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WakeMate: The Home Stretch
- michaelfairley 16y agoThe pictured wristband and the concept drawing are not what I would describe as "relatively close". Other than that, I'm excited to get my Wakemate.
- spydertennis 16y agoGood point, post edited. We've learned during the industrial design process that concept drawings can be difficult to realize. The wristband is close to being something we are very happy with.
- covercash 16y agoSometimes I'll forget to turn the A/C on in the summer and I'll wake up drenched in sweat. The new wristband looks like it will soak up an awful lot of sweat and probably start to smell rather funky after a while. Is it washable? If not, is the monitoring device removable so I can fasten it to my own elastic wristband? I'm thinking along the lines of a FitBit style component that I can clip to my LiveStrong bracelet?
- jordyhoyt 16y agoI am very, very curious about this as well. It is something I hadn't thought about until you mentioned this, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they haven't though of it either. At the very least, giving early adopters a free upgrade to the washable version when it is available would be good. Luckily, there probably won't be a significant amount of summer left once we get the thing.
- spydertennis 16y agoThe electronics are removable and the wristband is definitely washable. How hot the wristband gets was initially one of my main concerns. I haven't had any issues with heat or sweating while wearing mine.
- jordyhoyt 16y agoThanks for the reply! Glad you guys are more prescient than I. Very excited to get in bed with your product.
- asmithmd1 16y ago"As far as we’re aware, no commercial product has made use of Apple’s authentication 2.0B coprocessor chip over Bluetooth yet so we’re not surprised by the number of strange issues we’ve encountered." Is this why there is a dearth of iPhone/iPad accessories? How much can they talk about their experiences given the fact that the protocol is under an NDA?
- joe_bleau 16y agoYes! I'm interested in developing i* accesories too. There doesn't seem to be much out there about it. (I have seen the Microchip and Cypress dev kits; probably going to pick up a few.)
- hop 16y agoWakemate: I could design you a silicone bracelet and have renderings today, a rapid prototype tmrw, a prototype silicone part made off a cast of the RP in a few days, make changes as desired, then get them tooled and start shipping parts by next month. Just, you know, if your into that sort of thing :)
- c1sc0 16y agoWhat kind of silicon bracelet are you talking about? Something like the LiveStrong? Just curious, what's the cost of these things?
- hop 16y agoYep, 50-70 durometer silicone, any color. Cost varies widely depending on how many you want to make, how complicated the tooling is, the number of parts per tool, cycle time, how much material the parts use, how detailed your logo/features are, mold finish... From $1500-$75,000 for tooling and $.05-$1 pp.
- zackattack 16y agoAh, I am building a different product but would like to chat. What's your email?
- spydertennis 16y agoHaha thanks for the offer! We've been thinking about offering different models of wristbands down the line. If you could send me an email (contact[at]wakemate[dot]com) we'd love to talk.
- replicatorblog 16y agoHi Hop, Curious about your background. Mfg/ID/MechE? Always nice to meet another "Atoms" person here. Shoot me an email at jflaherty@replicatorinc.com.
- pclark 16y agoSo with WakeMate I'll have to wear a bracelet and keep an app running on my iPhone whilst I sleep?
- swolchok 16y agoUnlike the ship dates, that aspect of the product has been very consistent for months, yes. (It's not entirely clear whether you have to keep the app running, but you probably do, and the bracelet is the whole point.)
- swolchok 16y agoHmm, it just occurred to me that my iPod touch battery is not in the greatest shape, so Wakemate might cause me to have to leave a computer on during the night to power the iPod, which seems counterproductive to sleeping well. Might have to buy a wall charger. (got it refurb, so it didn't come with one)
- mrduncan 16y agoI'm not one of the pre-order customers, but I'm curious if the bracelets are washable, or how they can be cleaned. It seems like it'd need to be laundered just like sheets if you're wearing it every night.
- ryanwaggoner 16y agoSo, you're reasonably confident that you'll hit your deadline or come close to it, but your shipping schedule depends entirely on the actions of another company (Apple) who is known for being slow to approve things like this? How does that work?
- roel_v 16y agoCorrect. If it's really true that 75% of the dev time has gone into the Apple chip (i.e., iPhone compatibility if I understand it correctly), they could've shipped... what, in March? Screw iPhone then for the first version.
- swolchok 16y agoThey asked pre-orders what phone they wanted to use the device with, so it's not out of the question that they knew that "screw iPhone" was out of the question.
- mcantor 16y agoPlans for an Android version?
