40 ms·

Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

• thewizardofaus 3y ago
  Started a hardware startup from my background in sport. It's very tough, especially being the only employee & founder.
  • hito 3y ago
    It's tough, and it's doable. I went it through. Good luck on your journey!
• upzg 3y ago
  We are creating a inflatable shippable greenhouse that can be set in 15 minutes on virtually any surface. The construction method reduces thermal mass loss by drafts by 90%. Structure sizes vary from sizes compatible with urban apartment balcony gardens to larger installs combining multiple structures to cover larger areas.
• akazo 3y ago
  Seeing all the interesting and cool projects and products I started wondering how small companies make sure that they are CE compliment as it has always seemed like a great endeavor to me
• gauravkumar552 3y ago
  We are building GreyOrange. visit greyorange.com
• baybal2 3y ago
  [dead]
• tagami 3y ago
  An education network of science labs connecting schools, science centers, libraries, and museums around the world to live missions aboard the International Space Station. I could always use help: https://exolab.space https://exolab.space
• MPlus88 3y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• PeterWhittaker 3y ago
  We have a unidirectional gateway with a complete protocol break. Sales are picking up. We’re hoping to deliver a guard later this year. Hardware may be hard, but what’s really hard are high assurance attack resistant systems.
  • naushit 3y ago
    is it cross domain solution?
    • PeterWhittaker 3y ago
      It is. Supports file transfers (sftp push and pull), XML (basically file with schema validation, different filters on each side of the protocol break), and TCP and UDP steaming. We’re proud of how fast it is, among other things.
      • kldx 3y ago
        Sounds interesting. Do you have any formal verification tools in your tech stack? p.s. are you hiring?
        • PeterWhittaker 3y ago
          > p.s. are you hiring? We're always interested in talking to potential candidates, but unless you're in Ottawa work would be truly remote (we all WFH, but we get together at least monthly for lunch, save for the folks in the Maritimes, the UK, etc.). My HN userid at sphyrnasecurity.com
  • applied_heat 3y ago
    What protocol? Control systems type stuff?
    • PeterWhittaker 3y ago
      File and XML (file with schema validation) via sftp, and TCP and UDP streaming. In streaming mode, useful for getting logs, etc., from a SCADA network to a business mode. In block mode, handy for pushing patches the other way. Among other things.
• greesil 3y ago
  As someone who used to work at an IoT company the consumer space is brutal. Unless you've got something you can sell for 10x BOM, or there's naturally a subscription based model then it's not worth the blood, sweat, and tears.
  • konschubert 3y ago
    10x BOM? Why is the bar so high for profitably? There are manufacturing costs, marketing and inventory risk. But still… what am I missing?
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      The probability and cost of failure? And/or alternative revenue streams with lower volatility available to people with the skill to pull it off.
    • wiskinator 3y ago
      NRE into the production line, especially hard tooling for plastic is huge. Plus all those things you mentioned, especially inventory risk are often underestimated. Don't forget that any manufacturing run itself is a huge risk. Tiny changes that need to be made to address anything from RF performance to fit and finish can invalidate a run and just burn up hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars (depending on scale)
      • konschubert 3y ago
        Yea, that’s why I’m not using plastics for my product.
      • mojomark 3y ago
        Even for something like HDPE? I did a project a while ago that was effectively a pontoon workboat. We used HDPE pontoons in lieu of stainless steel and the cost savings was about 25%. I assume that the raw materials (basically large diameter HDPE pipe) and plastic welding tools were just that much cheaper/easier. I was interested in doing a new HDPE product development on my own, but I'm a bit nervous this is a deep tooling rabbit hole.
• StephenSmith 3y ago
  We make a camera system for construction sites. Using computer vision, we can identify when and for how long subcontractors show up as well as notify our customers of unwanted behavior on site. https://bedrockwireless.com/ https://bedrockwireless.com/ Fun fact, we probably have the best port-o-potty detector in the world.
  • gtf21 3y ago
    Always nice to see another ConTech!
  • DDickson 3y ago
    If this were a camera that identified when and for how long a software engineer showed up to the office and notified their employer of "unwanted behavior", how long would it take for that story to end up on the front page of this site and torn apart as invasive and infantilizing?
    • StephenSmith 3y ago
      I guess I would say that subcontractors are more like hourly workers (who are time tracked meticulously in almost all industries) - not salaried like software engineers, who would deserve the respect and absence of tracking.
      • agloe_dreams 3y ago
        Not really, in the housing industry, it is generally job bid instead. The contractor taking longer just means they get paid later and don't get as many jobs done. Also, Unions hate this right?
        • StephenSmith 3y ago
          It's less about tracking how long they're there and more about when they showed up. We do the former because we can, but the GC really wants to know if and when their subs are showing up without having to be on site 24/7 waiting for them. For example, they can look back through yesterdays events to see that their plumber showed up - and then they'll know they need to go check on the work. The alternative is trying to get the plumber on the phone to figure out if the work had been completed or not - which is difficult in 2023. There's not a lot of unioned workers in most states for residential construction. But autoworkers, and anything else in manufacturing would be used to the constant monitoring. Commercial construction also typically has fulltime site superintendents, who would do this anyway.
• h317 3y ago
  We make edge AI cameras. After focusing on services for a while, it has been a different type of journey to switch to the product. We did an open source pilot product on esp32, and got surprisingly more interest than we thought, so now we are working on a high performance (4k, 60fps, AI chip) device. Lite-esp32 camera https://www.crowdsupply.com/maxlab/tokay-lite https://www.crowdsupply.com/maxlab/tokay-lite Source-code: https://github.com/maxlab-io/tokay-lite-pcb https://github.com/maxlab-io/tokay-lite-pcb Pro camera updats will be posted here: https://maxlab.io/store/tokay-riscv-camera/ https://maxlab.io/store/tokay-riscv-camera/
  • HockeyPlayer 3y ago
    How do these compare to the Luxonis cameras? https://www.luxonis.com/ https://www.luxonis.com/
    • m00x 3y ago
      Not OP, but I'm very familiar with both. Luxonis is way more powerful and has an Intel VPU (Movidius). It's not really meant to be a standalone platform, so it needs a host board (Linux SBC like the Pi). It takes a lot more power, but it can do 60fps on small Yolo models. Its resolution is a lot higher as well. ESP32-S3 has a pretty small memory capacity, and doesn't have H264-H265 hardware encoding, so you'll be on low-res, low-fps. It only does MJPEG (AFAIK) streaming, so you'll also have to deal with high latency if you want to send that data somewhere. The big bonus is that it's low-cost and low-power, and you're running it directly on the core without an OS. This means you can do stuff like sleep the cores until something wakes it up (like a PIR sensor that detects people), and it will start streaming in a second or two. TL;DR: Luxonis stronk, but needs big batteries or plugged in. ESP32-S3 can run on small batteries or solar.
      • moffkalast 3y ago
        Ngl I really wish Luxonis cameras supported running standalone after being configured once, OpenVino is such a heckin chonker to install and manage.
      • 3y ago
• varjag 3y ago
  We make a system for assisting self-evacuation from tunnels using directional sound effects: https://norphonic.com/products/evacsound/ https://norphonic.com/products/evacsound/ Most of the userspace work including the planner, fire detection, resource scheduling and distributed execution is done in Common Lisp.
  • agloe_dreams 3y ago
    Fascinating. Our Volvo does this for backing up and getting warnings from sensors. It uses the individual speakers from the direction of the issue. Works great.
    • varjag 3y ago
      Yep it's really nice augmentation. In a tunnel there are challenges though which aren't an issue in a compartment. The effects have to work for any person in miles long tunnels, with reverb/echo times in multiple seconds. They have to read off even with the noise from smoke extraction fans. Plus the practicalities of synchronized distributed operation, dealing with battle damage/attrition etc.
  • samstave 3y ago
    uhm, I need to introduce you to someone, who has developed this into a patented delivery via a baseball cap (hat) bill with directional indicators via LED to give you wayfinding HUD without a screen....
    • varjag 3y ago
      There's been lots of such ideas floating (and patented). But no evacuation method that relies on a motorist having any device or app on them is feasible.
      • samstave 3y ago
        No - this is to integrate into the fire fighters helmets. Telling them routes, supply caches, other team members... and they turn their head and get wayfinding directionals based on color RGBs in hat...
• synergy20 3y ago
  Tried this in the past, indeed hard to do, and, very heavy on cash investment, don't even think about bootstrapping it, crowdfunding might be the only way moving forward unless you somehow received huge investment. Most important thing is "ecosystem" to me, i.e. the logistics of ICs, PCB factories, upstream and downstream vendors, etc are all in the same place or city, I don't see anywhere in US that provides this yet. I went to Shenzhen instead, which has everything a hardware startup dreamed of, COVID kind of screwed it up for me though, back to software stuff.
  • hnfuzzy 3y ago
    Would love to pick your brain. Have an email?
  • reactormonk 3y ago
    I'd also be interested in picking your brain. If you happen to have time, send me an email.
• adastra22 3y ago
  We’re early stage, just fundraising now, but we’re working on building the first generation of molecular nanotechnology devices for machine-phase chemistry and the construction of gemstone-based nano machinery. We’re interested in talking to people of all backgrounds who want to make Drexler’s vision of nanotechnology a near-term reality. Send us an email: hello@machinephase.systems
• stephanerangaya 3y ago
  https://oxide.computer https://oxide.computer looks great
  • bsnnkv 3y ago
    Basically my dream job
  • immibis 3y ago
    I don't really understand what they're making and what differentiates their product. Is it a private cloud but designed so you can just drop it in place and turn it on instead of having to set up the cloud?
    • lijok 3y ago
      It's server racks with basically iLO on steroids. To be fair, simply being server a company that's easy to deal with is enough of a differentiator in this space. Would absolutely blindly buy from them just to avoid having to deal with HPE/Dell
      • immibis 3y ago
        I understood that company to be Supermicro, though I've never dealt with them so I could be wrong.
      • c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
        >To be fair, simply being server a company that's easy to deal with is enough of a differentiator in this space. Would absolutely blindly buy from them just to avoid having to deal with HPE/Dell I'm in the server business (within a very specific niche). I wish I could find more people like you.
