torrent of outrage, but
| fast forward 5-7 years and they absolutely made the right
| call. People learned to get over it.
|
| Catering to bordering-on-harmfully-obsessive parents
| isn't always the best call.
| fsckboy wrote:
| I didn't say cater to every whim of every person.
|
| I said listen to the customer because it is a legitimate
| point of contact, and they are not going to be the only
| one thinking what they're thinking, and even if you want
| to ignore them, you don't want to create a scene in front
| of other customers, so you can still think about and
| learn from the experience. The customer is always right
| from the customer's perspective, and you need to
| understand your customers' perspectives.
| mintplant wrote:
| The user you're replying to appears unconnected to Kioma,
| so I don't think they have any winning-over to do here.
| esalman wrote:
| Valid point.
| aquaphile wrote:
| I assume you are worried about off-gassing, and direct
| ingestion of harmful chemicals.
|
| TLDR: We stack up really well.
|
| 1) No flame retardants are used in the upholstery. We worked
| really hard to meet the flammability requirements with
| materials that aren't doped in endocrine-disrupting flame
| retardants. So that was a big win, because that is the
| largest chemical exposure in legacy car seats (in my opinion)
| and it is one that the scientific literature is very clear
| about.
|
| 2) The chassis is mostly machined aluminum (powder-coated)
| and polycarbonate. On the underside of the chassis there are
| some bracket retention pieces that use a standard cyano-
| acrylic glue ("super glue").
| bigdict wrote:
| Do you use these for your children?
| aquaphile wrote:
| Yes, but my kids have outgrown them. When my son outgrew his
| seat, he sometimes still used it as a rocking chair to read
| his books in his room.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| There's zero videos on your website, and zero videos of it on
| youtube. As someone in the market for this that's the first
| thing I checked. Get some videos up on Tiktok as well!
| aquaphile wrote:
| I'll add it to the marketing team's todo list. Thanks for the
| heads up!
| jebarker wrote:
| "Mom tested" might not be the best thing to say if you want
| moms to buy your product
| rootusrootus wrote:
| For anyone else who doesn't know off hand what MOQ stands
| for...
|
| BOM: bill of materials, aka list of what it takes to
| manufacture a product
|
| MOQ: minimum order quantity, the lower limit the manufacturer
| will accept
| sbrother wrote:
| These look amazing, like they solve all the pain points I've
| had with car seats over the past five years. I'm a little past
| that stage now but wish these had been around when I had little
| babies.
| aquaphile wrote:
| Thanks!
| esalman wrote:
| I am a bit skeptical dad but damn these look nice! The price is
| justifiable, although personally I'd hesitate because the seat
| is only good for about 2 years, and the seat seems to weigh
| higher than Nuna products which we got.
| huskyperv wrote:
| More like 18 months or less based on the height and weight
| limit, completely impractical pricing
| foooorsyth wrote:
| Lots of couples stair-step their kids. It's not 18 months
| for a lot of families. It's 4-6 years with hand-me-downs.
| remote_phone wrote:
| Baby seats have expiration dates and it's scary how many
| parents fall for the emotional manipulation around that.
| It makes the used car seat market dead as well as hand-
| me-downs
| foooorsyth wrote:
| >it's scary how many parents fall for the emotional
| manipulation around that
|
| Are you saying that the expiration dates are bogus? I
| knew that rated sports helmets and similar products had
| expirations, but not car seats. Maybe I'll go check the
| handed-down seat my son is using...
| bombcar wrote:
| They're basically bogus but put out because people don't
| bother inspecting the components and the makers really
| like selling additional ones.
|
| And basically all thrift stores and other used good
| dealers won't touch them because of the perceived
| liability.
| jagtstronaut wrote:
| I wouldn't care about an expiration date, but I avoid the
| hand-me-down car seat market for the wreck reason. The
| carseats are only designed to be in one. I personally
| wouldn't know how to definitively say it had never been
| in one.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Hand-me-down, to me, connotes reuse within the same
| (possibly extended) family.
|
| I'm fine sharing our used carseat with my 6yo only
| child's grandparents so that they can more easily help
| with my nieces and nephews (2 weeks, 1yo, 3yo, 4yo, and
| 5yo - oof!). My wife and I know it's not been in an
| accident, we would not misrepresent that to the detriment
| of our own family.
|
| But I would not buy one from even the most trustworthy
| Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace listing imaginable.
|
| I personally would love tamper-evident components within
| a carseat - think "Tip and Tell" [1] but for 3-axis
| accelerations. Impact-sensitive product labels exist such
| as those at [2], but I'm not convinced that the same
| accelerations and crashes that would damage polystyrene
| impact-absorbing foam would set off a glass ampule
| designed to break when you drop a rental camera lens or
| something like that.
|
| 1: https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-866/Damage-
| Indicators...
|
| 2: https://spotsee.io/impact
| aquaphile wrote:
| NHTSA guidelines on re-use post crash are at
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/car-seats-and-booster-seats/car-
| seat-u...
| esalman wrote:
| We actually sold our 2 year old nuna for nearly 75% of
| it's original price to another family. It had 10 year
| warranty and not recall/accident. I doubt how much these
| would go for secondhand. Which is not an issue if you
| stair-step the seat.
| o_m wrote:
| I'm the kind of guy that thinks I might be able to sell it
| for a good price, if it is high quality, after the use.
| Making the total money spent way less. But that begs the
| question, why not rent these out for 18 months at a time?
| abfan1127 wrote:
| renting assumes previous users properly maintained these
| seats. Car seats are "supposed" to be disposed of in the
| event of a collision due to possible cracks or other
| fatigues in the structure not necessarily visible to the
| end user. If you rent, you have to assume the seat was
| not in a structurally significant event. That's a lot of
| trust.
| esalman wrote:
| Given how these car seats are advertised as having high-
| tech materials, I wonder if the manufacturer can install
| a crash detection module in them.
| benburleson wrote:
| Most likely because you can't guarantee how it has been
| used once the first customer has used it. And that will
| lead to major legal problems if e.g. it has been in a
| crash and is now compromised, but nobody noticed, then
| failed to protect the 2nd child.
| roland35 wrote:
| The foam doesn't stay good for long, I think the car
| seats we had expired after 6-7 years?
|
| Also car seats can't be used after a crash, even if
| visually they looked ok. Maybe they could be refurbished
| (new foam, etc), but obviously this is a liability
| concern and probably isn't worth it.
| aquaphile wrote:
| Sizing > Realistically, the seat fits average kids up to 3
| years. At the 95% percentile on height most kids will
| outgrow a rear-facing car seat at 18 months (the growth of
| the torso is the limiting factor). From a labeling
| perspective we have to be careful, though, because the US
| regs on sizing are really terrible. Keep in mind the regs
| were written in the 1970s when we were still teaching
| Americans to wear seat belts. So there are 2 "options" in
| the US regs: 22 lbs 12-month test dummy, and 39 lbs 3-yr
| old test dummy. Lots of manufacturers claim their seats fit
| the 39 lbs mark, but they squash the test dummy's legs into
| an unrealistic position for a child (passes the test by the
| letter of the law, but misses the spirit of the law).
| Basically, we designed this seat to fit kids until they are
| ready for a front-facing seat.
|
| Pricing > It isn't for everyone. The Kioma seat is like a
| Maserati, but some people prefer a Ford Taurus. We have to
| charge a price to cover our production and design costs,
| and there is a quantitative and qualitative difference in
| the materials and performance of a Kioma car seat.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| > The Kioma seat is like a Maserati
|
| Perhaps not the best brand to invoke for a product where
| reliability is paramount. If you want to convey both
| luxury and reliability I'd go with Lexus (fancy Toyota).
| aquaphile wrote:
| ;) Point taken.
| fsckboy wrote:
| $1000 is too much for Target and Walmart, but for Beverly
| Hills, the Hamptons, etc. that's nothing. If your living
| room has space for a Peleton bike, this will fit right in.
| benburleson wrote:
| You don't put your Peloton in your living room like some
| peasant if you're buying a $1000 car seat.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| What if you live in a $9000/month 900 square foot condo
| in the bay area?
| dumpster_fire wrote:
| You totally underestimate how much baby fever tax first
| time parents are willing to pay using the logic "once in a
| lifetime only".
| esalman wrote:
| This is exactly what I meant when I said the price is
| justifiable. It is designed to be advertised as a premium
| product to an exclusive set of customers.
| ecks4ndr0s wrote:
| Just like motorbike helmets?
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| It looks just like a regular one. When the special features are
| plastic and foam that doesn't scream high quality to me.
|
| Why not make one that's solid steel and can tank a direct hit
| from a bus? You could make some really funny advertisements
| with crash test dummies.
| aquaphile wrote:
| I like your sense of humor. The engineers used to jokingly
| call this the "Orphanator -- the seat so safe only the kids
| survive the crash." Our marketing people told us to leave the
| ideas to them....
|
| In a collision, rigidity is actually the enemy. A well
| designed seat should never be reusable after a crash because
| all the materials yielded to dump energy. It is better to
| have energy diverted into stretching, bending, and breaking
| materials than have it channeled into a baby's body.
|
| We don't use steel (except for one rod), but we do use a lot
| of 5000 series machined aluminum which is powder-coated.
| Aluminum is preferable because it is better for creating
| crumple zones where the materials yield. The other primary
| material we use is polycarbonate because it has fantastic
| impact resistance (polycarbonate is used in "bullet-proof
| glass"). I'll let the marketing team know their materials
| description failed to impress you :)
| [deleted]
| reactormonk wrote:
| We're working on a device to allow seniors to access the digital
| world with a haptic interface. We support video calls / photo
| sharing / content / telemedicine / exercises to bridge the
| generational gap in digital services.
|
| https://family.cards
| Wolley wrote:
| I've been working on a modular vacuum cleaner robot for around 5
| years:
|
| https://wolley.se
|
| I have done it in my spare time but the dream is to be able to
| sell it as a kit and work on it full time.
| gnramires wrote:
| Awesome. I had a similar idea. Maybe we could join forces one
| day?...
|
| I thought about hacking and modding existing robots (I have one
| at home that has great hardware, but the software is
| terrible!).
|
| Definitely set up a Liberapay account to get support (if you
| need economic support), although I guess most people would want
| to see proof of concept first.
|
| One thing that would be great is to crowdsource the software,
| and maybe the training data for ML. The open source community
| got together and made the top chess and go engines with
| community GPU training, why not do the same for robot vacuums?
