7 ms·

Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Which is something people often overlook and

Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Which is something people often overlook and end up making products which no one really needs. Here's an example - I broke the remote for my AC earlier this year but I managed to salvage the codes and program a wifi-enabled ESP32 to communicate with the AC over wifi remotely, I made a crazy stupid UI for my phone so I can control it remotely(though I spend 90% of my time at home). Sounds like a brilliant product, doesn't it? Is there a market for it? I haven't bothered to check but my bet is that there might be 3000 people worldwide that would consider getting one, out of which maybe 50 would end up buying it. So no, this probably won't break the front page of Amazon to put it lightly.

skeeter2020 5y ago
>> Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Resptfully disagree. There are a lot of non-trivial problems that do not have good solutions. If you look for niche manifestations of hard problems, you can both find something with appropriate scope AND a good value proposition. You also don't need to solve problems, just make them better/easier.
- axegon_ 5y ago
  I genuinely can't remember the last time(or if there ever was such an event) I saw something new and thought "Hey this solves/helps with X, I gotta have it". Software is easy when this is all you do so when I have a problem I can solve with code, I go on and do it. Manufacturing, you are either a large corporation(apple, samsung, etc.) or you are a black swan. Most simply fail.
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
That's actually a good idea. Was the original remote app enabled? If not, now you have a potential product for those people who would rather use an app than the manual remote. Are spare remotes hard to get or expensive? There's another market that might want to buy from you, especially if the AC unit that is old or obsolete. Spare parts/retrofits with new features is big business. There's a good chance that if you dug into this particular problem you'd find that it could be profitable. Not quit-you-day-job profitable, but at least enough to bring in a few extra $k per month.
- axegon_ 5y ago
  I never said it wasn't a good idea. Almost 6 months later it serves me perfectly well. There was no original app. The AC itself was here when I moved in, it's an obscure manufacturer no one has ever heard about and I recon it's been here since the building was built around 2007. All I could find out about it was that it was made in South Africa and that's it. Infrared communication is incredibly simple on those devices and it's a matter of two hours to reverse engineer them(no shifting, rotations or any of that fancy stuff). All in all it cost me around 20 bucks and ~day to get it to work+the crazy stupid ui running off an actix webserver. But if I had the option to buy a remote control which works with it, I would have gladly done that instead(tried several universal remotes, none of which worked). My point was that this does solve my problem but it's an incredibly niche problem for an even smaller niche market. The owners of this AC from the same unknown manufacturer, that either can't find a spare remote or want to make it wifi enabled. It's insanely specific, isn't it? Let's not fool ourselves, writing the software is the easy part and fairly inexpensive when you can do it yourself, get a cheap stm32 board and flash it. Manufacturing on the other hand is a whole different ball game and honestly I can't justify the work of developing, manufacturing, distributing and dealing with taxes at the end of each month, all for 300 bucks tops(I'm probably far too optimistic). edit: esp32, not stm32(I'm mostly playing with stm32 lately).
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    Understood. We all do what we're comfortable with. > an incredibly niche problem for an even smaller niche market These are my favorite because no one "big" wants to get into them. I make a device that converts signals from heavy machinery that uses a specific type of almost-obsolete sensor to let it use a modern control that you can buy off the shelf. A friend of mine used to have a nice side business (was full time for a while) selling a replacement timer for a specific type of industrial printer. I like markets like that. The biggest problem I'd see in your case is that it's a consumer item, not industrial. Most customers just don't want to spend a whole lot unless they have to.

skeeter2020 5y ago

>> Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Resptfully disagree. There are a lot of non-trivial problems that do not have good solutions. If you look for niche manifestations of hard problems, you can both find something with appropriate scope AND a good value proposition. You also don't need to solve problems, just make them better/easier.

axegon_ 5y ago
I genuinely can't remember the last time(or if there ever was such an event) I saw something new and thought "Hey this solves/helps with X, I gotta have it". Software is easy when this is all you do so when I have a problem I can solve with code, I go on and do it. Manufacturing, you are either a large corporation(apple, samsung, etc.) or you are a black swan. Most simply fail.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago

That's actually a good idea. Was the original remote app enabled? If not, now you have a potential product for those people who would rather use an app than the manual remote. Are spare remotes hard to get or expensive? There's another market that might want to buy from you, especially if the AC unit that is old or obsolete. Spare parts/retrofits with new features is big business. There's a good chance that if you dug into this particular problem you'd find that it could be profitable. Not quit-you-day-job profitable, but at least enough to bring in a few extra $k per month.

axegon_ 5y ago
I never said it wasn't a good idea. Almost 6 months later it serves me perfectly well. There was no original app. The AC itself was here when I moved in, it's an obscure manufacturer no one has ever heard about and I recon it's been here since the building was built around 2007. All I could find out about it was that it was made in South Africa and that's it. Infrared communication is incredibly simple on those devices and it's a matter of two hours to reverse engineer them(no shifting, rotations or any of that fancy stuff). All in all it cost me around 20 bucks and ~day to get it to work+the crazy stupid ui running off an actix webserver. But if I had the option to buy a remote control which works with it, I would have gladly done that instead(tried several universal remotes, none of which worked). My point was that this does solve my problem but it's an incredibly niche problem for an even smaller niche market. The owners of this AC from the same unknown manufacturer, that either can't find a spare remote or want to make it wifi enabled. It's insanely specific, isn't it? Let's not fool ourselves, writing the software is the easy part and fairly inexpensive when you can do it yourself, get a cheap stm32 board and flash it. Manufacturing on the other hand is a whole different ball game and honestly I can't justify the work of developing, manufacturing, distributing and dealing with taxes at the end of each month, all for 300 bucks tops(I'm probably far too optimistic). edit: esp32, not stm32(I'm mostly playing with stm32 lately).
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  Understood. We all do what we're comfortable with. > an incredibly niche problem for an even smaller niche market These are my favorite because no one "big" wants to get into them. I make a device that converts signals from heavy machinery that uses a specific type of almost-obsolete sensor to let it use a modern control that you can buy off the shelf. A friend of mine used to have a nice side business (was full time for a while) selling a replacement timer for a specific type of industrial printer. I like markets like that. The biggest problem I'd see in your case is that it's a consumer item, not industrial. Most customers just don't want to spend a whole lot unless they have to.