  • bcantrill 3y ago
    We have talked quite a bit about what it's like to be making hardware as a startup in our Oxide and Friends podcast[0] -- and one might be especially interested in the Q&A we did on Monday[1] after our launch got quite a bit of attention here on HN.[2] [0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/ https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/ [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P5Mk_IggE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P5Mk_IggE0 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36552015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36552015
• montereynack 3y ago
  www.sentineldevices.com We use machine learning to monitor industrial equipment for signs of faults or failures, and identify in real-time which signals are relevant to the failure/which ones a technician should look at first. The problem we're solving is that when a machine fails unexpectedly, 60% or more of a technician's time is spent just figuring out what was going on and what, specifically, went wrong. We want to cut that time by half or more by having our device be an engineer-in-a-box monitoring the equipment 24/7/365. We're also unique in that we're "zero-cloud" - we do all data collection, storage & processing (yes, even the AI training - not just inference) on-device, on a COTS hardware platform that fits in your hand. The idea is to be truly plug-and-play without having to figure out network infrastructure, and cybersecurity, and data storage costs, etc. etc. Demo video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhtLS3UfnPU&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhtLS3UfnPU&feature=youtu.be We're always interested in pilots; our website is admittedly fairly stealth mode, but if you know someone that works at a factory, they can reach out to forrest.shriver@sentineldevices.com
• gtf21 3y ago
  We (https://www.converge.io https://www.converge.io) both build sensors (and SaaS) and work with 3rd party sensors to analyse concrete operations and material performance for construction to help make it more efficient and sustainable. Hardware is definitely hard.
• tiffanyh 3y ago
  Kickstarter Huge # of products on Kickstarter are hardware. Below is the tech focused offerings (but there is many more categories). https://www.kickstarter.com/design-tech https://www.kickstarter.com/design-tech
• davidw 3y ago
  I worked for a home automation kind of thing a few years back and... it's hard. The part I worked on in software was fun, but it's just so difficult to deal with the lead times and difficulty of updating things and doing customer service. More power to you if you're making a go of it. Years ago, I worked on these, and it was so much fun, because of the variety of (smart) people involved, from tracing the light rays through the machine to motors, firmware, and all the rest. https://www.icare-world.com/us/product/icare-eidon/ https://www.icare-world.com/us/product/icare-eidon/
• konschubert 3y ago
  I am making and selling an eink smart screen. It can display a google calendar. You can also point it to any url that serves an image. Is it okay to post a link? https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-calendar https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale... I am planning to release more applications for it and I am opening the platform for 3rd party applications.
  • Rafuino 3y ago
    I'd love to get this but for iCal display. Any chance that's in the cards in the future?
    • konschubert 3y ago
      It’s in the cards, pretty high in the stack, but I never make promises. If you can write code and you don’t want to wait for me to add it to the default calendar app, you can build it and release it as a 3rd party app: https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-gallery/blob/main/HowToBuildAnApp.md https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-gallery/blob/ma...
      • Rafuino 3y ago
        Got it. I'm not the right person to build this functionality so I'll just wait to see if it comes and buy later if so!
  • gouthamve 3y ago
    I see that shipping to Europe is not yet supported. Do you have plans soon?
    • konschubert 3y ago
      CE certification is extremely expensive for a bootstrapped startup. Plus there is Elektroschrottverordnung and Verpackungsrichtlinie and all that stuff. You can send me an email at info@invisible-computers.com
• kokanee 3y ago
  I work on software at a hardware startup that is designing and manufacturing a next-generation electrolysis plant for the production of green hydrogen. My personal experience has led me to believe that opportunities to participate meaningfully in climate tech are exclusively available at hardware companies. Anyone attempting to solve climate change with software is at best skimming value off of the work being done by others in the physical world, and at worst creating markets for corporate greenwashing.
  • b112 3y ago
    Please contact me, see link in profile.
  • wiskinator 3y ago
    This sounds like great tech. Keep at it for the benefit of all of us.
  • samtho 3y ago
    > Anyone attempting to solve climate change with software is at best skimming value off of the work being done by others in the physical world, and at worst creating markets for corporate greenwashing. I fully agree with this assessment and I would love to hear more about your product.
  • rvense 3y ago
    > Anyone attempting to solve climate change with software is at best skimming value off of the work being done by others in the physical world, and at worst creating markets for corporate greenwashing. I've see so a lot of jobs popping up related to SaaS for compliance right now, so things like helping companies stay on top of regulation and track their own efforts and initiatives. I do get the impression that a lot of it is done sincerely, but it does have a hint of ye olde 'selling shovels in a gold rush'. Still, if it keeps people out of adtech and cryptocurrency it seems like a win.
    • fragmede 3y ago
      how do you sell shovels in a gold rush insincerely?
• aquaphile 3y ago
  We make the world's best baby car seats. https://www.kioma.us https://www.kioma.us Fatherly Magazine calls it "The Car Seat of the Future". It's been crash tested, flight inversion tested, flammability tested and mom tested. It is full of patented innovations to make kids safer and parenting more enjoyable. It required lots of material science, production techniques, supply chain adjustments, and a surprising amount of software (to model dynamic stress, and to run the robot and CNC trim paths). Once you get to the point you can clearly articulate your BOM and Specs to a manufacturer for MOQ=50, things get a lot easier. At the prototype stage we built everything ourselves, but now we use OEM manufacturers.
  • the_svd_doctor 3y ago
    Looks nice and easy to clean. I don't know why the regular "Target car seats" have so many creases and folded layers, it's a major PITA to clean :)
    • bombcar 3y ago
      Some are better than the Target basic ones, but even the "good" ones are way too complicated to clean, and it's like they've never even considered a kid might barf whilst in one, and some of the effluent will disappear into some weird crevice never to be revealed again.
    • aquaphile 3y ago
      Thanks! All the cushions are removable (velcro) so you can hit it with a hose and separately wash the cushions. The interior chassis surface is smooth, which is a big point of pride for us as it is easier to clean.
    • qingcharles 3y ago
      This feature is totally underrated in industrial design. I've had to clean many fridges over my years and every time I find horrible black mold in all sorts of crevices caused by poor design decisions and decisions based solely on cost.
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
• xenospn 3y ago
  I had one! Spent four years depleting my savings and burning through investor money before calling it quits. Most important lesson I've learned is to not build another Hardware startup with my own money. Leftover investment memo: https://www.notion.so/gethuan/Huan-Memo-1e6ee1d17d72440cb98101fbef3badda?pvs=4 https://www.notion.so/gethuan/Huan-Memo-1e6ee1d17d72440cb981...
• screye 3y ago
  Loads of hardware startups, but the communities are not in the Bay, Seattle or NYC. Most of the activity is not being generated by Americans or in America. Lots are being started in India, Dubai and China. Even the ones based out of the US or Singapore spend most of their time in Shenzen. In the US, I routinely see robotics and Healthcare hardware startups in Boston or San Diego, pseudo attached to the local university. No surprise that irobot and Boston dynamics are based out of Boston.
  • iancmceachern 3y ago
    I think there is a huge hardware startup ecosystem in the bay, I'm part of it. Especially for certain hardware specialties like medical,semiconductor, defence, space, etc.
  • mkipper 3y ago
    Another consideration is that a lot of hardware startups focus on industrial applications with customers that don't operate out of tech hubs. There are tons of small companies making hardware for oil & gas applications, but you'll mostly find them in areas where their customers are located (e.g. Texas, Alberta) and/or LCOL cities where you can find cheap real estate. This also applies to other industries like agriculture and automotive. These aren't "sexy" companies so you don't hear much about them, but I'd wager that if you add them up, they'd outnumber the number of hardware startups in NYC and the Bay Area.
    • moneywoes 3y ago
      Where do you find these companies? I imagine crunchbase isn’t the best spot
      • mkipper 3y ago
        Unfortunately I don't think there's a good way to find these companies unless you happen to live near them or work in the industry they sell to. In my experience, they normally get started and funded by local people in their industry and they sell back to local customers (at least initially) from their network, so there's very little in the way of advertising, especially at a national level. Also, they often hire from their network for early positions and local colleges/universities as they grow, so you might not even see them on job boards. If you're looking for companies that are a bit more established, you could try industry trade shows.
• kylixz 3y ago
  https://darkhive.ai https://darkhive.ai small uncrewed aerial systems for public safety. Other companies still dominate the market and for good reason. We aim to bring US-made equipment that is competitive and affordable.
  • atlasunshrugged 3y ago
    This is very cool! Is the intent that it'll have a bunch of modular stuff so law enforcement can equip it to do different tasks (e.g., different cameras or sensors)? Not sure if you ever saw the Axon (Taser) announcement that was quickly halted but they pitched doing something like this for schools with a taser attached. A bit dystopian but maybe useful given the awful number of school shootings and poor response times as evidenced by Uvalde
    • kylixz 3y ago
      The smaller unit we are building will have some different payload configs. We aren’t going for glass breakers and such based on feedback and what is most popular on the market (DJI). We want these to help mitigate the dangerous environments in public safety and be disposable. Like a frisbee. Shoot me an email! Happy to chat more.
  • genmud 3y ago
    Let me know if you need someone to test in a high heat environment and give you product feedback. I am on the UAS committee for a large city (1.6m+ people with 13k+ employees) and its amazing how many us-based companies don't take into account how hot it can be in the desert. I recently saw a vendor who needed to redesign/change their batteries and motors because of it. As some unsolicited advice, if you aren't working to get on the DIU Blue list [1], I highly recommend it. Many if not most public safety agencies are using that to make purchasing decisions. I have been sounding the alarm on how DJI is likely going to get banned at some point with all the trade shenanigans going on, but many of the US based companies just aren't as operator friendly. [1] - https://www.diu.mil/blue-uas https://www.diu.mil/blue-uas
    • 3y ago
• the_mar 3y ago
  Thalo Labs a New York City-based company focused on accelerating our path to a net-negative carbon society. We develop systems (hardware+software) that make it easy to measure and capture GHG emissions at the scale of the built environment. We are driven to provide practical solutions to emissions now and scale with the future of the green grid. See current open roles here: https://jobs.lever.co/thalolabs https://jobs.lever.co/thalolabs
• iancmceachern 3y ago
  I work in this space. Medical devices mostly, surgical robotics, active implantable devices (LVADS, artificial hearts), dialysis, monitoring and testing and also orthopedic stuff like bone taps, drills, screws and surgical navigation. I have a portfolio website at www.iancollmceachern.com
• devmunchies 3y ago
  I come from a traditional full-stack engineering background (web frontend + backend) and recently founded a smart toy company[1], the first product built on ESP32-S3. I took a few weeks for me to get comfortable writing firmware (although there is another more experienced engineer doing the primary work and electrical). I'm really excited for Espressif (the chip maker) to roll out newer versions of their microcontrollers on RISC-V. I would love to see a renaissance of inexpensive personal devices. [1]: We're pre-launch so nothing to share now.
  • leros 3y ago
    I have a similar background as you. How are you finding handling the mechanical side of things? I assume your toy is more than a PCB.
    • devmunchies 3y ago
      There are no motors, so more simple. There are mics, speakers, LEDs, LCDs, buttons, etc. I have a firmware engineer who also does electrical engineering, and a mechanical engineer who works with manufacturing, compliance, and industrial design.