|
| Good luck! :)
| gnramires wrote:
| Side note:
|
| People here often say that hardware is hard, but I think OSHW
| has the upside of de-risking it too (although I might be
| somewhat biased in my enthusiastic support of OSHW). If other
| people are producing it (from 3d printing at home to commercial
| manufacturing), you don't have manufacturing risks at all. The
| large costs and difficulty involved are probably mostly around
| manufacturing. Also by extending the development phase and
| working closely with customers you can find a product-market
| fit more naturally (and iterate if it fails... or just abandon
| it, I guess). If all goes wrong you've contributed an open
| source project...
|
| The hard part of course in that case is convincing your users
| and any company that decides to manufacture your hardware to
| pay you. But not unheard of, see LumenPNP
| (https://opulo.io/products/lumenpnp)
|
| My dream is a completely (or almost completely) open society,
| where most development is open and people collaborate more or
| less freely, and we have good mechanisms (and enough good sense
| individually?) to reward and invest in all this work.
| arroz wrote:
| I work in what used to be an EDA startup
|
| Now it was acquired by a big one though
|
| Not really hardware but almost
| wienke wrote:
| At https://www.thethingsindustries.com and the open source
| LoRaWAN developer platform https://www.thethingsnetwork.org we
| used to do a lot of hardware ourselves:
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/419277966/the-things-ne....
|
| Now we do very little and only focus on the SaaS network
| management part of it. We still have this product
| www.genericnode.com
|
| We now have 220 hardware partners that can do it much much better
| than us: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/device-repository/
| henryhenryhenry wrote:
| Peesport.com the world's best pee bottle
| arxpoetica wrote:
| Move to Utah.
|
| Lots of software growth, but much of that is hardware related.
| [deleted]
| themehdi wrote:
| We are developing a teledriving system (driving a car remotely by
| a human operator). Although we don't build our cars, we design
| and develop our own ECU.
|
| www.vay.io
| michibertel wrote:
| We are building smart Gastronomy Products.
|
| First of all our Selfservice Bar (https://limifyze.com). This
| system enables hotels to offer up to 150 cocktails autonomously,
| eliminating the need for additional staff. And Ledovation
| (https://ledovation.at) revolutionizes service-guest
| communication in restaurants. We are located in Austria. Both the
| development and the assembly of the devices take place in-house.
| kfreds wrote:
| Tillitis AB
|
| Our first product is the TKey - a new kind of USB security key -
| which we have been selling since May. TKey is very likely the
| most open source USB security key in the world, as well as the
| first one to feature unconditional measured boot, which we use as
| a method for key derivation.
|
| Tillitis AB is a sister company of Mullvad VPN AB and Glasklar
| Teknik AB.
| ajolly wrote:
| How does this compare to an onlykey?
| henryhenryhenry wrote:
| My hardware start up is going to change the world and how you pee
| PeeSport.com
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| Hand-blown titanium crystal glassware for whisk(e)y and spirits.
|
| Produced in Europe by a glass factory that has been operating
| since the late 1700's.
|
| PG's mantra "do things that don't scale" has been a great
| inspiration.
|
| I wanted something comparable to high-end wine stemware and it
| shockingly did not exist, so I designed it during COVID. This is
| my first physical goods venture and my goodness, it comes with a
| lot of challenges (as an American I've intimately learned the
| difficulties of Brexit, for example) but I wouldn't change
| anything for the world. It's so satisfying to see people use a
| shining piece of glassware made by real human craftsmen.
|
| The speed at which the glassware been welcomed in the community
| is overwhelming (both emotionally and from a pure business
| logistics perspective) and I couldn't be more grateful. Now, just
| 18 months post-launch, it's used in distilleries ranging from
| Scotland to Jamaica and Michelin starred restaurants.
|
| For the HN friends, use the code HACKER for 10% off glassware :)
|
| https://www.bennuaine.com/
| brogrammernot wrote:
| Fascinating. It's like a cross between a Teku glass and a white
| wine glass. Gorgeous.
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| Thanks! I like seeing how many folks know about the Teku beer
| glass. Very different use case, but the shape philosophy is
| similar.
|
| With Bennuaine it was really about fine-tuning the dimensions
| through a ton of research and prototyping to reduce ethanol
| burn while at the same time highlighting finer notes.
| c54 wrote:
| Neat! Ordered a pair. I especially love the dishwasher safety
| and lead-free elements
| mosquitobiten wrote:
| What's the brittleness like compared to glass? Is it more/less
| shatter resistant than other crystals?
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| Crystal is stronger than standard glass which is why it can
| be so thin.
|
| Modern production of lead-free crystal is generally pretty
| good now. Old leaded crystal is extremely brittle and prone
| to chipping and fractures which definitely soured people's
| perception of its durability. Our glassware uses titanium as
| a strengthening additive which really helps durability as
| well as sparkle.
|
| Most of our hospitality partners use them in service every
| day in commercial dishwashers with very little breakage.
| Having a shorter stem also greatly reduces both tipping and
| twisting scenarios which are the most common sources of
| breakage.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| How do you mix the Titanium into the crystal, and does it
| bond in some way, or how does it strengthen and improve the
| durability?
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| Crystal consists of many raw materials with silicon
| dioxide making up the majority of the mix (70+%).
| Titanium dioxide is melted in with everything in a brand-
| new solar powdered furnace that runs up 3,000 degrees
| Fahrenheit iirc.
|
| Titanium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any
| metal which is why it's used in the most demanding
| applications like rockets.
|
| Each glass manufacturer uses their own recipe and pretty
| much all of them use aluminum, rather than titanium, as
| their strengthening additive simply because it's
| exponentially cheaper.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| "Lots of good advice simply doesn't scale." --Paul.Graham
|
| I definitely think "Made by Humans" will become an
| increasingly-popular product highlight.
|
| Beautiful effort. Wish I still served alcohol =D
| jelling wrote:
| Cheers. Nice to see something whiskey related that isn't trying
| so hard to communicate the usual whiskey stereotypes.
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| It's something I battle against every day.
|
| I'm constantly told that whisky shouldn't be served in a
| stemmed glass. Honestly, I think half of my job is education.
|
| The masculinity of the marketing message towards spirits is
| deeply embedded in American culture, which is why big
| tumblers are commonplace even though they don't do spirits
| justice. You don't see those stigmas in wine. The community
| is definitely way more gender friendly now though which is
| great. If my glassware can play even the tiniest part in
| making spirits more accessible, I'd consider this business a
| success.
| wrboyce wrote:
| Are glencairns not common in the states? Whilst most pubs
| in the UK would serve me a whisky in a short tumbler style
| glass, I would be disappointed if a decent scotch bar did
| not at least offer me a choice.
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| In bars with decent brown spirits programs they probably
| use them, but no they're not anywhere near as common as
| they are in Europe.
|
| I've also never seen them in Michelin-level restaurants
| here because the quality of the glass isn't up to that
| standard.
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| We're building a closed loop artificial pancreas (think dialysis
| but for blood sugar) for hospital use -- the first of its kind in
| the US. There's a massive unmet need; all critical care patients,
| and all people with diabetes in the hospital could benefit.
| Studies have shown you can achieve a 30% reduction in mortality,
| and 25% reduction in length of stay, in addition to the hours per
| day you save nurses from managing blood sugar. It's a win/win/win
| on the lives saved/cost savings/nursing time saves, so we think
| it'll be pretty important when we hit the market!
|
| Sad to see how few other hard healthtech people there are here,
| they seem to be few and far between.
| pciexpgpu wrote:
| This is fantastic, good luck to you. We need more of people
| like you.
| wanderingmoose wrote:
| Can you tell me the difference between your product on the
| types of prescription cgm + insulin pump combos like
| dexcom/tandem which offer some level insulin control?
|
| I'm just curious. I run an xDrip set up and I've played around
| with a couple of the "DIY" closed loop setups.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Hey, my wife has diabetes, and she's had really awful luck
| with automated blood sugar monitors. Somehow their readings
| are always off by insane amounts vs a finger poke
|
| Have you done much research into that area? Do you know if
| there's a brand we should check out or any common gotchas? (I
| can't find much reasonable info on this online due to my poor
| Google skills and all the bad info out there..)
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| Consumer finger pricks are actually less reliable than CGMs
| these days (relative difference of up to 25%, vs 10% for
| something like a Dexcom G6). That being said, a few things
| you can try:
|
| 1. Wait 24 hours, the CGM needs time to adjust to your body
|
| 2. Don't overcalibrate in the first 24 hours, or when
| sugars are in flux. You'll mess up the factory calibration
| which can lead to worse accuracy over the session.
|
| 3. Try a different insertion site. Behind the arm and on
| the abdomen are the two most common ones.
|
| 4. Talk to your endo
|
| 5. Call your CGM maker, they will almost always overnight
| you a replacement if it's demonstrably failing.
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| Our device is for inpatient use, so it's a little more
| complicated than your typical DIY APS you might be used to as
| a T1/T2. You have to account for all kinds of different drug
| interactions, perfusion issues, undergoing surgical
| procedures, etc etc. The biggest single difference is that we
| use dextrose as a way to quickly recover from lows (like an
| automated orange juice dispenser).
|
| Because we're in the hospital and can access IV lines, we
| also have rapid access to data, and the drugs we infuse get
| taken up much quicker (5-10 minutes for insulin, 3 minutes
| for dextrose).
|
| The terminology is overlapping but the space is very
| different than outpatient glucose control.
| jablongo wrote:
| Why use dextrose instead of glucagon for lows? B/C patient
| liver function may be compromised more often in the in
| patient setting?
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| In addition to liver function, you can't always rely on
| patients to have glycogen stores to draw from.
|
| Additionally, dextrose is inexpensive, more available
| (rural county hospitals don't stock glucagon), easier to
| mix and store, has a longer shelf life, and most
| importantly, has a far quicker response time.
|
| Glucagon has promise for outpatient work, where the
| volume of fluid is much more of a factor, though the
| stability and cost are still unsolved problems. The
| patients we treat are in a bed, monitored periodically by
| trained healthcare providers, with routine access to a
| pharmacy.
|
| TL:DR Hospital control is just a different beast!
| roland35 wrote:
| That's awesome! At least in my limited experience developing
| health care hardware is much more challenging when there isn't
| a clear "regulatory path" that has been done before. Which
| makes it harder for completely novel devices (eg versus making
| an improved pacemaker which already has been approved)
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| The good thing for us is that artificial pancreases are
| regulated not as one device, but as three separate
| (interoperable) devices: the pumps, the sensors, and the
| control software. Only our control software is under a de-
| novo pathway ("totally new thing" pathway), everything else
| is 510k ("we know what this thing is" pathway). We also have
| Breakthrough Device designation, which really accelerates the
| regulatory timeline
| lukko wrote:
| Amazing! I'm a doctor and founded a software company
| (https://www.piahealth.co) - even for software as a medical
| device (SaMD), the regulatory hurdles are tricky and time-
| consuming, I imagine it's at least 10x for hardware. I have
| huge respect for what you're doing and hope it makes a big
| impact.
| actinium226 wrote:
| Sounds super cool, are you guys hiring?
