7 ms·

Stupid question: has the pandemic made creating custom/any HW in places, specifically, Shenzen, even more economical/cheaper?? If i have a product definition,

Stupid question: has the pandemic made creating custom/any HW in places, specifically, Shenzen, even more economical/cheaper?? If i have a product definition, would i be able to get prototypes for say, $1000 assuming its a fairly (seemingly) simple product? Edit: As ones will probably ask “define simple” - i want what is in effect a body cam, but with multiple cameras providing a 360 degree view, ideally affixed to the “button” location on a baseball cap. Or a small pole on a bavkpack. I actually thought of this years before gopro existed hut i couldnt convince any of my HW friends in silicon valley of its interest... There are many iterations on this, for example, one iteration i would like is effectively what has been developed into the “google hike view/walk view” Lidar on a bavkpack for mapping out in 3D your walk hike... Regardless, the most simplistic veing a multi cam 360 camera on a hat.... Could this be something done more cheaply in the pandemic climate?

m3kw9 6y ago
Or you could go with an FPGA for low volumes. Like the Lattice CrossLink-NX. It can get video input and even aggregate multiple video feeds into one as output for further processing.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  And you can do an FPGA to ASIC conversion which is probably the cheapest “custom” ASIC option out there.
  - m3kw9 6y ago
    Don’t you need to have a minimum (substantial) amount to be made before a fab will do anything for you?
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      There are companies that specialize in FPGA to ASIC conversion, and I think it works by sharing masks with other custom ASIC orders. So I think it’s feasible at thousands of units. It’s something like 50% lower power and cost per unit than FPGA and a little higher speed as well. Not super dramatic, but is a pretty easy path. I think $10,000 to $35,000 non-recurring costs plus the cost of the chips themselves. Potentially in the Kickstarter range. Full custom ASICs get much higher performance, lower power, lower per unit cost but have like a minimum of $500,000 NRE costs.
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
> would i be able to get prototypes for say, $1000 This takes $500K+ of investment. You need expensive tooling to develop the design and license any commercial IP. You have to pay the engineers to do the design and preproduction verification work. You have to pay the fab to make the masks, make the chips, and test them. Then you have to iterate to deal with problems.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
You could attach a pair of 180 degree camera modules to a single board computer and have a proof of concept prototype with no custom software to make it easy to use, but if you want a polished custom solution with compact hardware, battery power, and associated software you’re looking at six figures of NRE minimum. If you want a production ready product, it’s into the millions. How cheap do you think engineers will work? Even if they could pull it off with 1000 man hours, do you really expect them to charge $1/hr? Your estimates are off by many orders of magnitude. But what you’re describing (Minus LIDAR) is available off the shelf from multiple action camera vendors. We’ve been using 360 cameras in the action sport world for years now.
- scotty79 6y ago
  Cool thing would be attaching 180 camera to the front and 180 camera to the back of a necklace or a collar. And have some smart image processing algorithm to get 360 out of that. Paired with large storage, battery and wi-fi upload in the background this might be life-logging solution some people crave.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    FITT360
numpad0 6y ago
Go buy some USB hubs, some webcams, and a cheapest fake backpack...and try out Ricoh Theta first if you're going to burn that $1000 anyway.