      • leros 3y ago
        Gotcha. You have a team of people helping out. Sounds super fun!
• cmicali 3y ago
  At Sense we make a home energy monitor that provides real-time appliance-level monitoring using machine learning. Hardware is indeed hard as everyone said it would be! https://sense.com https://sense.com
  • comprambler 3y ago
    This seems exactly like neurio, but Generac seems to have shuttered that product.
  • thesh4d0w 3y ago
    That seems.... really expensive? $165 will get you an emporia with 16 sensors so you don't need any AI trying to decipher your usage, compared to $300 for yours that only gives you sensors for your main feed. Considering it's trivial to find schematics online showing how to wire a clamp current meter into an esp32, what have you found to be difficult about the hardware? I would expect the AI detection of individual appliances would be the hard part.
  • ycombinatornews 3y ago
    Glad to see Sense here! Been using it for 3+ years and am surprised how good it detects electrical appliances and other typical stuff. Do you have any plans regarding always on load? So hard to track it down…
• ezekg 3y ago
  Took me awhile to remember what it was called, but TinyPilot [^0] by mtlynch is pretty cool. Michael sometimes writes about running a hardware business on his blog [^1]. Not exactly a startup, but a small business. [^0]: https://tinypilotkvm.com https://tinypilotkvm.com [^1]: https://mtlynch.io/posts https://mtlynch.io/posts
  • djmips 3y ago
    Is TinyPilot hardware - it looks more like software?
    • ezekg 3y ago
      Yes: https://tinypilotkvm.com/product/tinypilot-voyager2a https://tinypilotkvm.com/product/tinypilot-voyager2a
  • liminalsunset 3y ago
    Seems like currently the competitors to this product are the Pi-KVM and the Blikvm. Seems like Blikvm have a number of interesting form factors, such as PCIe card and rack mount, which may be interesting to those looking into this space
  • SpaceL10n 3y ago
    We're trialing TinyPilot right now at my employer. They're very easy to work with and are willing to work with small companies to find new use cases.
  • LoganDark 3y ago
    1080p makes it a total non-starter for me, that sort of resolution is over a decade out of date, even for small laptops. Not sure why people think it's an acceptable maximum.
    • ezekg 3y ago
      I use 1080p everyday... on purpose. How else am I going to get 144+ FPS when gaming?
• erulabs 3y ago
  We make tiny Linux servers packed with real devops tools (but also sporting a somewhat-easy-ish-to-use UI) for home-hosting and self-teaching: https://pibox.io https://pibox.io - works great with Jellyfin!
  • Unstylish6010 3y ago
    Two big 'ole thumbs up for Kubesail and the Pibox! Been running mine since November of 2022 and it's great. As a complete novice I was able to self-host Jellyfin, Bitwarden, Nextcloud, Resilio Sync, and Flatnotes pretty much all in a few minutes. The Pibox is great, and the folks at Kubesail are wonderful.
  • atentaten 3y ago
    I'll look into purchasing one. My Jellyfin system drive failed on an old Dell Optiplex. I just need to replace and re-image the hdd, but this looks fun. Is it well ventilated?
    • erulabs 3y ago
      It does have a small noctua fan which is usually overkill, and several users have added low profile heatsinks. I don’t have any heat problems and mine are stacked in a big pile :P
  • matifali 3y ago
    thumbs up
  • vocatan 3y ago
    MAJOR two thumbs up on this one - the pibox is a very cool product, great for learning, easy to deploy on, and powerful enough for smaller tasks. the Kubesail folks are responsive (both in email and on their Discord server). Couldn't be happier!
• greatjack613 3y ago
  We develop huge 32" interactive display touch screens for trade shows and conferences that allow users to interact with apps and websites that a company wants to show. They look amazing and are always a show stopper for booths. They run a custom os based on AOSP which allows companies to use there pre made android app for the display instead of having to build anything custom. We also offer a website module that will display your website in full glory and interactivity. For more information or to rent a display you can send us an email isaac@bigtopdisplays.com
  • hnfuzzy 3y ago
    "You solved it, congrats!" :) Got an email bounce from your address. Would love to hear about your AOSP experience!
    • greatjack613 3y ago
      Thanks! I Misspelled the email, it's fixed now! Looking forward to hearing from you.
• nrp 3y ago
  We’re building hardware, but I also extracted some of the business philosophy behind Framework to share what I believe “hardware is hard” means: https://eclecti.cc/bytes/what-hardware-is-hard-really-means https://eclecti.cc/bytes/what-hardware-is-hard-really-means
• arxpoetica 3y ago
  Move to Utah. Lots of software growth, but much of that is hardware related.
• kfreds 3y ago
  Tillitis AB Our first product is the TKey - a new kind of USB security key - which we have been selling since May. TKey is very likely the most open source USB security key in the world, as well as the first one to feature unconditional measured boot, which we use as a method for key derivation. Tillitis AB is a sister company of Mullvad VPN AB and Glasklar Teknik AB.
  • fsflover 3y ago
    How does this compare with Librem Key?
    • knekt 3y ago
      Note: This reply is primarily copied from another comment I made comparing the TKey to another key. I'm sure kfreds can provide a far more in-depth answer, but unlike the Librem Key, which (seems to) stores information locally that is then accessed and passed along to a device, there is no way of storing an application (or any other data) on a TKey. Rather, a device app must be loaded onto the TKey every time you plug it in. Since each TKey device contains a Unique Device Secret, alongside it generating a hash of the application binary, and accepting an optional user-provided seed, it can derive key material unique to each application. If the exact same application and user-seed are provided each time, the application will return the same result. This is, for example, how one can use the TKey for signing files and SSH. The generated public/private key pair will always be the same, without requiring any data to be stored. Going back to your question, some of the differences include that: The TKey allows you to program and use your own applications, the TKey is fully open source (both HW and FW), there are no limits on the number of services the TKey can be used for, and the TKey uses USB C (meaning one can for example use it with a smartphone). Note: This is a pretty basic description of the TKey, there's far more to it, but it should explain some of the difference! //Disclosure: I currently work at Tillitis.
  • ajolly 3y ago
    How does this compare to an onlykey?
• j4nek 3y ago
  interesting that most submission here are startups which are selling some hardware where ML is the main product and no-one who is doing discrete (analog) electronics
• simlevesque 3y ago
  We make physical advertising (DOOH) with real time bidding. If you have an image you want to advertise you just submit it and select the screens/locations where you'd like to end up and choose what you want to pay. Then we approve and rate your ad and if you are the highest bidder (ad quality is part of the equation too) you can end up on the screen right then. The whole process can take 20 minutes, from signup to your ad being shown in businesses versus weeks to months for traditional advertising. Also the minimum payment is only 20$. We have all sorts of non-profits, local bands, anything you can think of, on the network. I think we have the lowest barrier of entry of the industry. https://oa.media/en/ https://oa.media/en/ If you'd like to discuss my email is in my profile.
  • talldatethrow 3y ago
    The first button looks like a button but doesn't go anywhere. Other buttons took me to pages in another language.
    • simlevesque 3y ago
      I'm on it.
• eeemmmooo 3y ago
  I own multiple interactive entertainment concepts. We build room scale hardware and props. So definitely a bit different than normal consumer hardware, but still have a lot of the same problems. One of our issues is we our low volume and unique use cases for our hardware. I’d love to connect with anyone else doing similar things. My info is in my bio. Breakoutgames.Com Activate.games
  • daswolle 3y ago
    This is really cool! I've seen some videos of these and I'm jealous they're so far away. What sort of issues do you have? Is the hardware very custom? It seems like a concept that could explode as a franchise or even template model like escape rooms a few years back.
• ilaksh 3y ago
  I think it would be nice if someone made a high-performance ASIC specifically for tinygrad.
  • Tepix 3y ago
    Would this be similar to the Google's Coral Edge accelerators?
    • ilaksh 3y ago
      I guess but I think Hotz said that tinygrad was specifically designed to _not_ be Turing complete, which allows for potentially much greater optimization and performance than existing accelerators which have to accommodate that.
• ed_ 3y ago
  We're working on "life support systems" for algae photobioreactors. This includes monitoring the health of the algae, monitoring and controlling the environment to optimise algae growth, providing feedback to users on growth and experiment progress, and uploading data to our own cloud. We're more software than hardware, but without the hardware capability we wouldn't have been able to attempt it. Previously we tried little "Singing Christmas Trees" as well [0], and while they were certainly nifty, we couldn't find the market for them at the price. [0] https://www.youtube.com/@pixolighting https://www.youtube.com/@pixolighting
  • samstave 3y ago
    Do you recall the game(?) 'LIGHT BRIGHT' Which consisted of a black-cardboard-paper with a pattern on it connect-the-dots-style - and you would plug into each 'dot' a plastic pin, then it would light-up at you would see the pattern/design in full form? - Imagine your xmas trees as a grid of LEDs and they are pressable/de-pressable (toggle) and kids can draw out a pattern, then have the machine animate the pattern in certain ways... as it understands the intent of the drawing as being a car/tree/person/animal whatever...
    • ed_ 3y ago
      We did look at the idea of letting people arbitrarily arrange a string of LEDs then somehow map the sub-models to the new positions (which LEDs are "left eye open", which are "mouth shape E", etc.), but we couldn't find an LED string we liked that was both cheap and individually-addressable. Also on the drawing board was some sort of "tiles" of letters which would be be rearranged by the user and illuminated in a fixed grid, then have different messages light up like a wordsearch. It could also be used to make those "word clocks" that are out there, that spell out "it is half past four" for example.
  • algas 3y ago
    That's super cool! I worked last year on an algae bioreactor. I was growing chlorella in plastic bottles in my room, just for the heck of it. That year I also met some people working for a University of Edinburgh startup using algae to consume the tails from whiskey production. Honestly, I really hope that algaes see a wider adoption in consumer and business processes, because they're really fun and fascinating organisms. Out of curiosity, are you looking for interns? I can work in the UK and the US. If you have contact information of some kind, I can send you my resume!
• dazhbog 3y ago
  I run 2 small IoT startups. One is smart agriculture related, we do ambient and soil moisture sensors https://pycno.co https://pycno.co Second, (from the learnings of the first one) offers a smart IoT gateway (cellular, WiFi,LoRa, etc.) with modular cartridges (like SNES) for connecting sensors and actuators from any 3rd party vendor https://deeporbital.com https://deeporbital.com
  • moneywoes 3y ago
    Seems very niche May I ask how you got in this venture?
    • dazhbog 3y ago
      Totally random, wanted to do home automation first but it wasn't a big pain for customers (it was a nice to have) and the market was very crowded. Started talking with agriculture companies and just developed whatever they wanted (HW/SW). Agriculture is a slower moving industry, which gave us time to learn from our plethora of mistakes. At the end of the day, home automation or agriculture, both needed some measuring, uploading and graphing of data.