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| Not atm, but Soon (TM)
| zenburnmyface wrote:
| We are building micro-bioreactors on the Raspberry Pi. Yes,
| hardware is _hard_ (and fun!)
|
| https://pioreactor.com/
| TooSmugToFail wrote:
| We started in 2017 aiming to build world's best video headset for
| drone pilots ("FPV goggles", for those in the know). Based in
| Europe, where we do all our R&D and MFG.
|
| Surviving these last three years was, well, as hard as you can
| expect. Raising money was a challenge (hardware, in Europe,
| Central and Eastern Europe). We started scaling MFG just as the
| COVID started closing down China and crippling supply chains.
| Front row seat at the chip shortage horror show: just as we
| started delivering the first units of our first product, we saw
| our critical components go from EUR5 to EUR100 a pop, and lead
| times go from "shipping tomorrow" to "we may be tell you when it
| may be available in a few months, but not sure."
|
| Today, we're alive to tell the story. We expanded from headsets
| to pretty much every piece of tech you need in a drone; all
| designed and built in Europe. We do FCs, ESCs, control links,
| analog video links, data links (WiFi, 5G/LTE, SDR), flight
| computers, as well as drones, drone controllers, etc. We have a
| drone sim with 500k total downloads. We also do our own private
| mobile networking infra (5gc/epc RAN, gNB/eNB). We do HW, FW, and
| "normal" SW.
|
| We've pretty much consistently doubled our revenues every year
| since inception, but it's been a wild ride. While our US
| counterparts were raising tens of millions with similar traction
| and a fraction of tech collateral, we never got much love from
| VCs. Raising is still a bitch.
|
| Last five years were blood, sweat, and tears, but I'd do it all
| over again, cause building physical stuff is the best job in the
| world.
| flybrand wrote:
| What's the name?
| mcbuilder wrote:
| I've been in hardware startup bizz for pretty long, starting to
| feel like an ancient being. It's been all AI/ML, so I'm a
| software/research type guy in the HW space.
| johndmcmaster wrote:
| We are making computer controlled microscopes more accessible:
| better software and lower cost. We are working on tightly
| integrating output images with cloud services (ex: AI analysis,
| data viewers) to make the data more usable. We also have FOSS
| Python host software that enables a lot of user customization. We
| rely on a lot more COTS components and software correction than
| traditional players to keep the cost low (ex: we use mass
| produced chassis instead of designing our own).
|
| https://www.labsmore.com/
|
| My ask for HN: pricing is hard and I'd love to talk to other
| hardware co-founders about their experience / advice. One
| complication is that pricing is affected based on how we make
| money (ex: are we selling more hardware vs cloud services). Or
| please reach out if you just like microscopes :) Always great to
| talk to more people!
| farhadnoorzay wrote:
| Pricing is definitely hard. Something we're testing out and
| learning about right now. Luckily we do have a subscription
| model too which can give us some flexibility. I'm happy to
| chat. My email is in my bio.
| StephenSmith wrote:
| We make a camera system for construction sites. Using computer
| vision, we can identify when and for how long subcontractors show
| up as well as notify our customers of unwanted behavior on site.
|
| https://bedrockwireless.com/
|
| Fun fact, we probably have the best port-o-potty detector in the
| world.
| [deleted]
| brk wrote:
| Looks neat, is your core product the AI for the construction
| site object detection?
| StephenSmith wrote:
| We make the whole camera system because we couldn't find
| anything on the market that allowed us to do the AI we
| wanted. The value for the customer is all in the AI tracking
| and security detection as well as the ability to just login
| live and see what's happening on site. So, yes, our core
| product is our software, but we had to make the hardware to
| capture market share.
| brk wrote:
| Your website shows OEM cameras and an off the shelf plastic
| enclosure, along with basic LED floodlights. What hardware
| are you making? Not saying your product isn't cool, just
| not clear what hardware you are "making" vs. assembling.
| StephenSmith wrote:
| You're not wrong. We have custom boards inside to handle
| the AI compute and power, but we mostly do assembly.
|
| If a software startup assembles a bunch of open source
| hardware together and packages it as a product, would you
| say they don't "make" software?
| intelVISA wrote:
| Is assembly manufacture? Is glueing together FOSS libs
| coding? Probably not but I'm No True Hacker.
| brk wrote:
| _If a software startup assembles a bunch of open source
| hardware together and packages it as a product, would you
| say they don 't "make" software?_
|
| No, I'd say they are more of a software company than a
| hardware company though. All software runs on some kind
| of hardware, but these days it is pretty rare for that
| hardware to be very unique or custom.
|
| I was mostly just curious what custom hardware you had,
| since that was the topic at hand. My curiosity comes from
| working in the surveillance AI space for the last ~15
| years, and having done a number of custom (as in we made
| the whole thing) cameras with AI, but now there is a
| trend more towards using a lightly OEM'd camera with
| custom firmware in many cases.
|
| Considering the availability of cameras with advanced
| SoCs capable of doing edge inference, I wanted to ask
| more about your hardware and your design choices in this
| market, but I think I'll just bow out. Good luck with
| your startup!
| DDickson wrote:
| If this were a camera that identified when and for how long a
| software engineer showed up to the office and notified their
| employer of "unwanted behavior", how long would it take for
| that story to end up on the front page of this site and torn
| apart as invasive and infantilizing?
| StephenSmith wrote:
| I guess I would say that subcontractors are more like hourly
| workers (who are time tracked meticulously in almost all
| industries) - not salaried like software engineers, who would
| deserve the respect and absence of tracking.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Thanks to both the parent for raising the ethical issues in
| this product and to OP for responding/addressing them. Our
| industry gets a lot better when we don't shy away from both
| asking and answering these kinds of questions!
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Not really, in the housing industry, it is generally job
| bid instead. The contractor taking longer just means they
| get paid later and don't get as many jobs done.
|
| Also, Unions hate this right?
| StephenSmith wrote:
| It's less about tracking how long they're there and more
| about when they showed up. We do the former because we
| can, but the GC really wants to know if and when their
| subs are showing up without having to be on site 24/7
| waiting for them.
|
| For example, they can look back through yesterdays events
| to see that their plumber showed up - and then they'll
| know they need to go check on the work. The alternative
| is trying to get the plumber on the phone to figure out
| if the work had been completed or not - which is
| difficult in 2023.
|
| There's not a lot of unioned workers in most states for
| residential construction. But autoworkers, and anything
| else in manufacturing would be used to the constant
| monitoring. Commercial construction also typically has
| fulltime site superintendents, who would do this anyway.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| That's an interesting angle. My Father actually, by
| chance, owns a residential drywall and finishing
| business. The 'did the plumber show up' factor is key.
| Though I'm not sure why this couldn't be solved by having
| the subs of a builder agree to give basic job updates.
| How do residential customers feel about someone's camera
| watching their house?
| StephenSmith wrote:
| Anything that makes the GC more efficient is going to be
| a win for the future homeowner. This might get more
| problematic for remodels, but we primarily work with new
| home builds.
|
| The GC can often bill it down to the homeowner as
| antitheft, which reduces time/money to complete the
| build. The biggest being time. An example, if custom
| windows are stolen, it could delay a project by months
| right now.
| sulam wrote:
| If you've worked with these people you know that there's
| nothing "basic" about getting job updates.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| I would argue salary employees deserve more tracking since
| they are given more freedoms. An hourly worker is paid
| hourly, and given tasks at a much smaller interval.. often
| by day and sometimes every few hours. If you have quarterly
| goals for salary employees, they probably need more
| 'tracking' to make sure they are doing what you expect as
| time goes on.
| arandr0x wrote:
| Software engineers have full-time managers (which are a lot
| more overhead to pay for but kinda serve that purpose from
| the client perspective) and are paid well enough and
| consistently enough to usually only work one job on a given
| day. Subcontractors sometimes do decide not to show up to
| your job site because another employer offered them a bonus
| to do theirs that day instead. The point isn't (only) to
| humiliate or do a show of power to the workers, it's to
| counter an economic incentive they have.
|
| That said, for a lot of subcontractor trades, it's so hard to
| find anyone that I'd worry about the reverse: you get known
| as "the freaks with the cameras" and no one good bids on your
| stuff anymore, and then the delivery is even more delayed.
| godelski wrote:
| > it's to counter an economic incentive they have.
|
| I think economists would call that a feature and not a bug.
| It is essentially an auction (something economists LOVE).
| You could instead take that money that you're spending on
| surveillance and instead spend it on giving the contractors
| a bonus to show up to your place instead.
|
| I really don't buy that this would "shame" them into coming
| to your place first. Everyone already is aware that they
| don't always show up because you got out bid. You're
| "solving" the problem the wrong way because you're not
| addressing the actual problem.
| arandr0x wrote:
| I would imagine shaming doesn't work because I think
| residential GCs have higher demand for workers than there
| is supply, but the cameras still solve the problems of
| making it easier for the GC to react when it happens (and
| the reaction could be offer to pay that sub more if the
| project is late or all the other subs have been showing
| up, realizing the work from the earlier stage wasn't
| done, and going home, or it could be lengthening their
| project schedule).
