16 ms·

Taking over a Dead IoT Company

1114 points by pulisse 4y ago

harrego 4y ago
The complete git history and the development .bash_history file are my favorite parts.
greenhearth 4y ago
Wow, amazing story and writing!
samwillis 4y ago
Seems down, mirror here: https://archive.is/dIbYd https://archive.is/dIbYd
blakesterz 4y ago
This was a really good read. It's part IOT security, part story about startups gone wrong. The WayBack Machine has it https://web.archive.org/web/20230109144459/https://blog.kchung.co/taking-over-a-dead-iot-company/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230109144459/https://blog.kchu... As does Google https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:71rSDbUQyMsJ:https://blog.kchung.co/taking-over-a-dead-iot-company/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:71rSDb...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
icapybara 4y ago
Nice analysis. I think the author really hit on the key problem: expensive BOM due to poor engineering choices.
- luma 4y ago
  The entire project looks like the result of a high school student's first Instructables. It's hilariously under-engineered and it's clear that these folks had absolutely no idea of how to build a product, IoT or otherwise. Hint: if your product plans involve a raspberry pi, you probably fucked up.
  - canucklady 4y ago
    I think dunking on the rpi is harsh - if it allows you to prototype and get your small-volume product out the door quickly, there's lots of other areas you could optimize the BOM first. Better to make a product with 75% gross margins as a single dev in 6 months than a product with 80% gross margins with a team of 6 in a year. Of course, they also overhired and wasted money on other BOM components
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      If your product needs to output HDMI, I can easily see an argument for using a Pi. If your product needs a couple GPIOs to drive an LED matrix? Using an RPi is pretty difficult to justify. You're likely going to spend more on the SD card for the Pi than you would on more suitable microcontroller (which can still be easily programmed and, in my experience, has a better [or at least no worse] story for GPIOs than the Pi)
      - tyingq 4y ago
        It's difficult to drive these LED matrix devices from a typical MCU, especially with chained panels, lots of LEDS, etc. Either due to the ~10Mhz+ output needed, or the memory to hold all the pixel data. Consider, for example, that each of the two panels in this sign has 32x64X3 (6144) leds. You have to send on/off for all of those, and then control brightness for each color by using PWM...meaning half-red brightness would be changing that pixel so it's on/off/on/off fast enough to beat persistence of vision. It's more common in the pre-built devices to have a controller that's using a main CPU plus a FPGA or CPLD. The better hobbyist drivers use things like a beaglebone black and it's onboard "PRU" that can drive real time from memory it shares with the ARM cpu and Linux. Also, since it's pulling train data, you need more smarts or cycles than a typical MCU to pull via WiFi/https, transform text into pixmaps, etc. Though there are examples of beefy MCUs doing all this well, like an ESP32. Or examples of small MCUs driving a small single color matrix.
        dom96 4y ago
        ESP32 is perfect for this application. RPI is far too beefy, unless you really want to do everything locally (without relying on an external server to package up the train data for you)
- spfzero 4y ago
  I wonder whether this particular unit was representative of the production target build. Maybe it was an early prototype? Certainly after 250K revenue (if you believe that number) there was funding for a design rev.
michaelbuckbee 4y ago
Towards the end of the article the author mentions not wanting to pursue this as a business as there are so many cheap programmable signs out there already. As someone who would love to buy one of these and customize it for myself does anyone have experience or recommendations with any of these?
- tyingq 4y ago
  Some experience. The cheapest and easiest route is to buy a pre-made sign from AliExpress and just use the serial/usb interface to send data to the sign. That's somewhat limited, as you can't really control each pixel in a real time way, and you're limited to sending a series of "screens" as either text (in their limited choices of fonts) or images, defining some linger time, transitions, etc. With some visual disruption as you send new data to redefine what to display. But it's easy. There's also variations on this theme. Some signs, for example, have had people who reverse engineered the protocol so that you can send stuff from your own scripts instead of the supplied (usually crappy) software. The other path is to buy plain led matrix modules and use some SBC to directly control what's displayed. More fun, but more work. This particular sign uses qty 2, 4mm pitch, 32x64 pixel panels, side by side. Like this one: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832064290423.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.818879c9LEceTp https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832064290423.html?spm=a2g... Lots of choices in pitch, single/three/full color, indoor or outdoor brightness, etc. Though you need to ensure your choice of driver (see paragraph below) supports it. They have different refresh rates, data sequence, and timing requirements. Then, you pick what to drive it with. Lots of choices there. There are libraries and hardware level-shifter adapters for a variety of things like a Parallax Propeller, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, etc. With various advantages and disadvantages. Fwiw, the Rpi is usually trickier as you're bitbanging from a non-real-time OS. The Parallax and BeagleBone have better ways to be quasi real time.
  - seanw444 4y ago
    Did you intentionally leave out Arduino from the "what to drive with" options?
ColdHeat 4y ago
Hello, author here. Happy to answer any questions! My apologies for the downtime, I wasn't expecting much traffic today since I submitted the post to HN yesterday but I've started scaling my server now!
- jagermo 4y ago
  super interesting read, thank you for that.
- ivraatiems 4y ago
  I just want to say that I love that you did this. You have great skills and you used them for good. I've never seen such a clearly white-hat hack :) People's stuff will work again thanks to you and you should feel great about it!
  - ColdHeat 4y ago
    Thank you for the kind words! Made my morning!
- hahla 4y ago
  Love this story. I did something similar with a website. Previous owner took it down, bought the domain from him and it organically grew to over 1m users per month with the same exact functionality. I wouldn't discount your ability to bring this back to market. Would consult a lawyer to see what implications taking over the branding and APIs have. But clearly this has a big market.
  - MrGilbert 4y ago
    I would really like to read more of this story. E.g. what did you do differently, did the original owner ever get in touch with you after it grew, stuff like that. Only if you can, ofc!
- csunbird 4y ago
  Love the story! At one point, you are asking about the purpose of the giant hole in the backside of the display: The most plausible explanation is that, it is to allow air circulation within the device to prevent overheating.
gilad 4y ago
Similarly, see https://tidbyt.com https://tidbyt.com - RGB LED matrix desktop appliance to show weather, sports scores, etc.
michaelt 4y ago
"As we discussed earlier, even at $300 the product is too cheap. The sign should have likely been selling at $600 from the very beginning." Even at $600 - there's a screenshot saying the company had three engineers and a marketer. If your 4 employees earn $25k per annum, with the $150 parts cost you'd have to sell 222 signs at $600. And if the employees were on $100k, that's 888 signs a year. That's a heck of a lot of signs, at the price. And you'd have to keep hitting those sales targets so long as you wanted the API to stay up. It would make much more sense if the business was a one-engineer passion project - someone who had a day job and did a few hours a week maintaining this as a side project would have much more achievable sales targets!
- gdilla 4y ago
  Or charge less and get a recurring fee for the API.
  - michaelt 4y ago
    Perhaps, but still tough to make the business plan work for a $100k wage bill. 833 subscribers at $10/month? 8,333 subscribers at $1/month?
    - gdilla 4y ago
      dont invest in non-viable things. if you can't cover your expenses, it's not a viable business.
  - brookst 4y ago
    This. It is fatal to charge a one-time price for services that have perpetual operating expenses.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pdntspa 4y ago