• nickpinkston 3y ago
  We're building Volition [1] to organize the world's mechanical components for MechEs, roboticists, mfg. techs, and beyond. Imagine McMaster-like UI quality, but ultimately across every good OEM / distributor. I previously built Plethora (automated CNC machining) and am happy to help all hardware / manufacturing startup folks. Please feel free to reach out. [1] https://govolition.com/ https://govolition.com/
  • algas 3y ago
    This looks fantastic. It would be really great to have some proper competition to McMaster in terms of making part information accessible. I'll keep this in mind for future products, good luck bringing it fully to market!
    • nickpinkston 3y ago
      Thank you! Would welcome any and all feedback you've got!
  • myself248 3y ago
    Ever since I first touched Octopart, I've wished there was an Octopart for mechanical components. This looks like it comes very close, and I love the look and feel.
  • skelpmargyar 3y ago
    Wow, your website is excellent and FAST. Good luck to you.
• hnfuzzy 3y ago
  Working solo on building an Android-compatible device, coming from a pure-software background. It's certainly a different world than the OSS community and available resources there, but the homebrew/hobbyist scene seems to have made a number of things more accessible over the past few years. I'm struggling with how to put an Android-compatible board together with just the peripherals I want (similar to a Pi but slimmed down), and lining up suppliers/manufacturers who can put it together. Looking for help/guidance on people familiar with any aspects of this!
  • _benj 3y ago
    not an expert by any means on this, but I've worked before with the Khadas VIM boards, which are development boards where you can install Android and start developing your project. The advantage of those is that they use Amlogic chips which are very affordable and come pretty much ready as product from Alibaba (search for "android box" and you'll find a bunch of white-label board/cases that are ready to be used) Alternatively, if yoou want more control/performance than what Android gives you, you can also look into Buildroot, which makes it very easy to build a custom linux distribution with your application in it, that is, you get a firmware ready to burn in your board with linux and your app running in it. Good luck!
• arroz 3y ago
  I work in what used to be an EDA startup Now it was acquired by a big one though Not really hardware but almost
• mNovak 3y ago
  Our company is developing affordable phased array antennas. The end goal is to serve the next-generation commercial wireless communications and sensing markets (e.g. 5G/6G, mmW imaging radar, etc), though as we're bootstrapped most of our work currently is in Defense. On the very off chance there's other RF or antenna engineers out there, we're hiring (US remote)!
  • electroagenda 3y ago
    What's the name of the company?
    • mNovak 3y ago
      Novaa RF, website [1] though it's really just a splash page [1] https://www.novaarf.com/ https://www.novaarf.com/
• dthakur 3y ago
  We mow laws with robots. https://yard.bot https://yard.bot
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• runjake 3y ago
  bcantrill[1] is here. Does Oxide[2] count as a hardware startup? 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcantrill https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bcantrill 2. https://oxide.computer/ https://oxide.computer/
  • bcantrill 3y ago
    If we don't count as a hardware startup, I'm going to have some questions about what does count as a hardware startup. ;)
• jonahss 3y ago
  I'm building trading cards made with e-ink displays. https://www.wyldcard.io/blog/introducing-wyldcard https://www.wyldcard.io/blog/introducing-wyldcard https://www.crowdsupply.com/wyldcard/wyldcard-devkit https://www.crowdsupply.com/wyldcard/wyldcard-devkit
  • techperson20007 3y ago
    I remember reading your post about this on HN a while back. You are creating some sick tech. Hope you can blow up.
  • gigaflop 3y ago
    I had an idea that you might be able to build, now that I see 'you' again: Would you ever design an E-Ink "Life and token counter" aimed at people who play Commander format MTG? Given the amount of time and effort it would take me to DIY, I'd easily pay $50ish for a standalone device of the type.
    • distortionfield 3y ago
      Seconding this, then I wouldn’t have to use my phone all the time.
• Simon_O_Rourke 3y ago
  A couple of good friends of mine spun out hardware start-ups over the past five years. Even though I'm a data/software guy, I helped out with both, up to and including soldering components onto demo boards. Since I've a couple of kids, mortgage, temperamental automobile etc. etc. I wasn't in the position to work for either startup for low salary/high equity though, and I'm kind of glad I didn't TBH. The first startup should be way bigger and well known than it is, but the product/market fit isn't too good and marketing in general is poorly executed. This startup looks at electro-muscular stimulation to help out diabetic and pre-diabetic folks with getting some exercise (and folks with mobility/joint issues). To be honest I can't see this company surviving another five years unless there's some radical shake up in the way it's marketed, which is as a consumer device rather than a medical device. The second startup is a spin out from a medical devices incubator, and is a real niche market - basically nerve implants to manage chronic pain. The target market is something ridiculously small, on the order of a handful of people per 100k who may benefit from it. At the moment, the only thing keeping this startup afloat seems to be generous research grants, can't really see how they can stay going unless the overall plan is to drive some hype and hope to get acquired by some bigger fish.
• techdragon 3y ago
  Space robotics, trying to build the Caterpillar of construction and maintenance on orbit. Not a lot to show yet but that’s unsurprising because it takes quite a while to get this sort of thing built up to the point where your printing prototypes or bending metal, and it’s along road from there to putting anything into orbit. Didn’t make the cut for YC Summer 2023, looking forward to applying again with 6 more months of development progress…
  • starik36 3y ago
    Any thought given to the fact that every startup in the past decade that attempted in-orbit manufacturing failed or had massive trouble?
    • distortionfield 3y ago
      I’m sure they haven’t thought about it at all /s Seriously, what kind of question is this? The entire point of engineering is to try things that are new or have not previously been done. Do you think SpaceX gave a lot of thought to prior failures around reusability?
      • starik36 3y ago
        My point is that all these companies over the years made grand proclamations until they hit the hard reality that manufacturing in space is either not feasible, not economic, not possible or too complicated. I am skeptical at this point.
    • techdragon 3y ago
      Yep. It’s why we’re not focusing on manufacturing. There’s plenty of demand for maintenance like the life extension services based on getting maximum value from existing hardware on orbit, Lockheed Martin have sold several Mission Extension Vehicles and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for that market. There’s other factors such that make now the time, contracts and money changing hands for commercial space stations, with two firmly underway with a third looking promising and two more potential ones from legitimately capable companies just not yet past the point where it’s clear construction will take place. All sorts of stuff can last longer and have better ROI for owners and operators if suitable maintenance can be performed on it.
• Wolley 3y ago
  I've been working on a modular vacuum cleaner robot for around 5 years: https://wolley.se https://wolley.se I have done it in my spare time but the dream is to be able to sell it as a kit and work on it full time.
  • gnramires 3y ago
    Awesome. I had a similar idea. Maybe we could join forces one day?... I thought about hacking and modding existing robots (I have one at home that has great hardware, but the software is terrible!). Definitely set up a Liberapay account to get support (if you need economic support), although I guess most people would want to see proof of concept first. One thing that would be great is to crowdsource the software, and maybe the training data for ML. The open source community got together and made the top chess and go engines with community GPU training, why not do the same for robot vacuums? Good luck! :)
    • Wolley 3y ago
      Thanks! Sure, there's a lot of more work to do, especially the software for the "brain". I have mostly focused on the mechanics and electronics since that's the most exciting/new for me. I will in a couple of months have a skeleton/chassi finished and then the "only" thing left is to write the software to make it autonomous. The idea is to keep it really simple in the beginning and let it run on a Raspberry Pi Zero W. Using a Raspberry Pi opens up the platform for more people and software. Yes, I would want to have something that works fine before starting to sell components, parts or accepting donations etc.
  • gnramires 3y ago
    Side note: People here often say that hardware is hard, but I think OSHW has the upside of de-risking it too (although I might be somewhat biased in my enthusiastic support of OSHW). If other people are producing it (from 3d printing at home to commercial manufacturing), you don't have manufacturing risks at all. The large costs and difficulty involved are probably mostly around manufacturing. Also by extending the development phase and working closely with customers you can find a product-market fit more naturally (and iterate if it fails... or just abandon it, I guess). If all goes wrong you've contributed an open source project... The hard part of course in that case is convincing your users and any company that decides to manufacture your hardware to pay you. But not unheard of, see LumenPNP (https://opulo.io/products/lumenpnp https://opulo.io/products/lumenpnp) My dream is a completely (or almost completely) open society, where most development is open and people collaborate more or less freely, and we have good mechanisms (and enough good sense individually?) to reward and invest in all this work.
• pinkmuffinere 3y ago
  We make stingray resistant booties! Stingray stings are painful and can be dangerous, and the fear of getting stung can take the enjoyment out of the beach. We’ve mainly targeted surfers so far, but they could be useful for any beach-goer. Definitely been dealing with the fact that “hardware is hard”. We had a design we were fairly happy with about two years ago, but have been struggling to get it manufactured since then. We’re making progress, but it’s always slow. Our website is www.mydragonskin.com
  • yardie 3y ago
    Steve Irwin's death[0] has never not been on my mind anytime a stingray gets near me. I'm like "hey little fella, I'm going to slowly back away to avoid both of us freaking out and one of us may end up dead." Best of luck with your startup! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Irwin
    • xenospn 3y ago
      How often do you find yourself near a stingray?
    • pinkmuffinere 3y ago
      Thanks! Just for posterity: Steve Irwin’s death was really very unusual. Stingrays can be scary, but deaths directly due to stingray stings are pretty rare. Contaminated wounds are more common and can lead to serious issues, but even that is not normal. We’ve met multiple people who’ve gotten 10+ stings, but I only know one person who had serious issues due to contamination.
  • kulahan 3y ago
    Is there any interest in your company on making the same thing for pets, or at least dogs? My pops takes his dog surfing most days, and there are lots and lots of urchins around. The extra safety would be nice.
    • pinkmuffinere 3y ago
• cactacea 3y ago
  Just a one man show for now but this is my current side project: https://www.tesotaoverland.com/product/apds https://www.tesotaoverland.com/product/apds The idea is that this replaces a many of the components you'd normally use to build out a 12V electrical system for a van or 4wd truck. Just plug everything in to the WAGO connectors, no bus bars, fuse blocks or difficult crimp connections required.
  • evntdrvn 3y ago
    Nifty!! Good luck :)
  • bombcar 3y ago
    Something that can handle those kinds of amps and had a simple low-voltage cut off would be amazing (I'm thinking using them for abuse of power tool batteries, which normally don't have a cutoff in them). There are weird adjustable ones on eBay but they're not terribly reliable and seem to not handle larger amperages.
  • rsaxvc 3y ago
    This would've been so nice when I was rebuilding an RV. I had converted nearly everything to 12V(before Dell & IBM did charger authentication) and ended up with little 12V fused distribution blocks everywhere.