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| I think if these got to the point of "worker stared at floor
| for 7 minutes" it would be invasive. If it tracks when a
| vehicle shows up to site and leaves.
|
| That being said, as someone with digestion issues, tracking
| bathroom habits is offensive.
|
| In short, yes this is invasive. But much like AI, this type
| of thing isn't going away, there is just going to be more
| lawsuits about it in the future.
| delusional wrote:
| We should make it illegal by law.
| StephenSmith wrote:
| We don't track port-o-potty use, just if they move.
| Vandalism is at an all time high on construction sites,
| tipping port-o-johns is a common teenage prank and the GC
| needs to know if and when this is happening on sites (and
| hopefully catch the perpetrators).
| xenospn wrote:
| Hmmm... going to start a company that makes portapotty
| anchors!
| MPlus88 wrote:
| [dead]
| newhouseb wrote:
| This is great! I built a house and DIY'ed this because our site
| was 2 hours away from where we were living at the time.
|
| It was clear (our) GC was not used to this because they were
| constantly telling us that things were happening when they very
| clearly weren't (thanks to the live video we had from to the
| site).
| StephenSmith wrote:
| We occasionally get the homeowner to buy our product to
| monitor their GC - the GC always hates this. This in-turn
| leads us to recommending that the GC (if they're the buyer
| [most common]) to never share it with the future homeowner as
| that usually causes the GC to be overburdened by the
| homeowner.
|
| I applaud you creating your own solution, many GCs can do
| this, but most can't or don't want to deal with it.
| mgomez wrote:
| This is pretty neat. I'm wondering if something like this (on a
| smaller scale) could be used to catch the elusive illegal
| dumper in my neighborhood.
| StephenSmith wrote:
| We're working on this solution. Most housing projects have a
| semi-permanent dumpster, but GC's often have problems with
| people dumping in their houses' dumpsters, causing them to
| pay for more refills on their dumpster, which can get
| expensive.
|
| Since we record motion on site, we typically catch the
| illegal dumpers, but it's hard to pick out from the many
| motion events that may occur on a construction site.
| remote_phone wrote:
| A regular camera can't do this?
| beezlewax wrote:
| How does knowing someone is on site lead to an increase in
| anything production wise? All they'd have to do is wander
| around and look busy. Some people are willing to do this over
| real work despite it being a task in itself.
| StephenSmith wrote:
| Subcontractors are businesses, if they're paying people to
| wander around on site, they have big problems.
|
| It's more about the fact that GCs struggle to get accurate
| schedules around when their subs will show up, the subs are
| in too high of a demand (think plumbers, electricians,
| framers). So they ask the subs to come out and complete a job
| and the sub responds with, "we'll be there sometime next
| week." Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don't. GCs need
| to know when and if they are showing up.
| jkelleyrtp wrote:
| Many years ago I worked at a startup doing this - putting
| cameras on tower cranes. Fun times. Took a while to find PMF
| and the startup ended up going under. Good times, was super
| fun!
| gtf21 wrote:
| Always nice to see another ConTech!
| j4nek wrote:
| interesting that most submission here are startups which are
| selling some hardware where ML is the main product and no-one who
| is doing discrete (analog) electronics
| nabilt wrote:
| I'm building an open source water meter to detect costly water
| leaks and track your water usage. The hardware design is flexible
| enough to easily repurpose it for measuring residential gas and
| electricity meters, as well as any signal that requires
| continuous reading while maintaining a long battery life.
|
| https://y-drip.com
|
| Follow the development process here:
|
| https://hackaday.io/project/191398-ydrip
| kachurovskiy wrote:
| Metal lathe conversational CNC controllers -
| https://kachurovskiy.com/
| tagyro wrote:
| FYI your website crashed my browser ...and now it's not
| accessible anymore
| kachurovskiy wrote:
| It's Shopify on the default theme. Try
| https://github.com/kachurovskiy/nanoels/tree/main/h4
| [deleted]
| shariqm wrote:
| We're building hearing aids that work in noisy places
| (AudioFocus[1], YC S19). We use novel machine learning and
| microphone array design to help patients hear better in loud
| restaurants, weddings, & family gatherings better than any other
| AI hearing aid.
|
| It's a big deal because untreated hearing loss is associated with
| social isolation & depression and while 37M people have hearing
| loss in the United States, only 8M use hearing aids. Hearing in
| noisy places is the biggest reason for lack of adoption.
|
| We just got our behind-the-ear (BTE) hardware prototype running
| and already have several excited patients. Listen to an audio
| recording from it here[2]. We're currently working on a pilot
| study with a professor in San Francisco.
|
| If you, or someone you know, is interested in participating in
| the pilot study let me know. And if you know interested
| investors, I'm happy to chat with them. I can be reached at
| shariq@audiofocus.io
|
| [1] www.audiofocus.io
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orU5Wx6_RfA&t=24s
| gimili wrote:
| Not a hardware startup per-se, but we are ex-satellite engineers
| who out if frustration with available tooling have developed the
| engineering software every hardware engineer deserves:
| https://www.valispace.com
|
| Also just released the first hardware engineering ai assistant:
| https://youtu.be/uLEOPpqiUok
| behnamoh wrote:
| OP said "hardware".
| distortionfield wrote:
| This is meaningfully hardware adjacent, stop being a stick in
| the mud.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Stop allowing irrelevant comments in a thread that clearly
| says "hardware" startup.
| cuSetanta wrote:
| Oh sweet, hey Valispace. I can vouch for this software as a
| spacecraft integrator. I worked with it a few years back as
| part of a trial and the power of inputing real world hardware
| measurements of equipment back into a system and see the impact
| of the measurements system wide is very powerful.
|
| While it is aimed at the spacecraft industry, I can see any
| industry with concurrent engineering taking advantage of this
| sort of system.
| varjag wrote:
| We make a system for assisting self-evacuation from tunnels using
| directional sound effects:
|
| https://norphonic.com/products/evacsound/
|
| Most of the userspace work including the planner, fire detection,
| resource scheduling and distributed execution is done in Common
| Lisp.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| Fascinating. Our Volvo does this for backing up and getting
| warnings from sensors. It uses the individual speakers from the
| direction of the issue. Works great.
| varjag wrote:
| Yep it's really nice augmentation. In a tunnel there are
| challenges though which aren't an issue in a compartment. The
| effects have to work for any person in miles long tunnels,
| with reverb/echo times in multiple seconds. They have to read
| off even with the noise from smoke extraction fans. Plus the
| practicalities of synchronized distributed operation, dealing
| with battle damage/attrition etc.
| samstave wrote:
| uhm, I need to introduce you to someone, who has developed this
| into a patented delivery via a baseball cap (hat) bill with
| directional indicators via LED to give you wayfinding HUD
| without a screen....
| varjag wrote:
| There's been lots of such ideas floating (and patented). But
| no evacuation method that relies on a motorist having any
| device or app on them is feasible.
| xenospn wrote:
| I had one! Spent four years depleting my savings and burning
| through investor money before calling it quits. Most important
| lesson I've learned is to not build another Hardware startup with
| my own money.
|
| Leftover investment memo: https://www.notion.so/gethuan/Huan-
| Memo-1e6ee1d17d72440cb981...
| simlevesque wrote:
| We make physical advertising (DOOH) with real time bidding. If
| you have an image you want to advertise you just submit it and
| select the screens/locations where you'd like to end up and
| choose what you want to pay. Then we approve and rate your ad and
| if you are the highest bidder (ad quality is part of the equation
| too) you can end up on the screen right then.
|
| The whole process can take 20 minutes, from signup to your ad
| being shown in businesses versus weeks to months for traditional
| advertising.
|
| Also the minimum payment is only 20$. We have all sorts of non-
| profits, local bands, anything you can think of, on the network.
| I think we have the lowest barrier of entry of the industry.
|
| https://oa.media/en/
|
| If you'd like to discuss my email is in my profile.
| talldatethrow wrote:
| The first button looks like a button but doesn't go anywhere.
| Other buttons took me to pages in another language.
| simlevesque wrote:
| I'm on it.
| synergy20 wrote:
| Tried this in the past, indeed hard to do, and, very heavy on
| cash investment, don't even think about bootstrapping it,
| crowdfunding might be the only way moving forward unless you
| somehow received huge investment.
|
| Most important thing is "ecosystem" to me, i.e. the logistics of
| ICs, PCB factories, upstream and downstream vendors, etc are all
| in the same place or city, I don't see anywhere in US that
| provides this yet.
|
| I went to Shenzhen instead, which has everything a hardware
| startup dreamed of, COVID kind of screwed it up for me though,
| back to software stuff.
| reactormonk wrote:
| I'd also be interested in picking your brain. If you happen to
| have time, send me an email.
| hnfuzzy wrote:
| Would love to pick your brain. Have an email?
| testmasterflex wrote:
| As a student living in a small studio I hated that everyone could
| hear your bathroom business.
|
| 10 years later I'm now trying to solve this problem for small
| homes and businesses.
|
| Loodio is a bathroom privacy device:
|
| https://loodio.com
| mNovak wrote:
| Our company is developing affordable phased array antennas. The
| end goal is to serve the next-generation commercial wireless
| communications and sensing markets (e.g. 5G/6G, mmW imaging
| radar, etc), though as we're bootstrapped most of our work
| currently is in Defense.
|
| On the very off chance there's other RF or antenna engineers out
| there, we're hiring (US remote)!
| electroagenda wrote:
| What's the name of the company?
| mNovak wrote:
| Novaa RF, website [1] though it's really just a splash page
|
| [1] https://www.novaarf.com/
| bag_boy wrote:
| I help out at Hardware Park, Birmingham's coworking space for
| hardware startups.
|
| hardwarepark.org
| zh3 wrote:
| Pretty much every business (mostly start-ups) I've been involved
| have been a combination of hardware and software; anyone who can
| work both is never going to be out of a job.
|
| These days I tend to mix both of those things with bicycles just
| to add some spice to the challenge :)
| contingencies wrote:
| Very high complexity, long slog (7+ years) food automation
| robotics venture here. We actually moved to Shenzhen (from
| elsewhere in China), then moved out of Shenzhen as we matured to
| a point where additional industrial space was required: large
| blocks of land around Shenzhen are prohibitively expensive. For
| us, in-house manufacturing and all that goes with it are firmly
| in-scope.
|
| We maintain a presence for supply chain, but EOY 2022 moved
| operations out of China owing to an alignment of operational
| challenges under the current domestic environment, macro-
| political conditions, venture maturity and correspondingly
| changing needs. Managing that move _alone_ was an extremely
| complex challenge involving all manner of curveballs - more than
| enough for a decent film.
|
| We anticipate raising in the US 4Q this year for 2024 US go-to-
| market.
|
| Coming from software, _hard_ is an understatement. Purely on the
| R &D front we've had to successfully innovate in fields as varied
| as electrical and power engineering, electronic engineering,
| global cross-market food regulations, HVAC, hydraulics,
| mechanical engineering, process engineering, refrigeration. On
| the business front we've had to tackle - as an early stage
| venture - the many challenges of cross-border operations
| including cross-border financing, HR, intellectual property,
| legal, a shifting array of visa rules, supply chain (chipageddon,
| shipageddon), etc. The team has waxed and waned up to over a
| dozen full time and back down to two at present. Over this time
| I've seen countless tangentially-aligned investment fads and
| trends come and go: Chinese 'New Retail', YC's short-lived move
| to China (flew me to Beijing to interview with the partners),
| COVID-fuelled global overinvestment in last-mile food delivery,
| drone delivery, ghost kitchens, 15 minute groceries, etc. Right
| now there's a huge number of ventures failing in related spaces,
| but we remain very confident.