- itsandrew 16y agohttp://blog.wakemate.com/2010/06/25/wakemate-android-demo/ http://blog.wakemate.com/2010/06/25/wakemate-android-demo/
- drewcrawford 16y agoA brief history of ship dates: January 22, 2010: "We've tentatively planned for the first batch of WakeMates to be shipped as early as next month." March 11, 2010: "the first run of units will go out on March!" March 31, 2010: "This is the last day of Q1 and we will be shipping out the first units today." (Maybe they did ship out a few? but I was a very early pre-order and didn't get one...) April 1, 2010: "The next batch of units will ship no later [sic] July 30, 2010. Based on your pre-order date, you should expect your WakeMate no later than 07/30/2010, but probably significantly sooner. This is a conservative estimate; we want to provide you with a firm date. We are confident we can deliver many orders sooner and will continue working night and day to ship yours as soon as possible." July 20, 2010: "We may not hit the July 31st date at this point, but we’ll come close. We’ll post an updated ship date (measured in days or weeks at worst, not months) when we have a better idea of when it will be"
- subwindow 16y agoI believe they did ship a few dozen units out in Q1. I don't believe they lied in any of those quotes- at worst it looks like they'll miss their July 30 ship date by a week or so. That's not all that bad.
- drewcrawford 16y agoBeing even a week late is not my idea of a "conservative estimate" or a "firm date". I realize we're not talking about a mission-critical product here. But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it.
- lionhearted 16y agoEmphasis mine: > But when you choose to use language like that, live up to it. You've probably never built a product before. It's not that Wakemate is "not living up to it", it's that they're thinking, "My God, this was supposed to be out two months ago. Okay, what's the worst case scenario? Four months? No way it can take more than four months. Okay, let's tell people four months and plan to get it out in two months." All kinds of shit goes wrong when you're building a new product. Now, if you'd said "be more realistic" or "be more pessimistic" or "get better at estimating", I guess I'd agree with you sort of. But one thing they can't do is "live up to it" by willpower - these are young entrepreneurs trying to get their product out and it's a parade of trivial things are stopping them from doing so. At least, that's what I'm guessing, having built stuff before. I promise, they're trying and feeling about 10,000 times more neurotic and disappointed than any cool exterior would show.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- clistctrl 16y agoI definitely would order this if they come out with support for WebOS.
- catch23 16y agoHah! WebOS is dead.
- redorb 16y agohttp://wakemate.com/tour/ http://wakemate.com/tour/ which is still on their site..Is nothing like the final shipping product http://blog.wakemate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wristband31.jpg http://blog.wakemate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wristban... I would say its a multiple of degrees less 'designed' or 'professional' ... I still want my pre-order as long as it will ship working with android. p.s. You need to use your current iteration on your homepage photo; cause the one you have on there now and your current iteration have very very low correlation imho.
- gnemeth 16y agoOriginal wristband: too big, too heavy, not something I want to wear to bed and the electronics bulge out too far. New wristband:much smaller, much lighter, made of "pillowy" material and hides the electronics. Overall it is a much more comfortable wristband and a much better user experience. While the original may have been a little "flashier" we did not want to sacrifice UX for looks, especially when you are only going to be wearing this to bed. As for our homepage - we need to get the final version of the wristband photographed and then we will be implementing a full design change of our homepage.
- chasingsparks 16y agoI (and many other HN readers, I'm sure) have had this idea plenty of times. If you wake up in one of those bad regions, you really are so much less productive. I'm glad someone is building this. Once it looks like the kinks are out, I'm ordering one for sure.
- jrockway 16y agoA similar product has already existed for years; the Zeo.
- clewiston 16y agonot exactly similar. Our product uses Actigraphy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actigraphy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actigraphy), which is a different method (and in our opinion much less obtrusive) for measuring sleep phases than the Zeo which uses a headband. Also, our unit is wireless and automatically uploads your data to our web server with very little user input (besides setting the alarm before going to bed).
- jrockway 16y agoSimilar in the sense that it's a thing that makes a noise when it's time to get up, based on your sleep patterns.
- gridspy 16y agoCongratulations WakeMate on making it this far. I fully understand how very hard it is to create a hardware product, it takes much longer than you expect to get to the great quality level that hardware requires.
- mcritz 16y agoI'm also really interested in the product and I can't wait to hear what the early adopters have to report. I'm also really interested to know what was learned about working with Apple on a hardware interface.
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoAnybody use one yet (outside the WakeMate guys)? I am VERY interested in this product, but am not quite willing to be on the bleeding edge. :)
- donaldc 16y agoWhen WakeMate is finally released, I'd be interested in reading a retrospective by the founders on what they learned, and on what checks/changes to their development approach they have made for version 2. As they are discovering, development with a physical, hardware component can be very different from pure internet startup development. Hopefully any other YC startups with a hardware component are taking note. I'd still like to buy a WakeMate, once it's proven itself, but I'm rather glad I didn't pre-order.
- axiom 16y agoIs there some specific reason they worked so hard to make it sync with the iPhone over bluetooth? as opposed to, say, syncing with your laptop over bluetooth, or just make the thing log data and then sync to a computer via USB. Is it purely the sex-appeal of having an iPhone related product?
- clewiston 16y agowhen iphone users make up the majority of your preorders (and supposedly market), then yes it does matter. if we had just launched for Blackberry and Android, we would not be having these delays...