  • sitkack 3y ago
    Sweet! I want the same thing plus current and voltage monitoring and the ability to shutdown certain circuits. I have a design for a wifi (or bt) operated 1000A relay to disconnect the starting and the house batteries.
    • cactacea 3y ago
      You may have seen this already but the Redarc RedVision system might be more in line with your use case: https://www.redarcelectronics.com/us/redvision https://www.redarcelectronics.com/us/redvision
• redband 3y ago
  We're building an AI tool and die maker. Never officially launched on HN but was YC W21 (https://atomic.industries https://atomic.industries). I would argue this is one of the most challenging intersections of software and hardware in the world. We are building a vertically integrated system that can design and fabricate tooling (injection molds, etc).
  • contingencies 3y ago
    Consider broadening your scope. Your offering appears to target a manufacturing stage where it its value-add is relatively capped: since tools, materials and processes are already specified. While generative specification of mould assemblies is powerful, we all know fabrication is the main pain point. Other process geometries such as jigs and fixtures can be similarly critical and deliver more value more quickly and this leads in to questions of flow (handling/storage/palletizing), even machine tool worktable systems. Huge amounts of money are routinely lost on poor process investments due to invisible process alternatives. Be any part of a general solution there, and you're at the table before a factory is built, when it has resource allocation questions, to tune maintenance processes, or when it needs new revenue streams. While it's hard to be all things to all people, simply having an integrated offering with an MVP in each major process engineering zone will help immensely. It's certainly more than the big players have tabled (who are addicted to consulting on the status quo), and would therefore set you up well for acquisition.
• contingencies 3y ago
  Very high complexity, long slog (7+ years) food automation robotics venture here. We actually moved to Shenzhen (from elsewhere in China), then moved out of Shenzhen as we matured to a point where additional industrial space was required: large blocks of land around Shenzhen are prohibitively expensive. For us, in-house manufacturing and all that goes with it are firmly in-scope. We maintain a presence for supply chain, but EOY 2022 moved operations out of China owing to an alignment of operational challenges under the current domestic environment, macro-political conditions, venture maturity and correspondingly changing needs. Managing that move alone was an extremely complex challenge involving all manner of curveballs - more than enough for a decent film. We anticipate raising in the US 4Q this year for 2024 US go-to-market. Coming from software, hard is an understatement. Purely on the R&D front we've had to successfully innovate in fields as varied as electrical and power engineering, electronic engineering, global cross-market food regulations, HVAC, hydraulics, mechanical engineering, process engineering, refrigeration. On the business front we've had to tackle - as an early stage venture - the many challenges of cross-border operations including cross-border financing, HR, intellectual property, legal, a shifting array of visa rules, supply chain (chipageddon, shipageddon), etc. The team has waxed and waned up to over a dozen full time and back down to two at present. Over this time I've seen countless tangentially-aligned investment fads and trends come and go: Chinese 'New Retail', YC's short-lived move to China (flew me to Beijing to interview with the partners), COVID-fuelled global overinvestment in last-mile food delivery, drone delivery, ghost kitchens, 15 minute groceries, etc. Right now there's a huge number of ventures failing in related spaces, but we remain very confident. We persist largely because we started from a good place (already spoke fluent Chinese, knew China, could self-fund), have focused on a genuinely venture-scale business strategy, maintained a low burn rate, stuck to fundamentals, ignored the trends, and I am personally lucky enough to have both a hugely supportive family and early stage investor sharing my high conviction plus enough residual resources from a prior exit to continue to invest personally. At this point, our technology is genuinely best in class globally by multiple objective metrics (eg. footprint, cost per location, degree of automation), and we are correspondingly well placed for aggressive venture-scale growth and returns. We therefore look forward to securing significant US funding, leveraging our China supply chain, and consolidating US hiring and operations to achieve go-to-market. But damn, has it been a trip!
• grepLeigh 3y ago
  My startup https://printnanny.ai/ https://printnanny.ai/ provides monitoring/automation SaaS for 3D printers, but most venture capitalists I've met (including YC partners) categorize PrintNanny as a hardware startup. I offer Raspberry Pi kits due to shortages/scalper bots. Most of my customers can't find 1-3 Raspberry Pi 4, but I'm able to place orders for 50+ units. I'm not sure if I'll continue the kit line of business; fulfilling hardware products as a solo founder is tough.
• matthewmacleod 3y ago
  We do warehouse analysis using autonomous robots: https://www.dexory.com https://www.dexory.com Hardware is hard – not just the actual work, but the different approaches needed to development, management, and fundraising. We started in the consumer space, moved to the retail/customer service space, and only really hit our stride when we pivoted to the logistics space. Our series A was announced last week so there's plenty of momentum and the industry generally is enthusiastic about technology. Ongoing improvements in robotics technology generally is finally making this sort of application feasible!
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• mcbuilder 3y ago
  I've been in hardware startup bizz for pretty long, starting to feel like an ancient being. It's been all AI/ML, so I'm a software/research type guy in the HW space.
• testmasterflex 3y ago
  As a student living in a small studio I hated that everyone could hear your bathroom business. 10 years later I’m now trying to solve this problem for small homes and businesses. Loodio is a bathroom privacy device: https://loodio.com https://loodio.com
• johnjago 3y ago
  OutSail Shipping is turning any cargo ship into a sailboat — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35426482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35426482 I apologize if it’s been posted. Not sure if there’s a good way to search 400 comments on HN.
• scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
  I don't run the show and it's not my company, but I work on simulation devices for developing surgical skills. We have these MEMS and laser sensors for tracking surgical tool movements that the founder came up with. My impression after 3 years in a product role is that it is amazing what a ~5 engineer team is capable of achieving over a couple of years. However, we're located in Poland so employees are cheap, we're heavily subsidized by huge grants and funding. Our offices/facility is in the middle of nowhere. The engineers are quite stressed out because their work depends on many external factors that they don't have much control over (shipping, ordering components, manual assembly etc.). They literally run a workshop - they argue about who's using the tools, what the 3D printer schedule is like. It's so many things at the same time - it's super slow, production and QA is a comedy, design changes are challenging to implement. Product certification and patenting is an enormous challenge. Business is super slow (our customers take years to make up their mind and they buy with public tenders). But on the other hand... they do also seem happy and proud. I mean I love the product, and I love showing it off, UX testing, etc. And there are few competitors on the market, so it's also quite stable. I think hardware is more accessible and doable than it used to be - 'hardware is hard' is something my industrial designer dad would repeat in the 90's.
  • arandr0x 3y ago
    > we're heavily subsidized by huge grants and funding this is how it is in Canada too! My city has a huge manufacturing sector so a lot of these little startups with super niche products that take lots of R&D are found there. But no one talks about us because engineers aren't paid doctor money here (the grants aren't THAT good, which I think in the US defense sector they are).
• zrnsm 3y ago
  Aspinity, Inc. https://www.aspinity.com/ https://www.aspinity.com/ We're a semiconductor startup working on ultra-low power programmable analog devices. We're always looking to hire. We need expertise in the following areas: analog design, semiconductor production and test, embedded systems, ML model development and infrastructure, digital/analog signal processing, PCB design and test, analog circuit simulation, compiler infrastructure, SDK development and more. Software we use: Rust, C, Python, PyTorch. Email me directly at nicolas@aspinity.com to connect. We're based in Pittsburgh.
• SpaceL10n 3y ago
  I'm head of engineering at a local kiosk company (www.advancedkiosks.com) and we are doing fun things with very little resources! We recently implemented Google MediaPipe for presence detection. That was fun. We use custom printed microcontroller boards to control certain peripherals like LED strips and fans. We design in 3D print our own brackets. Things like that. The job requires a lot of creativity and knitting together of technologies. Pretty good fun. Beats writing yet another distributed CRUD SaaS app...though we do have a couple of those. I don't know if my employer qualifies as a startup, but we're pretty small and doing cool things.
  • _benj 3y ago
    So cool, and I love all the mentions of "fun" :-) I remember implementing a "kiosk" but the way my employer wanted it was a full screen electron/react app running on a windows server. It was such a pain working around windows to grab full screen, start a GUI application and so on... all the while I kept thinking, this could be a "simple" Qt/QML app running on frame buffer on an RPI! Heck, we could even customize the startup screen, and it would be easily a magnitude faster with 1/100 the hardware!
    • SpaceL10n 3y ago
      That surprised me also. We ended up writing a window manager application to force the kiosk UI window to always be on top and I up front...even after all the registry edits. So, yup, I feel you there!
    • dilawar 3y ago
      https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~gogo/humor/hum_toast.html https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~gogo/humor/hum_toast.html
      • _benj 3y ago
        This made me laugh as my soul shriveled from the memories of codebases I’ve worked with :’-) I’m surprised at how some software companies actually survive!
• wienke 3y ago
  At https://www.thethingsindustries.com https://www.thethingsindustries.com and the open source LoRaWAN developer platform https://www.thethingsnetwork.org https://www.thethingsnetwork.org we used to do a lot of hardware ourselves: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/419277966/the-things-network https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/419277966/the-things-ne.... Now we do very little and only focus on the SaaS network management part of it. We still have this product www.genericnode.com We now have 220 hardware partners that can do it much much better than us: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/device-repository/ https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/device-repository/
• ijustlovemath 3y ago
  We're building a closed loop artificial pancreas (think dialysis but for blood sugar) for hospital use -- the first of its kind in the US. There's a massive unmet need; all critical care patients, and all people with diabetes in the hospital could benefit. Studies have shown you can achieve a 30% reduction in mortality, and 25% reduction in length of stay, in addition to the hours per day you save nurses from managing blood sugar. It's a win/win/win on the lives saved/cost savings/nursing time saves, so we think it'll be pretty important when we hit the market! Sad to see how few other hard healthtech people there are here, they seem to be few and far between.
  • wanderingmoose 3y ago
    Can you tell me the difference between your product on the types of prescription cgm + insulin pump combos like dexcom/tandem which offer some level insulin control? I'm just curious. I run an xDrip set up and I've played around with a couple of the "DIY" closed loop setups.
    • ijustlovemath 3y ago
      Our device is for inpatient use, so it's a little more complicated than your typical DIY APS you might be used to as a T1/T2. You have to account for all kinds of different drug interactions, perfusion issues, undergoing surgical procedures, etc etc. The biggest single difference is that we use dextrose as a way to quickly recover from lows (like an automated orange juice dispenser). Because we're in the hospital and can access IV lines, we also have rapid access to data, and the drugs we infuse get taken up much quicker (5-10 minutes for insulin, 3 minutes for dextrose). The terminology is overlapping but the space is very different than outpatient glucose control.
      • jablongo 3y ago
        Why use dextrose instead of glucagon for lows? B/C patient liver function may be compromised more often in the in patient setting?