|
| We persist largely because we started from a good place (already
| spoke fluent Chinese, knew China, could self-fund), have focused
| on a genuinely venture-scale business strategy, maintained a low
| burn rate, stuck to fundamentals, ignored the trends, and I am
| personally lucky enough to have both a hugely supportive family
| and early stage investor sharing my high conviction plus enough
| residual resources from a prior exit to continue to invest
| personally. At this point, our technology is genuinely best in
| class globally by multiple objective metrics (eg. footprint, cost
| per location, degree of automation), and we are correspondingly
| well placed for aggressive venture-scale growth and returns. We
| therefore look forward to securing significant US funding,
| leveraging our China supply chain, and consolidating US hiring
| and operations to achieve go-to-market. But _damn_ , has it been
| a trip!
| h317 wrote:
| We make edge AI cameras. After focusing on services for a while,
| it has been a different type of journey to switch to the product.
| We did an open source pilot product on esp32, and got
| surprisingly more interest than we thought, so now we are working
| on a high performance (4k, 60fps, AI chip) device.
|
| Lite-esp32 camera https://www.crowdsupply.com/maxlab/tokay-lite
| Source-code: https://github.com/maxlab-io/tokay-lite-pcb
|
| Pro camera updats will be posted here:
| https://maxlab.io/store/tokay-riscv-camera/
| HockeyPlayer wrote:
| How do these compare to the Luxonis cameras?
| https://www.luxonis.com/
| m00x wrote:
| Not OP, but I'm very familiar with both.
|
| Luxonis is way more powerful and has an Intel VPU (Movidius).
| It's not really meant to be a standalone platform, so it
| needs a host board (Linux SBC like the Pi). It takes a lot
| more power, but it can do 60fps on small Yolo models. Its
| resolution is a lot higher as well.
|
| ESP32-S3 has a pretty small memory capacity, and doesn't have
| H264-H265 hardware encoding, so you'll be on low-res, low-
| fps. It only does MJPEG (AFAIK) streaming, so you'll also
| have to deal with high latency if you want to send that data
| somewhere. The big bonus is that it's low-cost and low-power,
| and you're running it directly on the core without an OS.
|
| This means you can do stuff like sleep the cores until
| something wakes it up (like a PIR sensor that detects
| people), and it will start streaming in a second or two.
|
| TL;DR: Luxonis stronk, but needs big batteries or plugged in.
| ESP32-S3 can run on small batteries or solar.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ngl I really wish Luxonis cameras supported running
| standalone after being configured once, OpenVino is such a
| heckin chonker to install and manage.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| The ESP32-P4 has hardware accelerators for media-encoding,
| including H.264. Might want to check it out.
| m00x wrote:
| Is it out yet?
|
| I'm desperately waiting for it to be available.
| passwert wrote:
| Could you please clarify what you mean by 'AI'?
| throwaway721099 wrote:
| I'm working on the world's brightest lamp:
| https://presale.getbrighter.co/
|
| There has been a lot of writing about the benefits of bright
| light in your house and how to set up your own rig (e.g.
| https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/), but nobody has built a mass market
| consumer product (one that's easy to set up, has all the right
| features (dimmable, adjustable color temp, high CRI), and looks
| aesthetic).
|
| Feel free to contact me at team@getbrighter.co
| Tepix wrote:
| Can you talk about the power consumption?
| gargablegar wrote:
| Hardware is hard:founding hardware engineer, we were acquired 4
| years ago by a corporate. We place WiFi sensors around your
| network that behave like typical clients. We report on user
| experience and show when there are issues in your network. WiFi
| technician in a box.
|
| The fact that it's subscription based is what made us float.
|
| The initial capital outlay, supply chain, compliance and design
| work is so funding intensive but can we done on budget if you are
| wise about it.
|
| We had to build a full web app and rich backend to report the
| results, a device team to write the sensor software and of course
| hardware design.
|
| About 50% of our funding went into supply chain costs just to get
| the first units out the door. The rest into staffing. Without the
| hook into the large hardware manufacturers/China we had a pretty
| heavy BOM cost.
|
| It was rough but the Saas portion once it was up allowed us
| breathing room.
|
| It's critical to design for compliance in your target markets and
| critical to manage your spend on components. A minor design
| mistake in your hardware will destroy your brand - where with
| software it's a patch away.
|
| Shipping and tax costs are another killer which add so much cost
| overhead and are often over looked.
|
| It was stressful I'm glad we found a corporate home as it allowed
| us some breathing room to focus and redesign things with a budget
| safety net.
| mosquitobiten wrote:
| So many tech channels on Youtube are watched by people who work
| in places your tech could help, and these channels are starving
| for content non-stop. You should reach out to some like LTT,
| Level1Tech, ServetheHome.
| myself248 wrote:
| A brother needs a link.
|
| Are you able to roam/hand off between APs and measure the
| reassociation time? That would address a monitoring need I have
| right now.
| manicennui wrote:
| Does it actually connect or just measure the signal? If the
| former, have you had to deal with all the various auth schemes
| that companies use? I know that Cisco in particular loves to
| create their own schemes.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think it would be nice if someone made a high-performance ASIC
| specifically for tinygrad.
| Tepix wrote:
| Would this be similar to the Google's Coral Edge accelerators?
| ilaksh wrote:
| I guess but I think Hotz said that tinygrad was specifically
| designed to _not_ be Turing complete, which allows for
| potentially much greater optimization and performance than
| existing accelerators which have to accommodate that.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| We make stingray resistant booties! Stingray stings are painful
| and can be dangerous, and the fear of getting stung can take the
| enjoyment out of the beach. We've mainly targeted surfers so far,
| but they could be useful for any beach-goer.
|
| Definitely been dealing with the fact that "hardware is hard". We
| had a design we were fairly happy with about two years ago, but
| have been struggling to get it manufactured since then. We're
| making progress, but it's always slow.
|
| Our website is www.mydragonskin.com
| yardie wrote:
| Steve Irwin's death[0] has never not been on my mind anytime a
| stingray gets near me. I'm like "hey little fella, I'm going to
| slowly back away to avoid both of us freaking out and one of us
| may end up dead."
|
| Best of luck with your startup!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin
| xenospn wrote:
| How often do you find yourself near a stingray?
| kulahan wrote:
| Is there any interest in your company on making the same thing
| for pets, or at least dogs? My pops takes his dog surfing most
| days, and there are lots and lots of urchins around. The extra
| safety would be nice.
| beambot wrote:
| Cobalt Robotics - physical robots for safety, security &
| facilities management.
|
| Predominantly big-enterprise B2B. SaaS-like unit economics. Post-
| Series C with marquee investors (BloombergBeta, Sequoia, Coatue,
| etc). Robots in 8 countries.
|
| https://www.cobaltrobotics.com/
| screye wrote:
| Loads of hardware startups, but the communities are not in the
| Bay, Seattle or NYC.
|
| Most of the activity is not being generated by Americans or in
| America. Lots are being started in India, Dubai and China. Even
| the ones based out of the US or Singapore spend most of their
| time in Shenzen.
|
| In the US, I routinely see robotics and Healthcare hardware
| startups in Boston or San Diego, pseudo attached to the local
| university. No surprise that irobot and Boston dynamics are based
| out of Boston.
| mkipper wrote:
| Another consideration is that a lot of hardware startups focus
| on industrial applications with customers that don't operate
| out of tech hubs.
|
| There are tons of small companies making hardware for oil & gas
| applications, but you'll mostly find them in areas where their
| customers are located (e.g. Texas, Alberta) and/or LCOL cities
| where you can find cheap real estate. This also applies to
| other industries like agriculture and automotive.
|
| These aren't "sexy" companies so you don't hear much about
| them, but I'd wager that if you add them up, they'd outnumber
| the number of hardware startups in NYC and the Bay Area.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I think there is a huge hardware startup ecosystem in the bay,
| I'm part of it. Especially for certain hardware specialties
| like medical,semiconductor, defence, space, etc.
| kylixz wrote:
| https://darkhive.ai small uncrewed aerial systems for public
| safety. Other companies still dominate the market and for good
| reason. We aim to bring US-made equipment that is competitive and
| affordable.
| genmud wrote:
| Let me know if you need someone to test in a high heat
| environment and give you product feedback.
|
| I am on the UAS committee for a large city (1.6m+ people with
| 13k+ employees) and its amazing how many us-based companies
| don't take into account how hot it can be in the desert. I
| recently saw a vendor who needed to redesign/change their
| batteries and motors because of it.
|
| As some unsolicited advice, if you aren't working to get on the
| DIU Blue list [1], I highly recommend it. Many if not most
| public safety agencies are using that to make purchasing
| decisions.
|
| I have been sounding the alarm on how DJI is likely going to
| get banned at some point with all the trade shenanigans going
| on, but many of the US based companies just aren't as operator
| friendly.
|
| [1] - https://www.diu.mil/blue-uas
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| This is very cool! Is the intent that it'll have a bunch of
| modular stuff so law enforcement can equip it to do different
| tasks (e.g., different cameras or sensors)? Not sure if you
| ever saw the Axon (Taser) announcement that was quickly halted
| but they pitched doing something like this for schools with a
| taser attached. A bit dystopian but maybe useful given the
| awful number of school shootings and poor response times as
| evidenced by Uvalde
| ericcj wrote:
| Aura is sort of a hybrid: we're building a photo sharing network
| but the destination is our digital frames, so now that we're
| running at scale we spend at least as much energy on software as
| hardware: https://auraframes.com/careers
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| We make industrial devices that use electron paramagnetic
| resonance (EPR) to measure free radical content of chemicals in
| real time by sampling directly from the flow line. Right now
| we're focused on measuring asphaltene content in crude oil
| pipelines, but we're trying to expand into chemical manufacturing
| as well.
|
| https://www.microsiliconinc.com/
| clobmclob wrote:
| I work for a hardware startup in NYC and HK called Looking Glass
| (www.lookingglassfactory.com). We create light field displays.
