5 ms·

Being generous, 5 employees for hw + 5 for manufacturing should be more than sufficient for a pair of sunglasses that takes 10 second videos.

com2kid 10y ago
That is not how hardware works. At least 2 EEs, another couple EE techs to fix prototype up boards that come in and prepare development boards for the software work. You will have a couple people doing just regulatory work. Sign off on BT, USB, batteries, etc. At least 1 ME, at least 1 industrial designer as well. 1 person in charge of optics. 1 software person to do board bring up, another person who specializes in Bluetooth because Bluetooth is a nightmare and you will have to work around different bugs on iOS and Android. Finally someone to do the actual firmware. You may get away with just 2 people, or you may need more, depending. Someone had to design the box they come in. The vending machines likely had a team behind them as well. Then there is the marketing of the product, the glasses went viral fast, there was a team of people responsible for that. And once all that is done, now you need a manufacturing team. If the team was incredibly agile and efficient, maybe 20 people at the bare minimum.
- dreamfactory2 10y ago
  double at least for redundancy to cover holiday/sickness/bus factor
  - com2kid 10y ago
    Having worked on an agile HW team, I'll say that the bus factor was a solid 1 all throughout. In fact the bus factor was a whole lot of different 1s!
- corndoge 10y ago
  And yet college students make products like this in their spare time and Palmer Lucky created the Oculus Rift prototype in his garage. My lord. Always the HN expert to wag the finger. It is really not that hard. Not anywhere near as easy as software, but far easier than you describe. It doesn't take 20 people to slap a camera and a microcontroller on the same board. I could build Spectacles this weekend with 100x the resolution and 2000x the record time for 1/2 the cost.
  - nom 10y ago
    Did you read what the parent said? That is not how hardware works. Yes it's easy to build a single device... successfully scaling it to millions of devices is the hard part. Also: "100x the resolution?" You obviously have no clue.
  - maverick_iceman 10y ago
    Why don't you? Otherwise shut up.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - notyourwork 10y ago
    > Always the HN expert to wag the finger. Says the expert with nothing to support your assertive claims.

com2kid 10y ago

That is not how hardware works. At least 2 EEs, another couple EE techs to fix prototype up boards that come in and prepare development boards for the software work. You will have a couple people doing just regulatory work. Sign off on BT, USB, batteries, etc. At least 1 ME, at least 1 industrial designer as well. 1 person in charge of optics. 1 software person to do board bring up, another person who specializes in Bluetooth because Bluetooth is a nightmare and you will have to work around different bugs on iOS and Android. Finally someone to do the actual firmware. You may get away with just 2 people, or you may need more, depending. Someone had to design the box they come in. The vending machines likely had a team behind them as well. Then there is the marketing of the product, the glasses went viral fast, there was a team of people responsible for that. And once all that is done, now you need a manufacturing team. If the team was incredibly agile and efficient, maybe 20 people at the bare minimum.

dreamfactory2 10y ago
double at least for redundancy to cover holiday/sickness/bus factor
- com2kid 10y ago
  Having worked on an agile HW team, I'll say that the bus factor was a solid 1 all throughout. In fact the bus factor was a whole lot of different 1s!
corndoge 10y ago
And yet college students make products like this in their spare time and Palmer Lucky created the Oculus Rift prototype in his garage. My lord. Always the HN expert to wag the finger. It is really not that hard. Not anywhere near as easy as software, but far easier than you describe. It doesn't take 20 people to slap a camera and a microcontroller on the same board. I could build Spectacles this weekend with 100x the resolution and 2000x the record time for 1/2 the cost.
- nom 10y ago
  Did you read what the parent said? That is not how hardware works. Yes it's easy to build a single device... successfully scaling it to millions of devices is the hard part. Also: "100x the resolution?" You obviously have no clue.
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  Why don't you? Otherwise shut up.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- notyourwork 10y ago
  > Always the HN expert to wag the finger. Says the expert with nothing to support your assertive claims.