• gimili 3y ago
  Not a hardware startup per-se, but we are ex-satellite engineers who out if frustration with available tooling have developed the engineering software every hardware engineer deserves: https://www.valispace.com https://www.valispace.com Also just released the first hardware engineering ai assistant: https://youtu.be/uLEOPpqiUok https://youtu.be/uLEOPpqiUok
  • behnamoh 3y ago
    OP said “hardware”.
    • distortionfield 3y ago
      This is meaningfully hardware adjacent, stop being a stick in the mud.
      • behnamoh 3y ago
        Stop allowing irrelevant comments in a thread that clearly says "hardware" startup.
        • distortionfield 3y ago
          It’s clearly not low effort or irrelevant, chill out with the thread policing.
  • cuSetanta 3y ago
    Oh sweet, hey Valispace. I can vouch for this software as a spacecraft integrator. I worked with it a few years back as part of a trial and the power of inputing real world hardware measurements of equipment back into a system and see the impact of the measurements system wide is very powerful. While it is aimed at the spacecraft industry, I can see any industry with concurrent engineering taking advantage of this sort of system.
  • kataklasm 3y ago
    I have found this software to be very unintuitive with bad UI/UX, unfortunately. The utility of the software is good amd it fills a vital gap for concurrent engineering, but UI/UX needs to be improved badly.
• zackees 3y ago
  Very early stage, but I have a small electronic jewelry project that merges voice sensing electronics to timeless gemstones and bespoke hand wrapped high end jewelry. The value here is that everyone wants to be more important. A shining crystal that pulses with your voice makes you a celebrity everywhere you go. Later versions will include an AI assistant that is tuned specifically to keeping you on task and engaged.
• fzliu 3y ago
  We did (and still do) indoor localization (essentially GPS for indoor spaces). We started off building our own hardware and during the prototyping phase, we built a quad-channel software defined radio: https://github.com/fzliu/osdr-q10 https://github.com/fzliu/osdr-q10 My 2¢: don't do a hardware startup. Iteration cycles are long and expensive, funding is minimal, and if you're successful you'll be squeezed out of the market by giants such as Intel.
  • shamoh 3y ago
    Alternate pov: hardware lacks the kind of off-the-shelf tooling that software has developed, so engineers/founders feel like they have to develop a lot of non-critical things in-house. I'd argue most startups would be better off ruthlessly prioritising requirements and using poorer, off-the-shelf components, and building their advantage at the software-hardware intersection
• reachableceo 3y ago
  I’m cofounder and CTO of a self funded , post revenue , pre profit hardware startup . High altitude balloons that are payload agnostic. Working on the mass manufacturing process. Make revenue through consulting and renting out the hardware lab when we aren’t using it. Austin Texas Charles@turnsys.com to connect .
• replicatorblog 3y ago
  Our fund, Founder Collective, isn't hardware-focused, but we have backed a lot of transformative hardware startups – E.g., Whoop, Formlabs, Cruise, Desktop Metal, Kinsa, Running Tide. We've also backed a bunch that haven't been able to make it work. It's a tantalizing space, but wickedly hard. That said, we remain ever optimistic and if you're building something in hardware, please reach out – joeflaherty@foundercollective.com
• beambot 3y ago
  Cobalt Robotics - physical robots for safety, security & facilities management. Predominantly big-enterprise B2B. SaaS-like unit economics. Post-Series C with marquee investors (BloombergBeta, Sequoia, Coatue, etc). Robots in 8 countries. https://www.cobaltrobotics.com/ https://www.cobaltrobotics.com/
• mvolfik 3y ago
  I was briefly interviewing with hardwario.com, a small Czech startup focused on industrial IoT built on open-source technologies. They are starting a new Rust project, and they seem to be doing pretty good!
• franckl 3y ago
  We are building the world's highest temperature heat pump. It can reach 1000℉, when other commercial heat pumps usually reach a maximum of 320 ℉. It is a big deal because factories have to rely on polluting natural gas to produce their process heat. We estimate that it represents 3% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions and a $10B+ annual market opportunity. We are currently building a 5kW prototype at 480℉/250C to cook french fries for McCain (world's largest manufacturer of frozen potato products), our industrial partner for the first pilot. If you would like to support our decarbonization efforts, feel free to email us on contact@airthium.com or to invest in our crowdfunding! https://wefunder.com/airthium https://wefunder.com/airthium
  • barelyauser 3y ago
    What is the COP of a heat pump operating against this temperature gradient?
    • Ndymium 3y ago
      Quoting from their linked website: > Our heat pump can generate up to 3 times as much heat as a resistor, using the same amount of electricity. Though it doesn't mention the temperature at which this is achieved, only that the range is from 160 to 550°C.
      • franckl 3y ago
        we published a calculator if you would like to dig deeper! https://airthium.github.io/airthium.com-calculator/ https://airthium.github.io/airthium.com-calculator/ The COP gets lower as the temperature difference increases as you can expect.
        • jbm 3y ago
          For those, like me, who didn't know this term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance > The coefficient of performance or COP (sometimes CP or CoP) of a heat pump, refrigerator or air conditioning system is a ratio of useful heating or cooling provided to work (energy) required.[1][2] Higher COPs equate to higher efficiency, lower energy (power) consumption and thus lower operating costs.
• iiJDSii 3y ago
  A few years ago I made a Kickstarter for an augmented reality helmet - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/realjds/spartan-hud-next-generation-augmented-reality-helmet https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/realjds/spartan-hud-nex... Fun project, made some sales and a small profit, then hand-built and delivered the units from my apartment. Lots of learnings. Applied to YC and got an interview but ultimately didn't get in - I agree with their feedback that the platform was too general and "lacked a killer app". But it's a cool research platform due to its generality: you get a full Linux computer in your heads-up display, and can connect arbitrary USB peripherals (we had a version with a depth-sensing camera). Over the last year on weekends I've been working on a new light-weight version that allows one to drop in their smartphone or other ~5" screen, and actually orienting a specific version towards the sport of airsoft. Polycarbonate encasing around a modified helmet protects the electronics as well as the user's head. Hope to try it out sometime later this year; lately I've been pre-occupied with my day job and learning all the new AI software and theory out there. If anyone is interested in this project and wants to connect, ask questions, etc, feel free to reach out via email (in my profile). Cheers!
  • i-use-nixos-btw 3y ago
    A full on helmet? That’s awesome. I reject the claim that there is no killer app. Have you not seen Judge Dredd? ;) But seriously, I like this. Honestly I think I’d rather this than a normal headset. There are so many design challenges and compromises made because of the notion that they should only cover the eyes. But that approach just leaves us looking gormless to any onlookers, so there’s not much aesthetic benefit. Meanwhile your design looks, for lack of a better word, badass.
    • iiJDSii 3y ago
      Thanks so much! Comments like this definitely are reassuring :) I'll definitely make a post on HN in the future when the next version (airsoft focused) is up and running!
• omgmajk 3y ago
  We are attempting to make some sensors used in the automotive industry, I am currently tied to a client but will start up our internal development again during the autumn. We work mostly with hardware, as in HIL and everything around a HIL - it's also these kind of sensors we are trying to figure out properly and create a product from.
• kachurovskiy 3y ago
  Metal lathe conversational CNC controllers - https://kachurovskiy.com/ https://kachurovskiy.com/
  • tagyro 3y ago
    FYI your website crashed my browser ...and now it's not accessible anymore
    • kachurovskiy 3y ago
      It's Shopify on the default theme. Try https://github.com/kachurovskiy/nanoels/tree/main/h4 https://github.com/kachurovskiy/nanoels/tree/main/h4
• zh3 3y ago
  Pretty much every business (mostly start-ups) I've been involved have been a combination of hardware and software; anyone who can work both is never going to be out of a job. These days I tend to mix both of those things with bicycles just to add some spice to the challenge :)
• throwaway721099 3y ago
  I'm working on the world's brightest lamp: https://presale.getbrighter.co/ https://presale.getbrighter.co/ There has been a lot of writing about the benefits of bright light in your house and how to set up your own rig (e.g. https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/ https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/), but nobody has built a mass market consumer product (one that's easy to set up, has all the right features (dimmable, adjustable color temp, high CRI), and looks aesthetic). Feel free to contact me at team@getbrighter.co
  • LoganDark 3y ago
    Tried to enter in my email and got 419 PAGE EXPIRED. I guess it'd probably cost a thousand bucks anyway...
  • Tepix 3y ago
    Can you talk about the power consumption?
  • a5withtrrs 3y ago
    Uh. 50,000 Lumens? That's a lotta lumens. Which is awesome. But that's also gonna be running at Imalent MS18 flashlights (which to be fair peak at 100,000 lumens) get well over 120 degrees C in temperature. Your design seems to have cooling fins. But If it's radiating noticeable amount of heat, I'll only be running it in winter.
• AdamH12113 3y ago
  We make industrial devices that use electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) to measure free radical content of chemicals in real time by sampling directly from the flow line. Right now we're focused on measuring asphaltene content in crude oil pipelines, but we're trying to expand into chemical manufacturing as well. https://www.microsiliconinc.com/ https://www.microsiliconinc.com/
• szaroubi 3y ago
  We are working on a not yet announced smart agriculture / agtech sensor, and have contributed to projects on the smart energy grid and also smart/autonomous mining. Hardware is hard, but IoT is harder. IoT involves bridging the gap between hardware, firmware, networking, security and cloud teams, which makes the challenge that much more complicated. Different teams have different concerns and getting a sense of all these sometimes conflicting concerns is tough. https://axceta.com https://axceta.com
• tda 3y ago
  We build robot arm based 3D printers. Surprisingly the company (more scale up than start up tbh) is entirely bootstrapped, and the hardware is pretty mature. But I am a software engineer and that is the area we are struggling with most currently, especially where IT and OT meet. www.ceadgroup.com
• henryhenryhenry 3y ago
  My hardware start up is going to change the world and how you pee PeeSport.com
• henryhenryhenry 3y ago
  Peesport.com the world’s best pee bottle
• bryanmgreen 3y ago
  Hand-blown titanium crystal glassware for whisk(e)y and spirits. Produced in Europe by a glass factory that has been operating since the late 1700's. PG's mantra "do things that don't scale" has been a great inspiration. I wanted something comparable to high-end wine stemware and it shockingly did not exist, so I designed it during COVID. This is my first physical goods venture and my goodness, it comes with a lot of challenges (as an American I've intimately learned the difficulties of Brexit, for example) but I wouldn't change anything for the world. It's so satisfying to see people use a shining piece of glassware made by real human craftsmen. The speed at which the glassware been welcomed in the community is overwhelming (both emotionally and from a pure business logistics perspective) and I couldn't be more grateful. Now, just 18 months post-launch, it's used in distilleries ranging from Scotland to Jamaica and Michelin starred restaurants. For the HN friends, use the code HACKER for 10% off glassware :) https://www.bennuaine.com/ https://www.bennuaine.com/
  • brogrammernot 3y ago
    Fascinating. It’s like a cross between a Teku glass and a white wine glass. Gorgeous.