| Coming from a primarily software background, I quite agree that
| hardware is harder. We are venture funded but we are _very_ lean
| due to the challenges of bootstrapping a display business and the
| capital requirements needed for manufacturing. We only have about
| 10 software engineers that are split across plugins, drivers,
| firmware, production tooling, our web platform, and solutions
| development. On the bright side, the technology presents
| extremely interesting problems.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| I actually had our chief innovation officer pick up a screen
| from you guys out in NY a few years back. I love your tech and
| wish you the best of luck
| clobmclob wrote:
| Thanks!
| baybal2 wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| boxcardavin wrote:
| We're working on riderless and balance-assisted bicycles and
| motorcycles. We're working to ship our flagship bike and we're
| about to launch a balance-bike for kids that helps them learn
| faster and sets up virtual bumpers while they learn.
|
| Cool video of moto carrying stuff (just like the 2016 google
| prank vid) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sqyjag9yRUA
| nosequel wrote:
| You should track down the one-man team from the first DARPA
| Grand Challenge who made an autonomous motorcycle. I was on a
| team with a real truck, so I didn't have to figure out how to
| balance a two-wheeled vehicle while also trying to figure out
| how to autonomously make it through an obstacle course. From an
| insiders view, we all thought he was the star of the show.
| boxcardavin wrote:
| This will sound like a joke, but that was Anthony Levandowski
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| > the one-man team
|
| Pretty sure there were several engineers (engineering
| students) involved
| mvolfik wrote:
| I was briefly interviewing with hardwario.com, a small Czech
| startup focused on industrial IoT built on open-source
| technologies. They are starting a new Rust project, and they seem
| to be doing pretty good!
| the_mar wrote:
| Thalo Labs a New York City-based company focused on accelerating
| our path to a net-negative carbon society. We develop systems
| (hardware+software) that make it easy to measure and capture GHG
| emissions at the scale of the built environment. We are driven to
| provide practical solutions to emissions now and scale with the
| future of the green grid.
|
| See current open roles here: https://jobs.lever.co/thalolabs
| eeemmmooo wrote:
| I own multiple interactive entertainment concepts. We build room
| scale hardware and props. So definitely a bit different than
| normal consumer hardware, but still have a lot of the same
| problems. One of our issues is we our low volume and unique use
| cases for our hardware.
|
| I'd love to connect with anyone else doing similar things. My
| info is in my bio.
|
| Breakoutgames.Com Activate.games
| sakaroz wrote:
| Hey :)
|
| I'm fullstack dev at Sencrop.com, we help farmers take better
| decisions for their crops with the help of IOT: connected rain
| gauge, temp sensor, hygrometry sensor, anenometer, pyranometer.
|
| And yes, hardware is hard :) but i'm proud to say that we cover a
| big part of west europe with more than 20k stations deployed and
| really help people on their field
| adastra22 wrote:
| We're early stage, just fundraising now, but we're working on
| building the first generation of molecular nanotechnology devices
| for machine-phase chemistry and the construction of gemstone-
| based nano machinery.
|
| We're interested in talking to people of all backgrounds who want
| to make Drexler's vision of nanotechnology a near-term reality.
| Send us an email: hello@machinephase.systems
| Mockapapella wrote:
| We're building FPV humanoid robots to do hands-on jobs from home
| that can be controlled with standard VR headsets:
| https://robosymbiosis.com/.
|
| Still very much a work in progress. I'm a little obsessed about
| the UX of things, so I'm really trying to drive the idea that it
| should feel as natural to use as moving your own body. I love
| that it combines tons of aspects from VR game design, robotics,
| and web technologies into a single experience. I expect to have a
| full scale, _really_ rough looking but functional prototype by
| this fall.
| DEDLINE wrote:
| https://qvntra.io
|
| We're replacing old-school bed alarms and call buttons in Senior
| Living facilities.
|
| The bed sensors that we manufacture are strapped to beds and
| monitor for out-of-bed, potential infection and medication error
| via algorithms on-top of real-time vital sign data.
|
| We mount always-on iPad in high traffic area for the nurses to
| grab alerts. Sirens are mounted in hallways to grab audible
| attention. The whole system is Zigbee 3.0.
|
| Nurses are leaving the industry in droves. The "Silver Tsunami"
| is approaching rapidly. We're helping nurses scale and keeping
| elderly safer in their homes.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| I produce Battery Powered WiFi Temperature & Humidity Sensors
|
| https://www.kokonaut.com
|
| https://www.instagram.com/kokonautinc
|
| Firmware Uploading and Testing Robot Cell:
| https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cmxpg1jhcLE/
|
| https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GFGZF2F
| seizethecheese wrote:
| We make an e-commerce subscription that uses a smart scale to
| trigger re-orders at the perfect time. The timing is dynamic for
| each customer's usage patterns.
|
| The scale lasts 1.5yrs per battery charge. Our customers cancel
| subscriptions at a way lower rate compared to typical
| subscriptions because their experience is way better.
|
| We bootstrapped to over 100 customers. We 3D printed the devices
| and hand soldered dev boards for the internals.
|
| We manufacture the device ourselves in China, now.
|
| Company is bottomless.com, though we are now focused mostly on
| integrations with third party e-commerce sites over direct
| customer acquisition.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I work in this space. Medical devices mostly, surgical robotics,
| active implantable devices (LVADS, artificial hearts), dialysis,
| monitoring and testing and also orthopedic stuff like bone taps,
| drills, screws and surgical navigation. I have a portfolio
| website at www.iancollmceachern.com
| franckl wrote:
| We are building the world's highest temperature heat pump. It can
| reach 1000, when other commercial heat pumps usually reach a
| maximum of 320 .
|
| It is a big deal because factories have to rely on polluting
| natural gas to produce their process heat.
|
| We estimate that it represents 3% of the world's annual CO2
| emissions and a $10B+ annual market opportunity.
|
| We are currently building a 5kW prototype at 480/250C to cook
| french fries for McCain (world's largest manufacturer of frozen
| potato products), our industrial partner for the first pilot.
|
| If you would like to support our decarbonization efforts, feel
| free to email us on contact@airthium.com or to invest in our
| crowdfunding! https://wefunder.com/airthium
| barelyauser wrote:
| What is the COP of a heat pump operating against this
| temperature gradient?
| Ndymium wrote:
| Quoting from their linked website:
|
| > Our heat pump can generate up to 3 times as much heat as a
| resistor, using the same amount of electricity.
|
| Though it doesn't mention the temperature at which this is
| achieved, only that the range is from 160 to 550degC.
| franckl wrote:
| we published a calculator if you would like to dig deeper!
| https://airthium.github.io/airthium.com-calculator/
|
| The COP gets lower as the temperature difference increases
| as you can expect.
| V__ wrote:
| This is really cool. Can you talk about some interesting
| challenges/problems you encountered?
| franckl wrote:
| We started in 2016 with just an idea, and we probably
| encountered every problem you can think of !
|
| - hard to raise funds for large deeptech projects (thank you
| YC and Wefunder for unlocking that one!)
|
| - a corrosion issue in 2019 that nearly killed us (we found a
| way around it after months of brainstorming and completely
| got rid of corrosion issues)
|
| - we had to build our own physics algorithm for very specific
| problems, and ended up selling the software we use internally
| to DENSO (a large japanese company) which funded the
| development. See https://tanatloc.com
|
| - tackling a market that doesnt exist yet with a seasonal
| energy storage solution (a change of engine architecture
| allowed us to use the same engine but for industrial heat
| pumps, an existing market much easier to tackle)
|
| - finding the right industrial space,
|
| and so on :)
| zodzedzi wrote:
| > ... we had to build our own physics algorithm for very
| specific problems, and ended up selling the software ...
|
| Like a simulation algorithm? Can you elaborate on what kind
| of algo and the problem it solved?
| franckl wrote:
| I can't go into details for confidentiality reasons but
| we published a paper last December on one of the
| simulation models : https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.
| 1007/978-3-031-12019-0_...
| [deleted]
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Those chips should come in special packaging saying they're eco
| friendly
| inopinatus wrote:
| ball grid array probably has the right thermal properties
| lionkor wrote:
| plastic packaging, of course
| OJFord wrote:
| Or, serious suggestion, dehydrated potato skin, held
| together with starch. Fun gimmick anyway.
| dthakur wrote:
| We mow laws with robots. https://yard.bot
| [deleted]
| ComputerCat wrote:
| We are building smart cameras for industrial automation and
| robotics. We are on our 3rd generation design with a 20.5TOPS
| Toshiba ASIC and Sony image sensors. A lot of sweat and tears
| have gone in the hardware and software design.
|
| You can load AI models like YOLO, resnet, MiDAS onto it and we
| are working on porting some generative AI models onto it as well.
| We have tried to make this as easy as possible for non-devs to be
| able to use it:
|
| https://docs.labforge.ca/docs/bottlenose-file-utility
|
| We offer monocular and stereo versions. The current gen is
| 8MP/4K.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| My startup https://printnanny.ai/ provides monitoring/automation
| SaaS for 3D printers, but most venture capitalists I've met
| (including YC partners) categorize PrintNanny as a hardware
| startup.
|
| I offer Raspberry Pi kits due to shortages/scalper bots. Most of
| my customers can't find 1-3 Raspberry Pi 4, but I'm able to place
| orders for 50+ units. I'm not sure if I'll continue the kit line
| of business; fulfilling hardware products as a solo founder is
| tough.
| szaroubi wrote:
| We are working on a not yet announced smart agriculture / agtech
| sensor, and have contributed to projects on the smart energy grid
| and also smart/autonomous mining.
|
| Hardware is hard, but IoT is harder. IoT involves bridging the
| gap between hardware, firmware, networking, security and cloud
| teams, which makes the challenge that much more complicated.
| Different teams have different concerns and getting a sense of
| all these sometimes conflicting concerns is tough.
|
| https://axceta.com
| tagami wrote:
| An education network of science labs connecting schools, science
| centers, libraries, and museums around the world to live missions
| aboard the International Space Station. I could always use help:
| https://exolab.space
| metonymy wrote:
| We're in agtech building mushroom growing systems for the kitchen
| counter. After two years of limited production active systems,
| we're shipping a totally passive solution that can grow a wide
| variety of mushroom varieties.
|
| Systems come with everything needed, including mushroom liquid
| cultures and growing media. We continue to iterate the design
| while testing new varieties and media.
|
| More info at https://mycelerator.com
| andrelayer wrote:
| I built a healthier men's dress shoe with a faux heel that allows
| you to walk barefoot while still maintaining a professional
| silhouette. https://OAKAStudio.com.
|
| Footwear is the most technical and health detrimental part of our
| wardrobe.