  Why does a project like this need three engineers? Two, I can kind of see (a hardware guy and a software guy, though it doesnt look like the hardware guy was doing much here), but three?
sschueller 4y ago
I build something similar https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vbz-fahrgastinformation/ https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vbz-fahrgastinformation/ but with way less BOM and I keep getting asked that I should sell them. The primary reason I don't is because I don't want to support something like that for the next 10 years...
- klinquist 4y ago
  heh, same. I built a little custom sign for my airbnb. Part of my home automation system: https://imgur.com/a/8A5IKV6 https://imgur.com/a/8A5IKV6
  - xd1936 4y ago
    Very cool, and well executed! Do you have build details anywhere?
    - klinquist 4y ago
      I don't, but it's essentially an Adafruit LED matrix + Pi + Adafruit PiHat. I modified the adafruit python library to read lines from Redis then I have another script that makes the API calls, has a REST server, etc and publishes text to reds queues.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
twawaaay 4y ago
I think RPi in this thing says it all. It screams it was built by somebody that does not know how to develop a physical product for mass market. There are only three parts in this product that should have any significant cost to them: * the display itself, * the wooden enclosure, * the packaging the product comes in, If there are switches, potentiometers or encoders I am really partial to well working ones and these are not so cheap. It is nice to have but at least they make the product feel more expensive so it is not a total waste. Everything else can be done dirt cheap. I don't think chinese are the best way to learn product design but they are pretty darn good at saving every last penny (or yuan in their case). I found it illuminating to study some of the devices of chinese origin (as opposed to ones that are only manufactured in China).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- not_the_fda 4y ago
  You would be surprised at how often people with no experience try to build a physical mass market product that nothing more than an RPi in a box. And they often go under because the BOM is too high and the software is garbage.
  - twawaaay 4y ago
    That's why when I started with design I decided to go for niche products for businesses. Kind of thing that when they have to buy it they will not be looking at the price too much. Low volume (I was doing all soldering myself!), high sticker price, not especially profitable for me. But makes it so much easier to design when you don't have to compromise so much and you don't have to be very inventive trying to save on BOM. And it is fun to be able to just do whatever you fancy. I think starting mass market production for price conscious clients with no experience is just asking for problems.
- samwillis 4y ago
  Even the wooden enclosure could be done for significantly less. It's effectively a picture frame. There are plenty of standard box frame profiles they are very similar to what they have built. If it was me, I would have explored working with a picture frame company for final assembly, many are used to "assembling" products with extra components (think of stuff on Etsy). The frames are simply cut with a framing guillotine and stapled together. My estimate would be frame (including custom cut back panel), and final assembly would be in the region of $10-$15 at a US/UK framers. (Excluding electrical BOM)
turbobooster 4y ago
This made me think of Chumby
- Neil44 4y ago
  App access could have been $1/mo. They could have expanded to other cities.
m-p-3 4y ago
IMO that Raspberry Pi 3 was way overkill for the project even back then and must have massively inflated the BOM. Nice article overall :)
js2 4y ago
> With full control of the domain, we can create a new API based on what the sign is expecting and revive all of the signs that are out in the field. Once the new server was up, did any signs from the field connect to it?
- ColdHeat 4y ago
  Good question! No signs connected to the server until I reached out to some other sign owners to try out my instructions.
  - wferrell 4y ago
    Great post!
dimmke 4y ago
Articles like this are part of why I love Hacker News so much. I've done a little investigation into producing hardware myself and concluded it was just too big a task for someone without the background who didn't want to put up a ton of capital or deal with overseas manufacturing. I loved reading this.
- jadtz 4y ago
  I am new to hn, and really liked this article. If you know about other interesting articles like this, please mention them. I would love to read.
  - _Microft 4y ago
    I'm semi-frequently submitting electronics/hardware hacking articles here. Maybe browse my history of submitted articles to see if there is something among them. Here are some examples: - "I hacked a Joy-Con controller to have a Capacitive Trackpad", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329927 - "Smartknob – an open-source input device", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30646371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30646371 - "DVD Laser Scanner Microscope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012652 - "A simple 11.2 GHz radio telescope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26078761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26078761 - "Home-Built Scanning Tunneling Microscope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740968
manv1 4y ago
Taking over their DNS isn't going to help if they did things correctly. If they did things right each device is going to be doing cert verification with AWS IOT, and that verification will fail. That's client and server cert validation, unless they turned that off. On reset it should still verify the server cert when it tries to call home, but since you have access to the image you can replace that (if they didn't stash it somewhere securely, that is).
- ColdHeat 4y ago
  The key point here would be "did things correctly" :) The sign did use AWS IoT for real time configuration updates however initial configuration was pulled from their HTTP server. Using the vulnerability I describe in the article I just remove the connection to AWS IoT.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  I’m sorry, but did you actually read the article? The one which details the process and shows a video of it working? This is just straight up gaslighting. “That thing you said you did isn’t going to work”.
- hnarn 4y ago
  > Taking over their DNS isn't going to help if they did things correctly. If you had read the post, you would have seen that they did, in fact, not “do things correctly”.
- IceWreck 4y ago
  There are other ways to accomplish that (asymmetric cryptography says hi). You don't need AWS IoT for everything. I cringe when people's default solution is to make their company dependent on a niche product of another company, especially when its easily avoidable.
- spuz 4y ago
  Could you explain this further? How would ensure that when you connect to https://trainsignapi.com https://trainsignapi.com that it validates the response is coming from the expected server? Would you hardcode a certificate on the device? What if you needed to upgrade the certificate? I don't quite understand how AWS IoT fits into it either.
klinquist 4y ago
Sounds like I need to partner with the author.... as I wrote my own predictive Caltrain late train model/alert site: https://caltrain.live https://caltrain.live (twitter @bettercaltrain)
neilk 4y ago
Maybe it’s very North American of me but I cringe when the author says “bad team”. Objectively, they didn’t have the skills, experience, or advisors to do this thing. And if the money truly disappeared, then someone crossed over into “bad” territory. But hardware startups are brutal. Kickstarted hardware is torture. Even experienced and well capitalized tiny teams go through this. A friend did one, rapidly realized the only option was to somehow get Chinese manufacturers excited about a small run of a strange product. Then two years later was trying to QA injection molds from across the ocean and switched manufacturers two times. They delivered, but only after years of what must have felt like crawling over broken glass. Maybe the NYC Train Sign team realized they couldn’t profit from the sign itself, but, unwilling to let the viral moment pass, were going to use it to establish themselves in consulting. You know… sell pickaxes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- iamflimflam1 4y ago
  Indeed, I enjoyed the article, but felt the snarkiness was bit too much. Startups fail all the time, and hardware startups are a minefield. If they had succeeded then we'd be singing their praises on how they started off with a scrappy product built from off the shelf parts and then managed to productionise it and outsource the manufacturing to china...