    • bryanmgreen 3y ago
      Thanks! I like seeing how many folks know about the Teku beer glass. Very different use case, but the shape philosophy is similar. With Bennuaine it was really about fine-tuning the dimensions through a ton of research and prototyping to reduce ethanol burn while at the same time highlighting finer notes.
  • ProllyInfamous 3y ago
    "Lots of good advice simply doesn't scale." —Paul.Graham I definitely think "Made by Humans" will become an increasingly-popular product highlight. Beautiful effort. Wish I still served alcohol =D
    • bryanmgreen 3y ago
      For sure! Obviously it's good if some things are made by machines (like things that requirement super-fine tolerances), but the movement towards "Made by Humans" is trending away from "hipster" or "nerd" into general appreciation and that's very cool. Even if it's just for "for the marketing", the end result is that someone is getting paid for job with tangible results. I particularly like it with the glassware because machines literally can't make this glass at its current quality; it HAS to be done by hand to have this level of refinement.
• gargablegar 3y ago
  Hardware is hard:founding hardware engineer, we were acquired 4 years ago by a corporate. We place WiFi sensors around your network that behave like typical clients. We report on user experience and show when there are issues in your network. WiFi technician in a box. The fact that it’s subscription based is what made us float. The initial capital outlay, supply chain, compliance and design work is so funding intensive but can we done on budget if you are wise about it. We had to build a full web app and rich backend to report the results, a device team to write the sensor software and of course hardware design. About 50% of our funding went into supply chain costs just to get the first units out the door. The rest into staffing. Without the hook into the large hardware manufacturers/China we had a pretty heavy BOM cost. It was rough but the Saas portion once it was up allowed us breathing room. It’s critical to design for compliance in your target markets and critical to manage your spend on components. A minor design mistake in your hardware will destroy your brand - where with software it’s a patch away. Shipping and tax costs are another killer which add so much cost overhead and are often over looked. It was stressful I’m glad we found a corporate home as it allowed us some breathing room to focus and redesign things with a budget safety net.
  • manicennui 3y ago
    Does it actually connect or just measure the signal? If the former, have you had to deal with all the various auth schemes that companies use? I know that Cisco in particular loves to create their own schemes.
    • gargablegar 3y ago
      It does a full connection and session and yes at first we thought it would be easy then we realised how many different auth methods are around. Over time we have grown to support most of them. Including being able to navigate a captive portal and login.
  • myself248 3y ago
    A brother needs a link. Are you able to roam/hand off between APs and measure the reassociation time? That would address a monitoring need I have right now.
• boxcardavin 3y ago
  We're working on riderless and balance-assisted bicycles and motorcycles. We're working to ship our flagship bike and we're about to launch a balance-bike for kids that helps them learn faster and sets up virtual bumpers while they learn. Cool video of moto carrying stuff (just like the 2016 google prank vid) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sqyjag9yRUA https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sqyjag9yRUA
  • nosequel 3y ago
    You should track down the one-man team from the first DARPA Grand Challenge who made an autonomous motorcycle. I was on a team with a real truck, so I didn't have to figure out how to balance a two-wheeled vehicle while also trying to figure out how to autonomously make it through an obstacle course. From an insiders view, we all thought he was the star of the show.
    • beedeebeedee 3y ago
      > the one-man team Pretty sure there were several engineers (engineering students) involved
    • boxcardavin 3y ago
      This will sound like a joke, but that was Anthony Levandowski
      • nosequel 3y ago
        Holy shit I never put that together. He was always just tinkering in his garage by himself as far as I remembered. We had a lot of bugs in our truck (like everyone) so we would get burned out and walk around and talk to each other. There was a lot of sharing with the smaller teams. Way later I realized I had a long conversation with Sebastian Thrun about how we did our throttle feedback actuator. He was lucky to have a drive-by-wire SUV and we were all mechanical. Those were super fun times hanging out at the raceway for trials those first two years.
• sakaroz 3y ago
  Hey :) I'm fullstack dev at Sencrop.com, we help farmers take better decisions for their crops with the help of IOT: connected rain gauge, temp sensor, hygrometry sensor, anenometer, pyranometer. And yes, hardware is hard :) but i'm proud to say that we cover a big part of west europe with more than 20k stations deployed and really help people on their field
• farhadnoorzay 3y ago
  We're building Hoopfit, the most advanced basketball shooting machine ever. It's battery powered and ultra portable so it can be used in your driveway hoop or you can take it to the park. It's powered by iPad Air so we heavily leverage the cameras for computer vision and AI to automatically track a players shooting stats and provide real time feedback on shooting form. I'm a software engineer but I have to admit, designing and building a physical product is so rewarding and a ton of fun :) It's the product I wish I had as a kid and desperately need as a recreational hooper trying to continue playing basketball as I get older! https://gethoopfit.com https://gethoopfit.com
  • fsagx 3y ago
    How will you price it relative to a dr dish?
    • farhadnoorzay 3y ago
      They have so many different models so it depends which model you compare it to :) We'll be competitive if not cheaper. We're still finalizing manufacturing and figuring out pricing but will likely need to start at a higher price and lower volume.
      • fsagx 3y ago
        for sure no one is carrying a dr dish around with them. Good luck!
• psychomugs 3y ago
  Not an official startup, but I developed an open-source laser cut and crocheted social robot platform during grad school. We ran a few workshops for ~middle schoolers to build it and there are a few built by other researchers and roboticists out in the wild. https://github.com/hrc2/blossom-public https://github.com/hrc2/blossom-public
• cambel 3y ago
  We are making electricity safe for workers: proxxi.co Focused mostly on manufacturing, mining, construction and maintenance. We also sell into Telcos and data centers
• zenburnmyface 3y ago
  We are building micro-bioreactors on the Raspberry Pi. Yes, hardware is _hard_ (and fun!) https://pioreactor.com/ https://pioreactor.com/
• Mockapapella 3y ago
  We're building FPV humanoid robots to do hands-on jobs from home that can be controlled with standard VR headsets: https://robosymbiosis.com/ https://robosymbiosis.com/. Still very much a work in progress. I'm a little obsessed about the UX of things, so I'm really trying to drive the idea that it should feel as natural to use as moving your own body. I love that it combines tons of aspects from VR game design, robotics, and web technologies into a single experience. I expect to have a full scale, really rough looking but functional prototype by this fall.
• antoniuschan99 3y ago
  I produce Battery Powered WiFi Temperature & Humidity Sensors https://www.kokonaut.com https://www.kokonaut.com https://www.instagram.com/kokonautinc https://www.instagram.com/kokonautinc Firmware Uploading and Testing Robot Cell: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cmxpg1jhcLE/ https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cmxpg1jhcLE/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GFGZF2F https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08GFGZF2F
• generalunited 3y ago
  Worked on this hardware startup from 2011-2015: http://VOXON.co http://VOXON.co - a volumetric 3D display company. We went through the Microsoft Accelerator for Kinect powered by Techstars 2012 in Seattle. It was very hard to find investors, mentors, and partners for hardware at the time. That said - building the technology from the ground up and seeing how much people loved it - I’ve never been more proud to be apart of a project. We were doing something really hard - but together we built exactly what we said we’d make.
• davedriesmans 3y ago
  https://telraam.net/en/S2 https://telraam.net/en/S2 Traffic counting by citizens. Counts cars, bikes, pedestrians, buses, trucks,... and we sell it to cities and other mobility professionals.
• nabilt 3y ago
  I'm building an open source water meter to detect costly water leaks and track your water usage. The hardware design is flexible enough to easily repurpose it for measuring residential gas and electricity meters, as well as any signal that requires continuous reading while maintaining a long battery life. https://y-drip.com https://y-drip.com Follow the development process here: https://hackaday.io/project/191398-ydrip https://hackaday.io/project/191398-ydrip
  • ycombinatornews 3y ago
    Wow! Would love to compare this to Flume! Been using it for some time but can’t quite catch one tiny leak I have
    • nabilt 3y ago
      Interesting. Do you mean the leak is intermittent and Flume isn't able to detect it? I would love to know more.
      • ycombinatornews 3y ago
        Leak is happening every other day, sometimes twice a day. Flume detects it but I can’t find the source of the leak in the house. For many months now. Wondering if this is some bad reading or something else.
        • nabilt 3y ago
          Strange. That's one of the reasons my leak threshold is customizable. My city water meter has an LED that turns on when it detects a leak, but I've never seen it work.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• bag_boy 3y ago
  I help out at Hardware Park, Birmingham’s coworking space for hardware startups. hardwarepark.org
• ericcj 3y ago
  Aura is sort of a hybrid: we’re building a photo sharing network but the destination is our digital frames, so now that we’re running at scale we spend at least as much energy on software as hardware: https://auraframes.com/careers https://auraframes.com/careers
• clobmclob 3y ago
  I work for a hardware startup in NYC and HK called Looking Glass (www.lookingglassfactory.com). We create light field displays. Coming from a primarily software background, I quite agree that hardware is harder. We are venture funded but we are very lean due to the challenges of bootstrapping a display business and the capital requirements needed for manufacturing. We only have about 10 software engineers that are split across plugins, drivers, firmware, production tooling, our web platform, and solutions development. On the bright side, the technology presents extremely interesting problems.
  • _boffin_ 3y ago
    I actually had our chief innovation officer pick up a screen from you guys out in NY a few years back. I love your tech and wish you the best of luck
    • clobmclob 3y ago
      Thanks!
• wslh 3y ago
  I take advantage of this thread to ask about an educational idea that is connected with hardware but is not looking for a business but a way of social contribution. The idea is to do basically something like Romo [1] (they closed) but at the cheapest price possible (assuming a level of quality). This is along the lines of OLPC [2]. I imagine a simple vehicle that is controlled by a mobile "smart" device and you can take the advantage of the capabilities of this device (e.g. camera). The Bandai SmartPet Robot Dog is at USD ~52 now [3]. How cheaper can all this? Not assuming worker cost just components, it can be open hardware. I understand that a level of quality should be achieved. For example, the motors used should be protected against burn. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterseid/romo-the-smartphone-robot-for-everyone https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterseid/romo-the-smar... [2] https://laptop.org/ https://laptop.org/ [3] https://www.japantrendshop.com/bandai-smartpet-robot-dog-p-1391.html https://www.japantrendshop.com/bandai-smartpet-robot-dog-p-1...