| runjake wrote:
| bcantrill[1] is here. Does Oxide[2] count as a hardware startup?
|
| 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcantrill
|
| 2. https://oxide.computer/
| bcantrill wrote:
| If we don't count as a hardware startup, I'm going to have some
| questions about what _does_ count as a hardware startup. ;)
| wslh wrote:
| I take advantage of this thread to ask about an educational idea
| that is connected with hardware but is not looking for a business
| but a way of social contribution.
|
| The idea is to do basically something like Romo [1] (they closed)
| but at the cheapest price possible (assuming a level of quality).
| This is along the lines of OLPC [2]. I imagine a simple vehicle
| that is controlled by a mobile "smart" device and you can take
| the advantage of the capabilities of this device (e.g. camera).
|
| The Bandai SmartPet Robot Dog is at USD ~52 now [3]. How cheaper
| can all this? Not assuming worker cost just components, it can be
| open hardware. I understand that a level of quality should be
| achieved. For example, the motors used should be protected
| against burn.
|
| [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterseid/romo-the-
| smar...
|
| [2] https://laptop.org/
|
| [3] https://www.japantrendshop.com/bandai-smartpet-robot-
| dog-p-1...
| devmunchies wrote:
| I come from a traditional full-stack engineering background (web
| frontend + backend) and recently founded a smart toy company[1],
| the first product built on ESP32-S3. I took a few weeks for me to
| get comfortable writing firmware (although there is another more
| experienced engineer doing the primary work and electrical).
|
| I'm really excited for Espressif (the chip maker) to roll out
| newer versions of their microcontrollers on RISC-V. I would love
| to see a renaissance of inexpensive personal devices.
|
| [1]: We're pre-launch so nothing to share now.
| leros wrote:
| I have a similar background as you. How are you finding
| handling the mechanical side of things? I assume your toy is
| more than a PCB.
| devmunchies wrote:
| There are no motors, so more simple. There are mics,
| speakers, LEDs, LCDs, buttons, etc. I have a firmware
| engineer who also does electrical engineering, and a
| mechanical engineer who works with manufacturing, compliance,
| and industrial design.
| leros wrote:
| Gotcha. You have a team of people helping out. Sounds super
| fun!
| generalunited wrote:
| Worked on this hardware startup from 2011-2015: http://VOXON.co -
| a volumetric 3D display company.
|
| We went through the Microsoft Accelerator for Kinect powered by
| Techstars 2012 in Seattle. It was very hard to find investors,
| mentors, and partners for hardware at the time.
|
| That said - building the technology from the ground up and seeing
| how much people loved it - I've never been more proud to be apart
| of a project. We were doing something really hard - but together
| we built exactly what we said we'd make.
| ed_ wrote:
| We're working on "life support systems" for algae
| photobioreactors. This includes monitoring the health of the
| algae, monitoring and controlling the environment to optimise
| algae growth, providing feedback to users on growth and
| experiment progress, and uploading data to our own cloud.
|
| We're more software than hardware, but without the hardware
| capability we wouldn't have been able to attempt it.
|
| Previously we tried little "Singing Christmas Trees" as well [0],
| and while they were certainly nifty, we couldn't find the market
| for them at the price.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@pixolighting
| samstave wrote:
| Do you recall the game(?) 'LIGHT BRIGHT'
|
| Which consisted of a black-cardboard-paper with a pattern on it
| connect-the-dots-style - and you would plug into each 'dot' a
| plastic pin, then it would light-up at you would see the
| pattern/design in full form?
|
| -
|
| Imagine your xmas trees as a grid of LEDs and they are
| pressable/de-pressable (toggle) and kids can draw out a
| pattern, then have the machine animate the pattern in certain
| ways... as it understands the intent of the drawing as being a
| car/tree/person/animal whatever...
| algas wrote:
| That's super cool! I worked last year on an algae bioreactor. I
| was growing chlorella in plastic bottles in my room, just for
| the heck of it. That year I also met some people working for a
| University of Edinburgh startup using algae to consume the
| tails from whiskey production. Honestly, I really hope that
| algaes see a wider adoption in consumer and business processes,
| because they're really fun and fascinating organisms.
|
| Out of curiosity, are you looking for interns? I can work in
| the UK and the US. If you have contact information of some
| kind, I can send you my resume!
| Havoc wrote:
| Not mine, but was impressed with IceWhale technologies. They
| shipped a custom SBC (Zimaboard) during the covid electronics
| supply chain shitshow. Was delayed as a result but they came
| through with solid execution eventually.
| stephanerangaya wrote:
| https://oxide.computer looks great
| immibis wrote:
| I don't really understand what they're making and what
| differentiates their product. Is it a private cloud but
| designed so you can just drop it in place and turn it on
| instead of having to set up the cloud?
| lijok wrote:
| It's server racks with basically iLO on steroids.
|
| To be fair, simply being server a company that's easy to deal
| with is enough of a differentiator in this space. Would
| absolutely blindly buy from them just to avoid having to deal
| with HPE/Dell
| immibis wrote:
| I understood that company to be Supermicro, though I've
| never dealt with them so I could be wrong.
| bcantrill wrote:
| We have talked quite a bit about what it's like to be making
| hardware as a startup in our Oxide and Friends podcast[0] --
| and one might be especially interested in the Q&A we did on
| Monday[1] after our launch got quite a bit of attention here on
| HN.[2]
|
| [0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P5Mk_IggE0
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36552015
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Basically my dream job
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I don't run the show and it's not my company, but I work on
| simulation devices for developing surgical skills. We have these
| MEMS and laser sensors for tracking surgical tool movements that
| the founder came up with.
|
| My impression after 3 years in a product role is that it is
| amazing what a ~5 engineer team is capable of achieving over a
| couple of years. However, we're located in Poland so employees
| are cheap, we're heavily subsidized by huge grants and funding.
| Our offices/facility is in the middle of nowhere.
|
| The engineers are quite stressed out because their work depends
| on many external factors that they don't have much control over
| (shipping, ordering components, manual assembly etc.). They
| literally run a workshop - they argue about who's using the
| tools, what the 3D printer schedule is like.
|
| It's so many things at the same time - it's super slow,
| production and QA is a comedy, design changes are challenging to
| implement. Product certification and patenting is an enormous
| challenge. Business is super slow (our customers take years to
| make up their mind and they buy with public tenders).
|
| But on the other hand... they do also seem happy and proud. I
| mean I love the product, and I love showing it off, UX testing,
| etc. And there are few competitors on the market, so it's also
| quite stable.
|
| I think hardware is more accessible and doable than it used to be
| - 'hardware is hard' is something my industrial designer dad
| would repeat in the 90's.
| arandr0x wrote:
| > we're heavily subsidized by huge grants and funding
|
| this is how it is in Canada too! My city has a huge
| manufacturing sector so a lot of these little startups with
| super niche products that take lots of R&D are found there. But
| no one talks about us because engineers aren't paid doctor
| money here (the grants aren't THAT good, which I think in the
| US defense sector they are).
| 3flp wrote:
| Early stage here - self funded. After many years in land mobile
| radio industry, I decided to start my own thing. Hand held radios
| are still around, and will be, for many years. We're making them
| much better - the range, battery life, .. and open sourcing them.
|
| As other said, development can be very expensive and iterations
| long, unless you're smart about it.
| tda wrote:
| We build robot arm based 3D printers. Surprisingly the company
| (more scale up than start up tbh) is entirely bootstrapped, and
| the hardware is pretty mature. But I am a software engineer and
| that is the area we are struggling with most currently,
| especially where IT and OT meet.
|
| www.ceadgroup.com
| dazhbog wrote:
| I run 2 small IoT startups.
|
| One is smart agriculture related, we do ambient and soil moisture
| sensors https://pycno.co
|
| Second, (from the learnings of the first one) offers a smart IoT
| gateway (cellular, WiFi,LoRa, etc.) with modular cartridges (like
| SNES) for connecting sensors and actuators from any 3rd party
| vendor https://deeporbital.com
| cmicali wrote:
| At Sense we make a home energy monitor that provides real-time
| appliance-level monitoring using machine learning. Hardware is
| indeed hard as everyone said it would be!
|
| https://sense.com
| comprambler wrote:
| This seems exactly like neurio, but Generac seems to have
| shuttered that product.
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| That seems.... really expensive?
|
| $165 will get you an emporia with 16 sensors so you don't need
| any AI trying to decipher your usage, compared to $300 for
| yours that only gives you sensors for your main feed.
|
| Considering it's trivial to find schematics online showing how
| to wire a clamp current meter into an esp32, what have you
| found to be difficult about the hardware? I would expect the AI
| detection of individual appliances would be the hard part.
| farhadnoorzay wrote:
| We're building Hoopfit, the most advanced basketball shooting
| machine ever.
|
| It's battery powered and ultra portable so it can be used in your
| driveway hoop or you can take it to the park. It's powered by
| iPad Air so we heavily leverage the cameras for computer vision
| and AI to automatically track a players shooting stats and
| provide real time feedback on shooting form.
|
| I'm a software engineer but I have to admit, designing and
| building a physical product is so rewarding and a ton of fun :)
|
| It's the product I wish I had as a kid and desperately need as a
| recreational hooper trying to continue playing basketball as I
| get older!
|
| https://gethoopfit.com
| montereynack wrote:
| www.sentineldevices.com
|
| We use machine learning to monitor industrial equipment for signs
| of faults or failures, and identify in real-time which signals
| are relevant to the failure/which ones a technician should look
| at first. The problem we're solving is that when a machine fails
| unexpectedly, 60% or more of a technician's time is spent just
| figuring out what was going on and what, specifically, went
| wrong. We want to cut that time by half or more by having our
| device be an engineer-in-a-box monitoring the equipment 24/7/365.
| We're also unique in that we're "zero-cloud" - we do all data
| collection, storage & processing (yes, even the AI training - not
| just inference) on-device, on a COTS hardware platform that fits
| in your hand. The idea is to be truly plug-and-play without
| having to figure out network infrastructure, and cybersecurity,
| and data storage costs, etc. etc. Demo video here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhtLS3UfnPU&feature=youtu.be
|
| We're always interested in pilots; our website is admittedly
| fairly stealth mode, but if you know someone that works at a
| factory, they can reach out to
| forrest.shriver@sentineldevices.com
| MPlus88 wrote:
| [dead]
| rock_hard wrote:
| Shameless plug:
|
| At https://flux.ai we are working on taking the "hard" out of
| hardware!