- closetohome 4y ago
  I agree completely about the difficulty of a hardware startup, but being "good" means knowing in advance what kind of challenges you'll face, or at least knowing who to consult about it, and when to listen to their advice. I guarantee that at several points in the development of their product, someone pointed out the high BOM cost and the math required to become profitable. At this point Kickstarter has been around for long enough that even people without direct experience in hardware development should have enough case studies to know what they're wading into.
speedgoose 4y ago
The way the hostname is set, allowing an incredibly simple shell injection, reminds me that the S in IoT stands for Security.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
buescher 4y ago
Kudos to the author for a cool reverse-engineering job. Nice hack. The sign wasn't the most problematic "mininum viable product" I've seen. If it were a rapidly developed first prototype, I'd even be impressed. I would bet they spent significantly more than $3 on the packaging and miscellaneous BOM items. I was going to say the wiring harness alone would be much more than that, but it looks like most of it is included in the Adafruit panel kit.
Lucasoato 4y ago
> It seems that the company could remotely connect to a terminal on every sign. What a red flag... they basically had a backdoor to everyone's home network.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
explodingwaffle 4y ago
Woof. Adafruit + Raspberry Pi in a shipped product screams to me that they did not have a real electronics guy on their team. https://ukdepartureboards.co.uk/ https://ukdepartureboards.co.uk/ is the British equivalent of this, and it seems to do everything right (don’t own one, but have seen on Twitter)- optional subscription, and nice looking hardware (seems like they contracted out for that). Though at the minute I suppose there are barely any trains running here :)
- eschneider 4y ago
  Usually yes, but it sometimes makes sense in a very low volume product.
- adriancr 4y ago
  This still seems like its fallen into same BOM trap. You could buy a phone (moto e20), same size as their small display at 90e vs 140e for the board above... Sell a nice android app, subscription and be done with it. Phone packs a lot more features.
  - awkward 4y ago
    That's an indescript rectangle that could just show anything and could be from anywhere. They are selling a specific shape of rectangle that shows stuff about London and aesthetically signals that it is from London.
- dom96 4y ago
  > and it seems to do everything right Last time I looked they were missing CE conformance, which afaik is pretty illegal. Surprised they haven't been found out yet.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fmntf 4y ago
    Additionally, the composition of certified products does not lead to a certified product. Even adding an enclosure around a certified board implies the recertification.
schubart 4y ago
I didn’t quite understand the need for an injection attack. Once you had bought the domain and could respond to the devices‘ API calls, weren’t you in the driving seat already?
- tyingq 4y ago
  A guess, but... "At boot time, the Config Server will pull the latest configuration from an HTTP server. In addition, the Config Server will connect to an AWS IoT Core endpoint to receive real time config updates from an MQTT server." So, perhaps to bootstrap information they didn't have, like the current configuration? It sounds like they sold different types of signs with different resolutions, and also whatever train station setup config there was. Maybe a one-time exploit to upload that info from the sign itself.
  - ColdHeat 4y ago
    Yes the exploit removes the AWS IoT connection so that updates can come from the recreated API. There was only one type of sign but it did come in various different cases.
- karmanyaahm 4y ago
  The author couldn't have accessed the original AWS account, which is what managed configuration updates.
- ColdHeat 4y ago
  I actually had written more about the exploit & vulnerability in my original drafts but I cut it out because it was a bit boring to read. You are correct that with domain control I am able to serve content to any sign but the content will only be loaded once at boot time. Any future updates would have needed to come from their defunct AWS IoT connection (ignoring full restarts). Using the exploit I remove the connection to AWS IoT and update some of the code to better connect it to the recreated API so users can update their signs in mostly real time.
  - wferrell 4y ago
dom96 4y ago
In 2020 I set out to build something very similar[0]. This was before I even knew NYCTrainSign existed. I started with zero electronics knowledge and learned a lot. My prototype has been running solidly for way over a year and while I've always hoped I would be able to turn it into an actual product I could sell... doing so proved challenging. Really what blocked me the most was CE/FCC conformance. I have done a lot of research into it and I couldn't figure out a way to get it without a massive investment upfront ($10k+). If anyone has experience in that area I would love to talk, my contact info is in my profile. Who knows, maybe I will get it to a point where it can be sold eventually. I'll certainly write up about my learnings from the project at the very least. 0 - https://twitter.com/d0m96/status/1427055272980328460 https://twitter.com/d0m96/status/1427055272980328460
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  https://www.instagram.com/p/BVAIWfGBARk/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BVAIWfGBARk/ my problem was squeezing the MTA API parser into the ESP32 flash... as long as you use off-the-shelf / already conforming modules, like the esp wroom etc, the cost for FCC compliance testing goes down into the thousands. it's still a line item, but over a run of 1000-2000 units, it turns into something that costs about a buck per board :)
  - dom96 4y ago
    > my problem was squeezing the MTA API parser into the ESP32 flash... Ahh, I wouldn't do that. The way I've done it is by pushing as much of the API handling logic off the ESP32 and onto a standalone server. The ESP32 is effectively a dumb client which takes in instructions like "WRITE westminster 5 min" from the server and draws the appropriate text/pixels/etc. > as long as you use off-the-shelf / already conforming modules, like the esp wroom etc, the cost for FCC compliance testing goes down into the thousands. it's still a line item, but over a run of 1000-2000 units, it turns into something that costs about a buck per board :) yeah... it's $1 per board unless none of your boards sell :)
    - jareklupinski 4y ago
pettycashstash2 4y ago
Wait, you are open sourcing code that you did not write but reverse engineered? It that legal?
- tyingq 4y ago
  Google vs Oracle seems to say that offering up a compatible api with different internals is legal. Exploiting the signs seems risky though.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Fujitsu vs IBM also says you can make compatible hardware and release it as well. And of course they lost other, similar cases during the PC Clone era.
- belval 4y ago
  In the absolute no this is not legal, but in practice for a company that has been dead for a while after scamming a lot of people I wouldn't be overly concerned of legal repercussions.
- sowbug 4y ago
  Yes, legal. But in a parallel universal where it weren't legal, there are no damages in this case.
djhworld 4y ago
A few years ago I created something similar for the London Tube although it was much more crude, just a pi zero and a strip of RGB LED lights that represented the colours of the tube lines. The store that made the LED strip caught wind of it some how and they cut out a wooden enclosure for me to put the thing in, with the tube line names etched into the wood, which completely blew me away. My dad kept on telling me at the time to sell it as a product but even then I knew that not being a hardware guy and not really having any experience building products it would be a dumb, expensive move - and stories like this reaffirm that this was the right thinking. Not saying it can't be done, it's just someone with more electronics expertise is way more qualified than a guy throwing together a python script on a Pi zero with retail components.
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  there is an in-between: a write-up and a post on hackaday.com :) would love to see the Pi zero and hacked together code on there!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Karsteski 4y ago
Very good read. The parts focusing on the cost of the BOM for the signs really shines a light on just the basic difficulties of hardware compared to software companies
anigbrowl 4y ago
