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Ask HN: Communities to learn about creating sensor/hardware products?
I want to create a back rest of a chair that is pressure sensitive (and then apply machine learning to identify medical issues).
What are good resources to learn about creating pressure sensitive chairs? I suppose I could join a hacker space? Any online communities one would recommend?
Two notes:
1. Pressure sensitive sensors can be replaced for <any sensor>.
2. Backrest of chair can be replaced for <any physical product that allows you to sow sensors in them such as pressure sensitive sensors>.
- tlb 8y agoYou should start with market validation. Would ___% of people say, "I'd pay $___ for a chair that could measure my ___?" What would the answers to those blanks have to be for there to be a good business opportunity? If the answers suggest that you could eventually sell millions of smart chairs, you still need to start with a small, local, initial market to refine the product. Assume the initial 100 prototype chairs you make will cost 10x more than the eventual price. Who would pay 10x more? They'd have to be fanatical about their posture. Such people probably exist: perhaps some kind of body-builder by night, accountant by day.
- mettamage 8y agoThanks, seems like I'd need to go to my university and deploy a simple survey. Not that it's necessarily geared at students but I see a subsection of them being in the target market. Though, the market demand has been validated by the fact that there's an industry around it. My product idea merely differentiates it. Would it be possible to email you some questions about my actual idea? I'd really appreciate a bit of brainstorming with fellow HN'ers. My email is in my profile.
- mettamage 8y agoI currently asked 3 people formally and 2 people informally. I've learned a lot already, thanks again for the tip! I've realized that in order for me to do projects like this I should most of all be technically interested in them since the chance of them to fail is way too high. Currently, I'm obsessing over it, let's see how long it lasts.
- tony-allan 8y agohackster.io is a great resource for projects. For example: https://www.hackster.io/user5175647213/prankchair-the-best-april-fool-s-prank-8f1a62 https://www.hackster.io/user5175647213/prankchair-the-best-a... This doesn't help with your exact needs but there are lots of idea's that are discussed.
- mettamage 8y agoOh that looks awesome, will look around there. Thanks!
- mettamage 8y agoCurrently I have found that YouTube gave me the best resources! I am a bit surprised by that (it was better than Google), at least when it comes to getting me started. What I am mostly impressed with [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JBSHqUcaG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JBSHqUcaG4
- mindcrime 8y agoYou may find helpful people/info at one or more of: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/ https://electronics.stackexchange.com/ https://arduino.stackexchange.com/ https://arduino.stackexchange.com/ https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/ https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/ https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/ http://www.reddit.com/r/hwstartups/ http://www.reddit.com/r/hwstartups/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/ https://hackaday.com/ https://hackaday.com/ https://forum.nutsvolts.com/ https://forum.nutsvolts.com/ https://circuitcellar.com/ https://circuitcellar.com/ https://www.eetimes.com/ https://www.eetimes.com/ https://makezine.com/ https://makezine.com/ You might also find this book interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Hacker-Adventures-Making-Breaking/dp/159327758X/ https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Hacker-Adventures-Making-Bre...
- mettamage 8y ago<edit> Also browsed all the other websites you recommended. I bookmarked a lot of them. They all look really interesting. </edit> Thanks for that book! I read 25% of it (couldn't afford more time). It was really interesting to see how the manufacturing process in China went, how he biohacked a virus [1], and how he hacked hardware through UV exposure. This book was actually tangentially related to my idea but not fully. I think that's for the better because with that book a new world opened up for me. I think I developed a taste for electrical engineering. Life keeps getting more and more interesting, it is a pity that our lives are so short and that most obligatory education methods (e.g. high school) are so ineffective. [1] Referring to DNA as bits and pairs of bits as functions and how 'function calls' were made with repeating sequences since they always(ish) encode to the same protein and ribosomes make that translation.
- stevekemp 8y agoSince you mention Reddit already /r/arduino is sometimes useful - though often it is a case of the blind leading the blind. For most of my projects I prefer to use ESP8266 devices, since they're cheaper than (official) arduino boards and feature onboard WiFi. For that /r/esp8266 is a good resource. Mostly though designing a simple sensor/and monitor simple. The hard part is making it fool-proof, user-friendly, and easy to mass-market. Assembling 20 devices by hand is simple, but you don't want to be doing it for 100+!
- nicholas73 8y agoIf you are lucky, you can contact a manufacturer of pressure sensor and hope that 1) they will answer a small customer 2) the guy answering really knows his stuff. Big names in the space would be Honeywell or TE Connectivity. As so happens I worked with pressure sensors before. My slightly above noob answer would be that most pressure sensors aren't suitable for you both in form factor and cost. Normally built to connect to some tube. A load cell that goes into a scale might work, but that could get expensive if you need many data points. If you need MANY data points and have low accuracy requirements (like if you want to draw a heat map) you could create a network of piezoelectric films. Piezoelectric materials generate a charge upon pressure. This would be trickier to make if there isn't one on market.
- matt_the_bass 8y agoDon’t forget to make it IoT! In all seriousness, particle.io has some very good forums. They are mostly product specific, but a great product to start with for novice embedded developers.