|
| Also have a great slack based community with lots of hardware
| folks going
| gtf21 wrote:
| We (https://www.converge.io) both build sensors (and SaaS) and
| work with 3rd party sensors to analyse concrete operations and
| material performance for construction to help make it more
| efficient and sustainable.
|
| Hardware is definitely hard.
| zackees wrote:
| Very early stage, but I have a small electronic jewelry project
| that merges voice sensing electronics to timeless gemstones and
| bespoke hand wrapped high end jewelry.
|
| The value here is that everyone wants to be more important. A
| shining crystal that pulses with your voice makes you a celebrity
| everywhere you go.
|
| Later versions will include an AI assistant that is tuned
| specifically to keeping you on task and engaged.
| zrnsm wrote:
| Aspinity, Inc. https://www.aspinity.com/
|
| We're a semiconductor startup working on ultra-low power
| programmable analog devices.
|
| We're always looking to hire.
|
| We need expertise in the following areas: analog design,
| semiconductor production and test, embedded systems, ML model
| development and infrastructure, digital/analog signal processing,
| PCB design and test, analog circuit simulation, compiler
| infrastructure, SDK development and more.
|
| Software we use: Rust, C, Python, PyTorch.
|
| Email me directly at nicolas@aspinity.com to connect. We're based
| in Pittsburgh.
| rambambram wrote:
| We are making the world's lightest and easiest DIY bicycle
| caravan.
|
| Right now, the first test trips are happening and the results
| look promising. Cycling on urban roads and in the forest works
| really well with the bicycle caravan behind. Camping mode with
| the tent setup needs to be tested thoroughly before going to
| market.
|
| Eventually we want to provide kits in various stages of
| readiness, from barebones fully DIY to pre-cut fabric and plates.
|
| For photos and more information, please visit
| https://www.theredpanther.org
| davidzweig wrote:
| Neat. Come to Bulgaria, I can take you to a couple of
| metalworking workshops, and plenty of forests to test your
| product. :)
| iiJDSii wrote:
| A few years ago I made a Kickstarter for an augmented reality
| helmet -
|
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/realjds/spartan-hud-nex...
|
| Fun project, made some sales and a small profit, then hand-built
| and delivered the units from my apartment. Lots of learnings.
|
| Applied to YC and got an interview but ultimately didn't get in -
| I agree with their feedback that the platform was too general and
| "lacked a killer app". But it's a cool research platform due to
| its generality: you get a full Linux computer in your heads-up
| display, and can connect arbitrary USB peripherals (we had a
| version with a depth-sensing camera).
|
| Over the last year on weekends I've been working on a new light-
| weight version that allows one to drop in their smartphone or
| other ~5" screen, and actually orienting a specific version
| towards the sport of airsoft. Polycarbonate encasing around a
| modified helmet protects the electronics as well as the user's
| head.
|
| Hope to try it out sometime later this year; lately I've been
| pre-occupied with my day job and learning all the new AI software
| and theory out there.
|
| If anyone is interested in this project and wants to connect, ask
| questions, etc, feel free to reach out via email (in my profile).
| Cheers!
| geigco wrote:
| This is the simplest thing somebody is going to post.
|
| I make KeyboardBumps and sell them at https://KeyboardBumps.com
|
| They were meant to be fun goofy tactile stickers for finding the
| right function keys. They ended up helping people with peripheral
| neuropathy (usually from chemotherapy or MS).
| techdragon wrote:
| Space robotics, trying to build the Caterpillar of construction
| and maintenance on orbit. Not a lot to show yet but that's
| unsurprising because it takes quite a while to get this sort of
| thing built up to the point where your printing prototypes or
| bending metal, and it's along road from there to putting anything
| into orbit.
|
| Didn't make the cut for YC Summer 2023, looking forward to
| applying again with 6 more months of development progress...
| starik36 wrote:
| Any thought given to the fact that every startup in the past
| decade that attempted in-orbit manufacturing failed or had
| massive trouble?
| distortionfield wrote:
| I'm sure they haven't thought about it at all /s
|
| Seriously, what kind of question is this? The entire point of
| engineering is to try things that are new or have not
| previously been done. Do you think SpaceX gave a lot of
| thought to prior failures around reusability?
| thewizardofaus wrote:
| Started a hardware startup from my background in sport. It's very
| tough, especially being the only employee & founder.
| [deleted]
| polvs wrote:
| Yes! A very long and tough journey but extremely exciting
| times... In 2015 we founded Submer (https://submer.com) with my
| brother-in-law (I know... we knew each other very well and for
| more than a decade) to try to solve the biggest problems in the
| data center industry with a highly-efficient liquid immersion
| cooling technology. These problems are now in an inflection point
| where all are converging. Among others:
|
| - Chip thermal design power densities keep increasing in such a
| way that some chips are already impossible to cool unless using
| liquid and this is being highly accelerated by the end of Moore
| Law and the usage of more GPUs, ASICs and FPGAs for generative
| AI, graphics, crypto, HPC...
|
| - Sustainability challenges. An average cloud data center using
| the typical evaporative air-cooling technologies consume about
| the amount of water in an Olympic swimming pool every two days
| and the overall DC industry and IT is estimated to consume more
| energy than the global air transport. 98% of the energy consumed
| by DCs is just rejected as heat into the atmosphere.
|
| - The total cost of ownership of datacenters is being affected by
| the physical limitation of the chip densities increase and its
| cooling costs, the regulations and energy prices derived from the
| sustainability, the expensive buildings needed and its speed of
| construction and other challenges (supply chain, Ukraine war...)
|
| I still remember the excitement of pitching to YC Fellowship
| batch back in 2015. We were able to get into the final ~100
| interviews among 6,500 applicants, but unfortunately we weren't
| selected. It was still a great experience and motivation and the
| good news is we are now selling and manufacturing hundreds of MWs
| of our technology, serving customers worldwide and employing 100+
| "Submerians".
|
| Even without being a formal YC Alumni, I feel very grateful for
| the YC and Hacker News community for the inspiration it brings
| and very happy to see all these exciting hardware startups! Keep
| up with the good work!
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| I'm head of engineering at a local kiosk company
| (www.advancedkiosks.com) and we are doing fun things with very
| little resources! We recently implemented Google MediaPipe for
| presence detection. That was fun. We use custom printed
| microcontroller boards to control certain peripherals like LED
| strips and fans. We design in 3D print our own brackets. Things
| like that. The job requires a lot of creativity and knitting
| together of technologies. Pretty good fun. Beats writing yet
| another distributed CRUD SaaS app...though we do have a couple of
| those. I don't know if my employer qualifies as a startup, but
| we're pretty small and doing cool things.
| _benj wrote:
| So cool, and I love all the mentions of "fun" :-)
|
| I remember implementing a "kiosk" but the way my employer
| wanted it was a full screen electron/react app running on a
| windows server. It was such a pain working around windows to
| grab full screen, start a GUI application and so on... all the
| while I kept thinking, this could be a "simple" Qt/QML app
| running on frame buffer on an RPI! Heck, we could even
| customize the startup screen, and it would be easily a
| magnitude faster with 1/100 the hardware!
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| That surprised me also. We ended up writing a window manager
| application to force the kiosk UI window to always be on top
| and I up front...even after all the registry edits. So, yup,
| I feel you there!
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Kickstarter
|
| Huge # of products on Kickstarter are hardware.
|
| Below is the tech focused offerings (but there is many more
| categories).
|
| https://www.kickstarter.com/design-tech
| ezekg wrote:
| Took me awhile to remember what it was called, but TinyPilot [^0]
| by mtlynch is pretty cool. Michael sometimes writes about running
| a hardware business on his blog [^1].
|
| Not exactly a startup, but a small business.
|
| [^0]: https://tinypilotkvm.com
|
| [^1]: https://mtlynch.io/posts
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| We're trialing TinyPilot right now at my employer. They're very
| easy to work with and are willing to work with small companies
| to find new use cases.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Seems like currently the competitors to this product are the
| Pi-KVM and the Blikvm.
|
| Seems like Blikvm have a number of interesting form factors,
| such as PCIe card and rack mount, which may be interesting to
| those looking into this space
| djmips wrote:
| Is TinyPilot hardware - it looks more like software?
| ezekg wrote:
| Yes: https://tinypilotkvm.com/product/tinypilot-voyager2a
| fzliu wrote:
| We did (and still do) indoor localization (essentially GPS for
| indoor spaces). We started off building our own hardware and
| during the prototyping phase, we built a quad-channel software
| defined radio: https://github.com/fzliu/osdr-q10
|
| My 2C/: don't do a hardware startup. Iteration cycles are long
| and expensive, funding is minimal, and if you're successful
| you'll be squeezed out of the market by giants such as Intel.
| cactacea wrote:
| Just a one man show for now but this is my current side project:
|
| https://www.tesotaoverland.com/product/apds
|
| The idea is that this replaces a many of the components you'd
| normally use to build out a 12V electrical system for a van or
| 4wd truck. Just plug everything in to the WAGO connectors, no bus
| bars, fuse blocks or difficult crimp connections required.
| sitkack wrote:
| Sweet!
|
| I want the same thing plus current and voltage monitoring and
| the ability to shutdown certain circuits. I have a design for a
| wifi (or bt) operated 1000A relay to disconnect the starting
| and the house batteries.
| cactacea wrote:
| You may have seen this already but the Redarc RedVision
| system might be more in line with your use case:
|
| https://www.redarcelectronics.com/us/redvision
| evntdrvn wrote:
| Nifty!! Good luck :)
| bombcar wrote:
| Something that can handle those kinds of amps and had a simple
| low-voltage cut off would be amazing (I'm thinking using them
| for abuse of power tool batteries, which normally don't have a
| cutoff in them).
|
| There are weird adjustable ones on eBay but they're not
| terribly reliable and seem to not handle larger amperages.
| rsaxvc wrote:
| This would've been so nice when I was rebuilding an RV. I had
| converted nearly everything to 12V(before Dell & IBM did
| charger authentication) and ended up with little 12V fused
| distribution blocks everywhere.
| psychomugs wrote:
| Not an official startup, but I developed an open-source laser cut
| and crocheted social robot platform during grad school. We ran a
| few workshops for ~middle schoolers to build it and there are a
| few built by other researchers and roboticists out in the wild.
|
| https://github.com/hrc2/blossom-public
| tedhallez wrote:
| We're building hydrofoiling electric boats. It's important
| because it's pretty much the only way to for electric boats to
| satisfy the range requirements of recreational and commercial
| vessels, at higher speeds.
|
| Check us out at Candela.com
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