This was really interesting - a well deserved spot at the top of the front page. It's rare to see an article that combines the technical and business analysis so well. It's amazing to me how quickly the company loaded itself up with staff. Being kinda familiar with ESP32 development, I thought at the beginning that the company would have 4-6 people - 1-2 technical, 1-2 production, 1 business/sales/marketing, 1 admin. It seems like they opted to target the luxury nostalgia market with the $600 price point rather than a more value-driven $300, and wrapped themselves in an aura of success rather than growing it naturally. The descriptions on the resumes of the former marketing staff juxtaposed with the business reality was...quite a contrast. It's especially sad as the basic idea was good and seems sustainable at a lower price point - with a metal/plastic housing it might have been an easy sell to businesses near subway stations, for example, and developing cosmetically different versions for other large cities would be quite feasible. I wonder what made them take the 'growth corporation' approach rather than crowdfunding the prototype > product route, which was fairly well established even 5 years ago. That offers a fairly clear roadmap for new ventures and is sufficiently familiar to consumers that innovators can do some market segmentation and have a cushion of patience to get them though the design to manufacturing transition. A great case study for anyone thinking about launching a product for fun or profit.
- mileza 4y ago
  I think the 600$ price point was inflated with the Pi and the Arduino being used. Simply changing some parts for cheaper ones would have allowed to reduce the BOM cost and thus reduce the price. The author mentions this in his post. Also seemingly not a lot of people paid 600$ for the sign, with a lot going for a lot cheaper than that.
  - FractalParadigm 4y ago
    That's a part of what the article dives into. For example the LED matrix hat they were using from Adafruit was probably the most expensive option they could have used at $25/unit, and the article gave examples of much cheaper (i.e. 10% of the cost) parts that would have done the exact same job with a little extra engineering time/effort. Replacing the Pi with an ESP32 would have saved money, but like the article mentions using a Pi wasn't entirely a bad idea considering the free marketing they got from the foundation.
moneywoes 4y ago
Your newsletter isn’t working heads up
- ColdHeat 4y ago
  Thanks for letting me know. I will have to take a look. I setup Ghost a long time ago and just really use it for the blogging...
college_physics 4y ago
Thoroughly enjoyable read. Maybe if i play devils advocate it will add some value: People have castigated the high RPi cost (among others) and they are probably right about it, but there is something remarkable about been able to ship even a small number of devices with a full blown computer and a unique UI. Maybe the more fundamental problem was not so much the hardware cost but not shipping enticing enough software to get people excited about the device?
ahaucnx 4y ago
Very interesting read. Based on our experience developing and manufactoring air quality monitors, making a customized PCB should be done as early as possible in the developing process. With easy to use editors (e.g. easyEDA) and cheap and fast PCB production/assembly (even for small quantities), there is no reason to use overized MCUs/mini computers like the Pi and expensive modules e.g. from Adafruit. Also, BOM components selection is key. For the same functionality, e.g. a multiplexer there are many different chips available -often at very different price points. Availability in times of chip shortages are also key to keep an eye on. Technically this product is very simple and the BOM costs they had were a magnitude too high. Too bad because it seemed that the market was ready and they could have become a very successful business.
- thathndude 4y ago
  This further hits home the lack of business acumen of the founders. Let's assume BOM is an order of magnitude off -- 10x what it should be. That doesn't mean fixing the problem would 10x profits. It would merely reduce BOM by 10x. Thus, if you can sell the thing for $600, you actually 20x Profit! Missed opportunity by this startup.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelmior 4y ago
  > there is no reason to use overized MCUs/mini computers like the Pi and expensive modules There is if you don't have the expertise. Of course, arguably if that's the case, you shouldn't be developing such a product anyway. But as the post detailed, by switching to a Pi Zero and removing the Adafruit HAT, the BOM costs would already drop significantly. I think if you're smart about it, you absolutely can build a viable product this way. Certainly not as profitable, but possible.
  - sircastor 4y ago
    I’ve been working on a hobby project for about 6 years, and early on I got very excited about productizing it. It led me down some interesting paths and really made me think about overall BOM cost, designing for assembly, ease of use, etc. It also revealed some weaknesses for me, as I kept making decisions based on something I was sure I could figure out, rather than what I actually knew how to do. Eventually I switched some things up and it got much easier.
ilayn 4y ago
Not to take away anything from the article but what does this have anything to do with IoT?
- emef 4y ago
  it was an IoT product (internet-connected LED sign)
  - ilayn 4y ago
    That's just a display not an IoT project. The display did nothing as a thing.
drewzero1 4y ago
Often when showing off something cool I built for fun, people say "you should make those and sell them!" This company is a great example of why I don't. Mad respect for the author though. It'd be cool enough to just get one sign working, but to take over the API and domain is pretty awesome.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
NotYourLawyer 4y ago
That BOM is crazy. It looks like (and is) a hobby project that never had any consideration given to manufacturerability.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lxe 4y ago
Looks like they were trying to sell early prototypes as final products?
walrus01 4y ago
Any idea what these LED matrix signs cost as the raw unit, ready to integrate with your own thing for a DIY project? Does the cost scale somewhat linearly with number of LEDs or horizontal x vertical resolution in pixels?
- mordae 4y ago
  https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/Worldsemi-WS2812BMini/C527089 https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/Worldsemi-WS2812BMini/C527089 $0.01 per LED About $2 per 100x100 mm board if you order about 100 of them. About $1 per above board for assembly service. Total: $6 per 15x15 LED board of 100x100 mm. Total: $12 per 30x30 LED board of 100x100 mm. I have no idea about how many would you actually need. As for the power supply, each LED draws 12 mA. So you are going to need quite a beefy supply. 15x15 grid = 2.7 A @ 5 V 30x30 grid = 10.8 A @ 5 V
  - walrus01 4y ago
    I was thinking something more like assembled modules of 100x100 or similar LEDs in chunks all together
- bshep 4y ago
  They are standard P4 panels, you can buy them for about $20-30 depending on seller/volume. They are 64x32 pixels. You can also buy P5, P10 and other sizes. They number tells you how many millimeters between each physical pixel. I use P10s for my Christmas display, they look good from about 15feet away or more.
Animats 4y ago
$600? That's way overpriced. Get some digital picture frame out of Shenzhen, like this one, that wholesales for $30 - $50.[1] That thing has WiFi, a 4-core CPU, and runs Android. Reprogram it to just run your application. Sell for maybe $75-$100. The manufacturer will add your logo and do custom packaging if you order at least 50. There are even cheaper discrete LED signs that talk WiFi, but those would be kind of intense for home use. Those you sell to shops near stations, so people can shop or eat while watching the train arrival info. [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/IPS-Display-7-8-10-13_62088312418.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/IPS-Display-7-8-10-13...?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
luisapic 4y ago
[flagged]
unit2044 4y ago
Did they really think it is ok to include a remote access without telling customers?! I guess this more often the case than people realize (especially with such hobby level hard- and software), but it actually is a huge security risk. Because once you are on a Raspyberry Pi in a customers network, there are no limits.. Insane.
azubinski 4y ago
What a good story "IoT" about :) Absolutely useless piece of kindergarten "engineering" + insanely inflated prices + real sales for any (low) price cause nobody wants this sh... + crowd of idlers in management growing like bacteria in a Petri dish = "Internet of Things". Nice!