LeifCarrotson 6y ago
You've got no idea what simple or complex means. If you had asked for a 3 or 4 cameras with 5mm lenses on 25x25mm base boards connected by MIPI ribbon cables under your collar to a few Raspberry Pis and a big battery in a backpack, you can do that today with off-the-shelf hardware for half your budget. They won't be synchronized, you can do that after the fact in your video editor. Getting someone to hold your hand and configure it for you will still cost the rest of your budget, but it's job done. Or buy an off-the-shelf 360 degree action camera with included mounting pole and just use that. Miniaturizing it into an ASIC and custom optics? That's man-years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And both DARPA and the private sector have put millions to billions into miniaturizing and reducing power requirements for LIDAR into the baseball cap and it's still humanly impossible at the moment to fit it into the button of a baseball cap. It's not even necessary to ask whether the pandemic makes these tasks a few percent cheaper. If you have an idea, get some basic information about the problem domain first.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't be a jerk in HN comments. If you know more than others, it's great to provide correct information, but please don't put other people down. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - catherd 6y ago
    I typically agree with your calls on being a jerk vs. not, but LeifCarrotson is being pretty factual here. Hardware is incredibly expensive and time consuming to create from scratch in ways programmers usually don't appreciate. If the GP is asking those questions after thinking about the problem for years they do clearly need to be told they have no idea what the problem is. In the hardware business we are constantly approached by people who have little more than a vague idea and a hobby-money budget. I've seen what happens when you encourage them, and it usually involves fucking up their retirement if you let them get too far. Much more humane to see it for what it is and shoot the idea down as fast as possible, or at least help them understand they probably need VC level funding to get anywhere. If someone has been simmering on an idea for years and can't even formulate a clear explanation of a problem he wants to solve (so that people can explain what's required past "it's really expensive, don't do it") it's clearly not sinking in and there's no product there, just a guy who wants to play with technology and waste manufacturer's time while doing it.
Mosaic51 6y ago
We are building such products, exactly. Http://www.mosaic51.com
baybal2 6y ago
> If i have a product definition, would i be able to get prototypes for say, $1000 assuming its a fairly (seemingly) simple product? No. Simplest microcontroller prototypes start to fly from $6k-$10k if you want anything beyond a kickstarter project. I once worked in an LED lighting company, a simplest analog IC went into $3m after cost overruns from $1.2m after a few failed tapeouts. To make any IC under $1m requires you to really know what you are doing. It's not what a startup with green, unexperienced engineers can do.
ansible 6y ago
What do the current crop of 360-degree view cameras lack that you really want? https://www.techradar.com/news/best-360-degree-camera https://www.techradar.com/news/best-360-degree-camera You could take the raw video from these and run it through a SLAM algorithm (simultaneous location and mapping) to build a 3-D map of the environment. Those cameras may not be as small as what you envision, but you'll have trouble making them even smaller. If you want to carry around a lidar unit, I have some bad news for you regarding cost and weight...
- samstave 6y ago
  Thank you for this. Like i said, i wanted one of these years ago and these things didnt exist then.... But i think ill buy one now
pinewurst 6y ago
I did a business plan for this and tried to raise money almost 20 years ago. :)