1114 points by pulisse 4y ago

harrego 4y ago

The complete git history and the development .bash_history file are my favorite parts.

greenhearth 4y ago

Wow, amazing story and writing!

samwillis 4y ago

Seems down, mirror here: https://archive.is/dIbYd https://archive.is/dIbYd

blakesterz 4y ago

This was a really good read. It's part IOT security, part story about startups gone wrong. The WayBack Machine has it https://web.archive.org/web/20230109144459/https://blog.kchung.co/taking-over-a-dead-iot-company/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230109144459/https://blog.kchu... As does Google https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:71rSDbUQyMsJ:https://blog.kchung.co/taking-over-a-dead-iot-company/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:71rSDb...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

icapybara 4y ago

Nice analysis. I think the author really hit on the key problem: expensive BOM due to poor engineering choices.

luma 4y ago
The entire project looks like the result of a high school student's first Instructables. It's hilariously under-engineered and it's clear that these folks had absolutely no idea of how to build a product, IoT or otherwise. Hint: if your product plans involve a raspberry pi, you probably fucked up.
- canucklady 4y ago
  I think dunking on the rpi is harsh - if it allows you to prototype and get your small-volume product out the door quickly, there's lots of other areas you could optimize the BOM first. Better to make a product with 75% gross margins as a single dev in 6 months than a product with 80% gross margins with a team of 6 in a year. Of course, they also overhired and wasted money on other BOM components
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    If your product needs to output HDMI, I can easily see an argument for using a Pi. If your product needs a couple GPIOs to drive an LED matrix? Using an RPi is pretty difficult to justify. You're likely going to spend more on the SD card for the Pi than you would on more suitable microcontroller (which can still be easily programmed and, in my experience, has a better [or at least no worse] story for GPIOs than the Pi)
    - tyingq 4y ago
      It's difficult to drive these LED matrix devices from a typical MCU, especially with chained panels, lots of LEDS, etc. Either due to the ~10Mhz+ output needed, or the memory to hold all the pixel data. Consider, for example, that each of the two panels in this sign has 32x64X3 (6144) leds. You have to send on/off for all of those, and then control brightness for each color by using PWM...meaning half-red brightness would be changing that pixel so it's on/off/on/off fast enough to beat persistence of vision. It's more common in the pre-built devices to have a controller that's using a main CPU plus a FPGA or CPLD. The better hobbyist drivers use things like a beaglebone black and it's onboard "PRU" that can drive real time from memory it shares with the ARM cpu and Linux. Also, since it's pulling train data, you need more smarts or cycles than a typical MCU to pull via WiFi/https, transform text into pixmaps, etc. Though there are examples of beefy MCUs doing all this well, like an ESP32. Or examples of small MCUs driving a small single color matrix.
      - dom96 4y ago
        ESP32 is perfect for this application. RPI is far too beefy, unless you really want to do everything locally (without relying on an external server to package up the train data for you)
spfzero 4y ago
I wonder whether this particular unit was representative of the production target build. Maybe it was an early prototype? Certainly after 250K revenue (if you believe that number) there was funding for a design rev.

michaelbuckbee 4y ago

Towards the end of the article the author mentions not wanting to pursue this as a business as there are so many cheap programmable signs out there already. As someone who would love to buy one of these and customize it for myself does anyone have experience or recommendations with any of these?

tyingq 4y ago
Some experience. The cheapest and easiest route is to buy a pre-made sign from AliExpress and just use the serial/usb interface to send data to the sign. That's somewhat limited, as you can't really control each pixel in a real time way, and you're limited to sending a series of "screens" as either text (in their limited choices of fonts) or images, defining some linger time, transitions, etc. With some visual disruption as you send new data to redefine what to display. But it's easy. There's also variations on this theme. Some signs, for example, have had people who reverse engineered the protocol so that you can send stuff from your own scripts instead of the supplied (usually crappy) software. The other path is to buy plain led matrix modules and use some SBC to directly control what's displayed. More fun, but more work. This particular sign uses qty 2, 4mm pitch, 32x64 pixel panels, side by side. Like this one: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832064290423.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.1.818879c9LEceTp https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2251832064290423.html?spm=a2g... Lots of choices in pitch, single/three/full color, indoor or outdoor brightness, etc. Though you need to ensure your choice of driver (see paragraph below) supports it. They have different refresh rates, data sequence, and timing requirements. Then, you pick what to drive it with. Lots of choices there. There are libraries and hardware level-shifter adapters for a variety of things like a Parallax Propeller, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, etc. With various advantages and disadvantages. Fwiw, the Rpi is usually trickier as you're bitbanging from a non-real-time OS. The Parallax and BeagleBone have better ways to be quasi real time.
- seanw444 4y ago
  Did you intentionally leave out Arduino from the "what to drive with" options?

ColdHeat 4y ago

Hello, author here. Happy to answer any questions! My apologies for the downtime, I wasn't expecting much traffic today since I submitted the post to HN yesterday but I've started scaling my server now!

jagermo 4y ago
super interesting read, thank you for that.
ivraatiems 4y ago
I just want to say that I love that you did this. You have great skills and you used them for good. I've never seen such a clearly white-hat hack :) People's stuff will work again thanks to you and you should feel great about it!
- ColdHeat 4y ago
  Thank you for the kind words! Made my morning!
hahla 4y ago
Love this story. I did something similar with a website. Previous owner took it down, bought the domain from him and it organically grew to over 1m users per month with the same exact functionality. I wouldn't discount your ability to bring this back to market. Would consult a lawyer to see what implications taking over the branding and APIs have. But clearly this has a big market.
- MrGilbert 4y ago
  I would really like to read more of this story. E.g. what did you do differently, did the original owner ever get in touch with you after it grew, stuff like that. Only if you can, ofc!
csunbird 4y ago
Love the story! At one point, you are asking about the purpose of the giant hole in the backside of the display: The most plausible explanation is that, it is to allow air circulation within the device to prevent overheating.

gilad 4y ago

Similarly, see https://tidbyt.com https://tidbyt.com - RGB LED matrix desktop appliance to show weather, sports scores, etc.

michaelt 4y ago

"As we discussed earlier, even at $300 the product is too cheap. The sign should have likely been selling at $600 from the very beginning." Even at $600 - there's a screenshot saying the company had three engineers and a marketer. If your 4 employees earn $25k per annum, with the $150 parts cost you'd have to sell 222 signs at $600. And if the employees were on $100k, that's 888 signs a year. That's a heck of a lot of signs, at the price. And you'd have to keep hitting those sales targets so long as you wanted the API to stay up. It would make much more sense if the business was a one-engineer passion project - someone who had a day job and did a few hours a week maintaining this as a side project would have much more achievable sales targets!

gdilla 4y ago
Or charge less and get a recurring fee for the API.
- michaelt 4y ago
  Perhaps, but still tough to make the business plan work for a $100k wage bill. 833 subscribers at $10/month? 8,333 subscribers at $1/month?
  - gdilla 4y ago
    dont invest in non-viable things. if you can't cover your expenses, it's not a viable business.
- brookst 4y ago
  This. It is fatal to charge a one-time price for services that have perpetual operating expenses.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pdntspa 4y ago
Why does a project like this need three engineers? Two, I can kind of see (a hardware guy and a software guy, though it doesnt look like the hardware guy was doing much here), but three?

sschueller 4y ago

I build something similar https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vbz-fahrgastinformation/ https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vbz-fahrgastinformation/ but with way less BOM and I keep getting asked that I should sell them. The primary reason I don't is because I don't want to support something like that for the next 10 years...

klinquist 4y ago
heh, same. I built a little custom sign for my airbnb. Part of my home automation system: https://imgur.com/a/8A5IKV6 https://imgur.com/a/8A5IKV6
- xd1936 4y ago
  Very cool, and well executed! Do you have build details anywhere?
  - klinquist 4y ago
    I don't, but it's essentially an Adafruit LED matrix + Pi + Adafruit PiHat. I modified the adafruit python library to read lines from Redis then I have another script that makes the API calls, has a REST server, etc and publishes text to reds queues.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

twawaaay 4y ago

I think RPi in this thing says it all. It screams it was built by somebody that does not know how to develop a physical product for mass market. There are only three parts in this product that should have any significant cost to them: * the display itself, * the wooden enclosure, * the packaging the product comes in, If there are switches, potentiometers or encoders I am really partial to well working ones and these are not so cheap. It is nice to have but at least they make the product feel more expensive so it is not a total waste. Everything else can be done dirt cheap. I don't think chinese are the best way to learn product design but they are pretty darn good at saving every last penny (or yuan in their case). I found it illuminating to study some of the devices of chinese origin (as opposed to ones that are only manufactured in China).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
not_the_fda 4y ago
You would be surprised at how often people with no experience try to build a physical mass market product that nothing more than an RPi in a box. And they often go under because the BOM is too high and the software is garbage.
- twawaaay 4y ago
  That's why when I started with design I decided to go for niche products for businesses. Kind of thing that when they have to buy it they will not be looking at the price too much. Low volume (I was doing all soldering myself!), high sticker price, not especially profitable for me. But makes it so much easier to design when you don't have to compromise so much and you don't have to be very inventive trying to save on BOM. And it is fun to be able to just do whatever you fancy. I think starting mass market production for price conscious clients with no experience is just asking for problems.
samwillis 4y ago
Even the wooden enclosure could be done for significantly less. It's effectively a picture frame. There are plenty of standard box frame profiles they are very similar to what they have built. If it was me, I would have explored working with a picture frame company for final assembly, many are used to "assembling" products with extra components (think of stuff on Etsy). The frames are simply cut with a framing guillotine and stapled together. My estimate would be frame (including custom cut back panel), and final assembly would be in the region of $10-$15 at a US/UK framers. (Excluding electrical BOM)

turbobooster 4y ago

This made me think of Chumby

Neil44 4y ago
App access could have been $1/mo. They could have expanded to other cities.

m-p-3 4y ago

IMO that Raspberry Pi 3 was way overkill for the project even back then and must have massively inflated the BOM. Nice article overall :)

js2 4y ago

> With full control of the domain, we can create a new API based on what the sign is expecting and revive all of the signs that are out in the field. Once the new server was up, did any signs from the field connect to it?

ColdHeat 4y ago
Good question! No signs connected to the server until I reached out to some other sign owners to try out my instructions.
- wferrell 4y ago
  Great post!

dimmke 4y ago

Articles like this are part of why I love Hacker News so much. I've done a little investigation into producing hardware myself and concluded it was just too big a task for someone without the background who didn't want to put up a ton of capital or deal with overseas manufacturing. I loved reading this.

jadtz 4y ago
I am new to hn, and really liked this article. If you know about other interesting articles like this, please mention them. I would love to read.
- _Microft 4y ago
  I'm semi-frequently submitting electronics/hardware hacking articles here. Maybe browse my history of submitted articles to see if there is something among them. Here are some examples: - "I hacked a Joy-Con controller to have a Capacitive Trackpad", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329927 - "Smartknob – an open-source input device", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30646371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30646371 - "DVD Laser Scanner Microscope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012652 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012652 - "A simple 11.2 GHz radio telescope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26078761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26078761 - "Home-Built Scanning Tunneling Microscope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740968

manv1 4y ago

Taking over their DNS isn't going to help if they did things correctly. If they did things right each device is going to be doing cert verification with AWS IOT, and that verification will fail. That's client and server cert validation, unless they turned that off. On reset it should still verify the server cert when it tries to call home, but since you have access to the image you can replace that (if they didn't stash it somewhere securely, that is).

ColdHeat 4y ago
The key point here would be "did things correctly" :) The sign did use AWS IoT for real time configuration updates however initial configuration was pulled from their HTTP server. Using the vulnerability I describe in the article I just remove the connection to AWS IoT.
mynameisvlad 4y ago
I’m sorry, but did you actually read the article? The one which details the process and shows a video of it working? This is just straight up gaslighting. “That thing you said you did isn’t going to work”.
hnarn 4y ago
> Taking over their DNS isn't going to help if they did things correctly. If you had read the post, you would have seen that they did, in fact, not “do things correctly”.
IceWreck 4y ago
There are other ways to accomplish that (asymmetric cryptography says hi). You don't need AWS IoT for everything. I cringe when people's default solution is to make their company dependent on a niche product of another company, especially when its easily avoidable.
spuz 4y ago
Could you explain this further? How would ensure that when you connect to https://trainsignapi.com https://trainsignapi.com that it validates the response is coming from the expected server? Would you hardcode a certificate on the device? What if you needed to upgrade the certificate? I don't quite understand how AWS IoT fits into it either.

klinquist 4y ago

Sounds like I need to partner with the author.... as I wrote my own predictive Caltrain late train model/alert site: https://caltrain.live https://caltrain.live (twitter @bettercaltrain)

neilk 4y ago

Maybe it’s very North American of me but I cringe when the author says “bad team”. Objectively, they didn’t have the skills, experience, or advisors to do this thing. And if the money truly disappeared, then someone crossed over into “bad” territory. But hardware startups are brutal. Kickstarted hardware is torture. Even experienced and well capitalized tiny teams go through this. A friend did one, rapidly realized the only option was to somehow get Chinese manufacturers excited about a small run of a strange product. Then two years later was trying to QA injection molds from across the ocean and switched manufacturers two times. They delivered, but only after years of what must have felt like crawling over broken glass. Maybe the NYC Train Sign team realized they couldn’t profit from the sign itself, but, unwilling to let the viral moment pass, were going to use it to establish themselves in consulting. You know… sell pickaxes.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
iamflimflam1 4y ago
Indeed, I enjoyed the article, but felt the snarkiness was bit too much. Startups fail all the time, and hardware startups are a minefield. If they had succeeded then we'd be singing their praises on how they started off with a scrappy product built from off the shelf parts and then managed to productionise it and outsource the manufacturing to china...
closetohome 4y ago
I agree completely about the difficulty of a hardware startup, but being "good" means knowing in advance what kind of challenges you'll face, or at least knowing who to consult about it, and when to listen to their advice. I guarantee that at several points in the development of their product, someone pointed out the high BOM cost and the math required to become profitable. At this point Kickstarter has been around for long enough that even people without direct experience in hardware development should have enough case studies to know what they're wading into.

speedgoose 4y ago

The way the hostname is set, allowing an incredibly simple shell injection, reminds me that the S in IoT stands for Security.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

buescher 4y ago

Kudos to the author for a cool reverse-engineering job. Nice hack. The sign wasn't the most problematic "mininum viable product" I've seen. If it were a rapidly developed first prototype, I'd even be impressed. I would bet they spent significantly more than $3 on the packaging and miscellaneous BOM items. I was going to say the wiring harness alone would be much more than that, but it looks like most of it is included in the Adafruit panel kit.