m3kw9 6y ago

Or you could go with an FPGA for low volumes. Like the Lattice CrossLink-NX. It can get video input and even aggregate multiple video feeds into one as output for further processing.

Robotbeat 6y ago
And you can do an FPGA to ASIC conversion which is probably the cheapest “custom” ASIC option out there.
- m3kw9 6y ago
  Don’t you need to have a minimum (substantial) amount to be made before a fab will do anything for you?
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    There are companies that specialize in FPGA to ASIC conversion, and I think it works by sharing masks with other custom ASIC orders. So I think it’s feasible at thousands of units. It’s something like 50% lower power and cost per unit than FPGA and a little higher speed as well. Not super dramatic, but is a pretty easy path. I think $10,000 to $35,000 non-recurring costs plus the cost of the chips themselves. Potentially in the Kickstarter range. Full custom ASICs get much higher performance, lower power, lower per unit cost but have like a minimum of $500,000 NRE costs.

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

> would i be able to get prototypes for say, $1000 This takes $500K+ of investment. You need expensive tooling to develop the design and license any commercial IP. You have to pay the engineers to do the design and preproduction verification work. You have to pay the fab to make the masks, make the chips, and test them. Then you have to iterate to deal with problems.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

You could attach a pair of 180 degree camera modules to a single board computer and have a proof of concept prototype with no custom software to make it easy to use, but if you want a polished custom solution with compact hardware, battery power, and associated software you’re looking at six figures of NRE minimum. If you want a production ready product, it’s into the millions. How cheap do you think engineers will work? Even if they could pull it off with 1000 man hours, do you really expect them to charge $1/hr? Your estimates are off by many orders of magnitude. But what you’re describing (Minus LIDAR) is available off the shelf from multiple action camera vendors. We’ve been using 360 cameras in the action sport world for years now.

scotty79 6y ago
Cool thing would be attaching 180 camera to the front and 180 camera to the back of a necklace or a collar. And have some smart image processing algorithm to get 360 out of that. Paired with large storage, battery and wi-fi upload in the background this might be life-logging solution some people crave.
- numpad0 6y ago
  FITT360

numpad0 6y ago

Go buy some USB hubs, some webcams, and a cheapest fake backpack...and try out Ricoh Theta first if you're going to burn that $1000 anyway.

LeifCarrotson 6y ago

You've got no idea what simple or complex means. If you had asked for a 3 or 4 cameras with 5mm lenses on 25x25mm base boards connected by MIPI ribbon cables under your collar to a few Raspberry Pis and a big battery in a backpack, you can do that today with off-the-shelf hardware for half your budget. They won't be synchronized, you can do that after the fact in your video editor. Getting someone to hold your hand and configure it for you will still cost the rest of your budget, but it's job done. Or buy an off-the-shelf 360 degree action camera with included mounting pole and just use that. Miniaturizing it into an ASIC and custom optics? That's man-years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And both DARPA and the private sector have put millions to billions into miniaturizing and reducing power requirements for LIDAR into the baseball cap and it's still humanly impossible at the moment to fit it into the button of a baseball cap. It's not even necessary to ask whether the pandemic makes these tasks a few percent cheaper. If you have an idea, get some basic information about the problem domain first.

dang 6y ago
Please don't be a jerk in HN comments. If you know more than others, it's great to provide correct information, but please don't put other people down. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- catherd 6y ago
  I typically agree with your calls on being a jerk vs. not, but LeifCarrotson is being pretty factual here. Hardware is incredibly expensive and time consuming to create from scratch in ways programmers usually don't appreciate. If the GP is asking those questions after thinking about the problem for years they do clearly need to be told they have no idea what the problem is. In the hardware business we are constantly approached by people who have little more than a vague idea and a hobby-money budget. I've seen what happens when you encourage them, and it usually involves fucking up their retirement if you let them get too far. Much more humane to see it for what it is and shoot the idea down as fast as possible, or at least help them understand they probably need VC level funding to get anywhere. If someone has been simmering on an idea for years and can't even formulate a clear explanation of a problem he wants to solve (so that people can explain what's required past "it's really expensive, don't do it") it's clearly not sinking in and there's no product there, just a guy who wants to play with technology and waste manufacturer's time while doing it.

Mosaic51 6y ago

We are building such products, exactly. Http://www.mosaic51.com

baybal2 6y ago

> If i have a product definition, would i be able to get prototypes for say, $1000 assuming its a fairly (seemingly) simple product? No. Simplest microcontroller prototypes start to fly from $6k-$10k if you want anything beyond a kickstarter project. I once worked in an LED lighting company, a simplest analog IC went into $3m after cost overruns from $1.2m after a few failed tapeouts. To make any IC under $1m requires you to really know what you are doing. It's not what a startup with green, unexperienced engineers can do.

ansible 6y ago

What do the current crop of 360-degree view cameras lack that you really want? https://www.techradar.com/news/best-360-degree-camera https://www.techradar.com/news/best-360-degree-camera You could take the raw video from these and run it through a SLAM algorithm (simultaneous location and mapping) to build a 3-D map of the environment. Those cameras may not be as small as what you envision, but you'll have trouble making them even smaller. If you want to carry around a lidar unit, I have some bad news for you regarding cost and weight...

samstave 6y ago
Thank you for this. Like i said, i wanted one of these years ago and these things didnt exist then.... But i think ill buy one now

pinewurst 6y ago

I did a business plan for this and tried to raise money almost 20 years ago. :)