Lucasoato 4y ago

> It seems that the company could remotely connect to a terminal on every sign. What a red flag... they basically had a backdoor to everyone's home network.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

explodingwaffle 4y ago

Woof. Adafruit + Raspberry Pi in a shipped product screams to me that they did not have a real electronics guy on their team. https://ukdepartureboards.co.uk/ https://ukdepartureboards.co.uk/ is the British equivalent of this, and it seems to do everything right (don’t own one, but have seen on Twitter)- optional subscription, and nice looking hardware (seems like they contracted out for that). Though at the minute I suppose there are barely any trains running here :)

eschneider 4y ago
Usually yes, but it sometimes makes sense in a very low volume product.
adriancr 4y ago
This still seems like its fallen into same BOM trap. You could buy a phone (moto e20), same size as their small display at 90e vs 140e for the board above... Sell a nice android app, subscription and be done with it. Phone packs a lot more features.
- awkward 4y ago
  That's an indescript rectangle that could just show anything and could be from anywhere. They are selling a specific shape of rectangle that shows stuff about London and aesthetically signals that it is from London.
dom96 4y ago
> and it seems to do everything right Last time I looked they were missing CE conformance, which afaik is pretty illegal. Surprised they haven't been found out yet.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fmntf 4y ago
  Additionally, the composition of certified products does not lead to a certified product. Even adding an enclosure around a certified board implies the recertification.

schubart 4y ago

I didn’t quite understand the need for an injection attack. Once you had bought the domain and could respond to the devices‘ API calls, weren’t you in the driving seat already?

tyingq 4y ago
A guess, but... "At boot time, the Config Server will pull the latest configuration from an HTTP server. In addition, the Config Server will connect to an AWS IoT Core endpoint to receive real time config updates from an MQTT server." So, perhaps to bootstrap information they didn't have, like the current configuration? It sounds like they sold different types of signs with different resolutions, and also whatever train station setup config there was. Maybe a one-time exploit to upload that info from the sign itself.
- ColdHeat 4y ago
  Yes the exploit removes the AWS IoT connection so that updates can come from the recreated API. There was only one type of sign but it did come in various different cases.
karmanyaahm 4y ago
The author couldn't have accessed the original AWS account, which is what managed configuration updates.
ColdHeat 4y ago
I actually had written more about the exploit & vulnerability in my original drafts but I cut it out because it was a bit boring to read. You are correct that with domain control I am able to serve content to any sign but the content will only be loaded once at boot time. Any future updates would have needed to come from their defunct AWS IoT connection (ignoring full restarts). Using the exploit I remove the connection to AWS IoT and update some of the code to better connect it to the recreated API so users can update their signs in mostly real time.
- wferrell 4y ago

dom96 4y ago

In 2020 I set out to build something very similar[0]. This was before I even knew NYCTrainSign existed. I started with zero electronics knowledge and learned a lot. My prototype has been running solidly for way over a year and while I've always hoped I would be able to turn it into an actual product I could sell... doing so proved challenging. Really what blocked me the most was CE/FCC conformance. I have done a lot of research into it and I couldn't figure out a way to get it without a massive investment upfront ($10k+). If anyone has experience in that area I would love to talk, my contact info is in my profile. Who knows, maybe I will get it to a point where it can be sold eventually. I'll certainly write up about my learnings from the project at the very least. 0 - https://twitter.com/d0m96/status/1427055272980328460 https://twitter.com/d0m96/status/1427055272980328460

jareklupinski 4y ago
https://www.instagram.com/p/BVAIWfGBARk/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BVAIWfGBARk/ my problem was squeezing the MTA API parser into the ESP32 flash... as long as you use off-the-shelf / already conforming modules, like the esp wroom etc, the cost for FCC compliance testing goes down into the thousands. it's still a line item, but over a run of 1000-2000 units, it turns into something that costs about a buck per board :)
- dom96 4y ago
  > my problem was squeezing the MTA API parser into the ESP32 flash... Ahh, I wouldn't do that. The way I've done it is by pushing as much of the API handling logic off the ESP32 and onto a standalone server. The ESP32 is effectively a dumb client which takes in instructions like "WRITE westminster 5 min" from the server and draws the appropriate text/pixels/etc. > as long as you use off-the-shelf / already conforming modules, like the esp wroom etc, the cost for FCC compliance testing goes down into the thousands. it's still a line item, but over a run of 1000-2000 units, it turns into something that costs about a buck per board :) yeah... it's $1 per board unless none of your boards sell :)
  - jareklupinski 4y ago

pettycashstash2 4y ago

Wait, you are open sourcing code that you did not write but reverse engineered? It that legal?

tyingq 4y ago
Google vs Oracle seems to say that offering up a compatible api with different internals is legal. Exploiting the signs seems risky though.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Fujitsu vs IBM also says you can make compatible hardware and release it as well. And of course they lost other, similar cases during the PC Clone era.
belval 4y ago
In the absolute no this is not legal, but in practice for a company that has been dead for a while after scamming a lot of people I wouldn't be overly concerned of legal repercussions.
sowbug 4y ago
Yes, legal. But in a parallel universal where it weren't legal, there are no damages in this case.

djhworld 4y ago

A few years ago I created something similar for the London Tube although it was much more crude, just a pi zero and a strip of RGB LED lights that represented the colours of the tube lines. The store that made the LED strip caught wind of it some how and they cut out a wooden enclosure for me to put the thing in, with the tube line names etched into the wood, which completely blew me away. My dad kept on telling me at the time to sell it as a product but even then I knew that not being a hardware guy and not really having any experience building products it would be a dumb, expensive move - and stories like this reaffirm that this was the right thinking. Not saying it can't be done, it's just someone with more electronics expertise is way more qualified than a guy throwing together a python script on a Pi zero with retail components.

jareklupinski 4y ago
there is an in-between: a write-up and a post on hackaday.com :) would love to see the Pi zero and hacked together code on there!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Karsteski 4y ago

Very good read. The parts focusing on the cost of the BOM for the signs really shines a light on just the basic difficulties of hardware compared to software companies

anigbrowl 4y ago

This was really interesting - a well deserved spot at the top of the front page. It's rare to see an article that combines the technical and business analysis so well. It's amazing to me how quickly the company loaded itself up with staff. Being kinda familiar with ESP32 development, I thought at the beginning that the company would have 4-6 people - 1-2 technical, 1-2 production, 1 business/sales/marketing, 1 admin. It seems like they opted to target the luxury nostalgia market with the $600 price point rather than a more value-driven $300, and wrapped themselves in an aura of success rather than growing it naturally. The descriptions on the resumes of the former marketing staff juxtaposed with the business reality was...quite a contrast. It's especially sad as the basic idea was good and seems sustainable at a lower price point - with a metal/plastic housing it might have been an easy sell to businesses near subway stations, for example, and developing cosmetically different versions for other large cities would be quite feasible. I wonder what made them take the 'growth corporation' approach rather than crowdfunding the prototype > product route, which was fairly well established even 5 years ago. That offers a fairly clear roadmap for new ventures and is sufficiently familiar to consumers that innovators can do some market segmentation and have a cushion of patience to get them though the design to manufacturing transition. A great case study for anyone thinking about launching a product for fun or profit.

mileza 4y ago
I think the 600$ price point was inflated with the Pi and the Arduino being used. Simply changing some parts for cheaper ones would have allowed to reduce the BOM cost and thus reduce the price. The author mentions this in his post. Also seemingly not a lot of people paid 600$ for the sign, with a lot going for a lot cheaper than that.
- FractalParadigm 4y ago
  That's a part of what the article dives into. For example the LED matrix hat they were using from Adafruit was probably the most expensive option they could have used at $25/unit, and the article gave examples of much cheaper (i.e. 10% of the cost) parts that would have done the exact same job with a little extra engineering time/effort. Replacing the Pi with an ESP32 would have saved money, but like the article mentions using a Pi wasn't entirely a bad idea considering the free marketing they got from the foundation.

moneywoes 4y ago

Your newsletter isn’t working heads up

ColdHeat 4y ago
Thanks for letting me know. I will have to take a look. I setup Ghost a long time ago and just really use it for the blogging...

college_physics 4y ago

Thoroughly enjoyable read. Maybe if i play devils advocate it will add some value: People have castigated the high RPi cost (among others) and they are probably right about it, but there is something remarkable about been able to ship even a small number of devices with a full blown computer and a unique UI. Maybe the more fundamental problem was not so much the hardware cost but not shipping enticing enough software to get people excited about the device?

ahaucnx 4y ago

Very interesting read. Based on our experience developing and manufactoring air quality monitors, making a customized PCB should be done as early as possible in the developing process. With easy to use editors (e.g. easyEDA) and cheap and fast PCB production/assembly (even for small quantities), there is no reason to use overized MCUs/mini computers like the Pi and expensive modules e.g. from Adafruit. Also, BOM components selection is key. For the same functionality, e.g. a multiplexer there are many different chips available -often at very different price points. Availability in times of chip shortages are also key to keep an eye on. Technically this product is very simple and the BOM costs they had were a magnitude too high. Too bad because it seemed that the market was ready and they could have become a very successful business.

thathndude 4y ago
This further hits home the lack of business acumen of the founders. Let's assume BOM is an order of magnitude off -- 10x what it should be. That doesn't mean fixing the problem would 10x profits. It would merely reduce BOM by 10x. Thus, if you can sell the thing for $600, you actually 20x Profit! Missed opportunity by this startup.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
michaelmior 4y ago
> there is no reason to use overized MCUs/mini computers like the Pi and expensive modules There is if you don't have the expertise. Of course, arguably if that's the case, you shouldn't be developing such a product anyway. But as the post detailed, by switching to a Pi Zero and removing the Adafruit HAT, the BOM costs would already drop significantly. I think if you're smart about it, you absolutely can build a viable product this way. Certainly not as profitable, but possible.
- sircastor 4y ago
  I’ve been working on a hobby project for about 6 years, and early on I got very excited about productizing it. It led me down some interesting paths and really made me think about overall BOM cost, designing for assembly, ease of use, etc. It also revealed some weaknesses for me, as I kept making decisions based on something I was sure I could figure out, rather than what I actually knew how to do. Eventually I switched some things up and it got much easier.

ilayn 4y ago

Not to take away anything from the article but what does this have anything to do with IoT?

emef 4y ago
it was an IoT product (internet-connected LED sign)
- ilayn 4y ago
  That's just a display not an IoT project. The display did nothing as a thing.

drewzero1 4y ago

Often when showing off something cool I built for fun, people say "you should make those and sell them!" This company is a great example of why I don't. Mad respect for the author though. It'd be cool enough to just get one sign working, but to take over the API and domain is pretty awesome.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

NotYourLawyer 4y ago

That BOM is crazy. It looks like (and is) a hobby project that never had any consideration given to manufacturerability.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

lxe 4y ago

Looks like they were trying to sell early prototypes as final products?

walrus01 4y ago

Any idea what these LED matrix signs cost as the raw unit, ready to integrate with your own thing for a DIY project? Does the cost scale somewhat linearly with number of LEDs or horizontal x vertical resolution in pixels?

mordae 4y ago
https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/Worldsemi-WS2812BMini/C527089 https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/Worldsemi-WS2812BMini/C527089 $0.01 per LED About $2 per 100x100 mm board if you order about 100 of them. About $1 per above board for assembly service. Total: $6 per 15x15 LED board of 100x100 mm. Total: $12 per 30x30 LED board of 100x100 mm. I have no idea about how many would you actually need. As for the power supply, each LED draws 12 mA. So you are going to need quite a beefy supply. 15x15 grid = 2.7 A @ 5 V 30x30 grid = 10.8 A @ 5 V
- walrus01 4y ago
  I was thinking something more like assembled modules of 100x100 or similar LEDs in chunks all together
bshep 4y ago
They are standard P4 panels, you can buy them for about $20-30 depending on seller/volume. They are 64x32 pixels. You can also buy P5, P10 and other sizes. They number tells you how many millimeters between each physical pixel. I use P10s for my Christmas display, they look good from about 15feet away or more.

Animats 4y ago

$600? That's way overpriced. Get some digital picture frame out of Shenzhen, like this one, that wholesales for $30 - $50.[1] That thing has WiFi, a 4-core CPU, and runs Android. Reprogram it to just run your application. Sell for maybe $75-$100. The manufacturer will add your logo and do custom packaging if you order at least 50. There are even cheaper discrete LED signs that talk WiFi, but those would be kind of intense for home use. Those you sell to shops near stations, so people can shop or eat while watching the train arrival info. [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/IPS-Display-7-8-10-13_62088312418.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/IPS-Display-7-8-10-13...?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

luisapic 4y ago

[flagged]

unit2044 4y ago

Did they really think it is ok to include a remote access without telling customers?! I guess this more often the case than people realize (especially with such hobby level hard- and software), but it actually is a huge security risk. Because once you are on a Raspyberry Pi in a customers network, there are no limits.. Insane.

azubinski 4y ago

What a good story "IoT" about :) Absolutely useless piece of kindergarten "engineering" + insanely inflated prices + real sales for any (low) price cause nobody wants this sh... + crowd of idlers in management growing like bacteria in a Petri dish = "Internet of Things". Nice!