• geigco 3y ago
  This is the simplest thing somebody is going to post. I make KeyboardBumps and sell them at https://KeyboardBumps.com https://KeyboardBumps.com They were meant to be fun goofy tactile stickers for finding the right function keys. They ended up helping people with peripheral neuropathy (usually from chemotherapy or MS).
• polvs 3y ago
  Yes! A very long and tough journey but extremely exciting times... In 2015 we founded Submer (https://submer.com https://submer.com) with my brother-in-law (I know... we knew each other very well and for more than a decade) to try to solve the biggest problems in the data center industry with a highly-efficient liquid immersion cooling technology. These problems are now in an inflection point where all are converging. Among others: - Chip thermal design power densities keep increasing in such a way that some chips are already impossible to cool unless using liquid and this is being highly accelerated by the end of Moore Law and the usage of more GPUs, ASICs and FPGAs for generative AI, graphics, crypto, HPC... - Sustainability challenges. An average cloud data center using the typical evaporative air-cooling technologies consume about the amount of water in an Olympic swimming pool every two days and the overall DC industry and IT is estimated to consume more energy than the global air transport. 98% of the energy consumed by DCs is just rejected as heat into the atmosphere. - The total cost of ownership of datacenters is being affected by the physical limitation of the chip densities increase and its cooling costs, the regulations and energy prices derived from the sustainability, the expensive buildings needed and its speed of construction and other challenges (supply chain, Ukraine war...) I still remember the excitement of pitching to YC Fellowship batch back in 2015. We were able to get into the final ~100 interviews among 6,500 applicants, but unfortunately we weren't selected. It was still a great experience and motivation and the good news is we are now selling and manufacturing hundreds of MWs of our technology, serving customers worldwide and employing 100+ "Submerians". Even without being a formal YC Alumni, I feel very grateful for the YC and Hacker News community for the inspiration it brings and very happy to see all these exciting hardware startups! Keep up with the good work!
• seizethecheese 3y ago
  We make an e-commerce subscription that uses a smart scale to trigger re-orders at the perfect time. The timing is dynamic for each customer’s usage patterns. The scale lasts 1.5yrs per battery charge. Our customers cancel subscriptions at a way lower rate compared to typical subscriptions because their experience is way better. We bootstrapped to over 100 customers. We 3D printed the devices and hand soldered dev boards for the internals. We manufacture the device ourselves in China, now. Company is bottomless.com, though we are now focused mostly on integrations with third party e-commerce sites over direct customer acquisition.
  • moneywoes 3y ago
    Brilliant idea How did you convince the first customers to adopt this without a case study? I imagine selling a individual scale to each consumer is tough no?
  • evandev 3y ago
    Huge fan of your product. Was using a different coffee subscription that would always show up late and I'd be without coffee. The scale does work well and I've only had once or twice have coffee show up a day late.
  • conception 3y ago
    Just as an FYI, I’ve been looking for a commercial version of this - WiFi scale that uses a webhook or what gave you to trigger a procurement process. Labs around the world would love to be able to track inventory by weight for chemicals as well as goods. Might be an interesting pivot.
• Havoc 3y ago
  Not mine, but was impressed with IceWhale technologies. They shipped a custom SBC (Zimaboard) during the covid electronics supply chain shitshow. Was delayed as a result but they came through with solid execution eventually.
• tedhallez 3y ago
  We're building hydrofoiling electric boats. It's important because it's pretty much the only way to for electric boats to satisfy the range requirements of recreational and commercial vessels, at higher speeds. Check us out at Candela.com
• johndmcmaster 3y ago
  We are making computer controlled microscopes more accessible: better software and lower cost. We are working on tightly integrating output images with cloud services (ex: AI analysis, data viewers) to make the data more usable. We also have FOSS Python host software that enables a lot of user customization. We rely on a lot more COTS components and software correction than traditional players to keep the cost low (ex: we use mass produced chassis instead of designing our own). https://www.labsmore.com/ https://www.labsmore.com/ My ask for HN: pricing is hard and I'd love to talk to other hardware co-founders about their experience / advice. One complication is that pricing is affected based on how we make money (ex: are we selling more hardware vs cloud services). Or please reach out if you just like microscopes :) Always great to talk to more people!
  • farhadnoorzay 3y ago
    Pricing is definitely hard. Something we're testing out and learning about right now. Luckily we do have a subscription model too which can give us some flexibility. I'm happy to chat. My email is in my bio.
    • johndmcmaster 3y ago
      Thanks! Will reach out soon
• shariqm 3y ago
  We're building hearing aids that work in noisy places (AudioFocus[1], YC S19). We use novel machine learning and microphone array design to help patients hear better in loud restaurants, weddings, & family gatherings better than any other AI hearing aid. It's a big deal because untreated hearing loss is associated with social isolation & depression and while 37M people have hearing loss in the United States, only 8M use hearing aids. Hearing in noisy places is the biggest reason for lack of adoption. We just got our behind-the-ear (BTE) hardware prototype running and already have several excited patients. Listen to an audio recording from it here[2]. We're currently working on a pilot study with a professor in San Francisco. If you, or someone you know, is interested in participating in the pilot study let me know. And if you know interested investors, I'm happy to chat with them. I can be reached at shariq@audiofocus.io [1] www.audiofocus.io [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orU5Wx6_RfA&t=24s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orU5Wx6_RfA&t=24s
  • BooneJS 3y ago
    Do you have a Coral Edge TPU in your device?
  • bloudermilk 3y ago
    Love this idea. I hoped that my AirPods with Live Listen would do the same but was disappointed that it sounded similar to your benchmark example or worse. I wonder if you all can use another layer in your ML stack to "fill out" the voices once you've isolated them. Your example leaves voices sounding very thin/hollow and even a bit garbled.
• 3flp 3y ago
  Early stage here - self funded. After many years in land mobile radio industry, I decided to start my own thing. Hand held radios are still around, and will be, for many years. We're making them much better - the range, battery life, .. and open sourcing them. As other said, development can be very expensive and iterations long, unless you're smart about it.
• reactormonk 3y ago
  We're working on a device to allow seniors to access the digital world with a haptic interface. We support video calls / photo sharing / content / telemedicine / exercises to bridge the generational gap in digital services. https://family.cards https://family.cards
• TooSmugToFail 3y ago
  We started in 2017 aiming to build world’s best video headset for drone pilots ("FPV goggles", for those in the know). Based in Europe, where we do all our R&D and MFG. Surviving these last three years was, well, as hard as you can expect. Raising money was a challenge (hardware, in Europe, Central and Eastern Europe). We started scaling MFG just as the COVID started closing down China and crippling supply chains. Front row seat at the chip shortage horror show: just as we started delivering the first units of our first product, we saw our critical components go from €5 to €100 a pop, and lead times go from "shipping tomorrow" to "we may be tell you when it may be available in a few months, but not sure." Today, we’re alive to tell the story. We expanded from headsets to pretty much every piece of tech you need in a drone; all designed and built in Europe. We do FCs, ESCs, control links, analog video links, data links (WiFi, 5G/LTE, SDR), flight computers, as well as drones, drone controllers, etc. We have a drone sim with 500k total downloads. We also do our own private mobile networking infra (5gc/epc RAN, gNB/eNB). We do HW, FW, and "normal" SW. We’ve pretty much consistently doubled our revenues every year since inception, but it’s been a wild ride. While our US counterparts were raising tens of millions with similar traction and a fraction of tech collateral, we never got much love from VCs. Raising is still a bitch. Last five years were blood, sweat, and tears, but I’d do it all over again, cause building physical stuff is the best job in the world.
  • flybrand 3y ago
    What’s the name?
    • FrankPetrilli 3y ago
      As an FPV Enthusiast, I suspect strongly that this is Orqa/ImmersionRC (which merged recently). > video headset for drone pilots ("FPV goggles", for those in the know) Orqa FPV.one > Based in Europe, where we do all our R&D and MFG. This is a pretty clear indicator that it's Orqa - few other folks in the FPV space are Europe-centric > We do FCs, ESCs Commercial gear > control links ImmersionRC Ghost > analog video links ImmersionRC Tramp > data links (WiFi, 5G/LTE, SDR) flight computers, as well as drones, drone controllers, etc Commercial gear > We have a drone sim with 500k total downloads. Orqa FPV.Skydive Was I right, TooSmugToFail? :D
• DEDLINE 3y ago
  https://qvntra.io https://qvntra.io We're replacing old-school bed alarms and call buttons in Senior Living facilities. The bed sensors that we manufacture are strapped to beds and monitor for out-of-bed, potential infection and medication error via algorithms on-top of real-time vital sign data. We mount always-on iPad in high traffic area for the nurses to grab alerts. Sirens are mounted in hallways to grab audible attention. The whole system is Zigbee 3.0. Nurses are leaving the industry in droves. The "Silver Tsunami" is approaching rapidly. We're helping nurses scale and keeping elderly safer in their homes.
• rock_hard 3y ago
  Shameless plug: At https://flux.ai https://flux.ai we are working on taking the “hard” out of hardware! Also have a great slack based community with lots of hardware folks going
  • LoganDark 3y ago
    "You bet your ass it works." NEXT LEVEL MARKETING LOL
• rambambram 3y ago
  We are making the world's lightest and easiest DIY bicycle caravan. Right now, the first test trips are happening and the results look promising. Cycling on urban roads and in the forest works really well with the bicycle caravan behind. Camping mode with the tent setup needs to be tested thoroughly before going to market. Eventually we want to provide kits in various stages of readiness, from barebones fully DIY to pre-cut fabric and plates. For photos and more information, please visit https://www.theredpanther.org https://www.theredpanther.org
  • davidzweig 3y ago
    Neat. Come to Bulgaria, I can take you to a couple of metalworking workshops, and plenty of forests to test your product. :)
    • rambambram 3y ago
      Cool idea, thanks!
• geethree 3y ago
  If you're looking for a fun hardware project I'd recommend a buddy's company. As they don't have a HN account, here is their plug: Exclosure is building a worldwide networks of space monitoring telescopes. We believe that space is for everyone, and that monitoring is the first step in keeping the outer space environment sustainable. We are actively seeking locations to host our observatories, and can compensate hosts with good viewing locations: https://www.exclosure.io/hosts https://www.exclosure.io/hosts
  • petabytes 3y ago
    I've always had the dream of setting up a remote telescope in my backyard, but light pollution has gotten so bad in my area.
• michibertel 3y ago
  We are building smart Gastronomy Products. First of all our Selfservice Bar (https://limifyze.com https://limifyze.com). This system enables hotels to offer up to 150 cocktails autonomously, eliminating the need for additional staff. And Ledovation (https://ledovation.at https://ledovation.at) revolutionizes service-guest communication in restaurants. We are located in Austria. Both the development and the assembly of the devices take place in-house.
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• ComputerCat 3y ago
  We are building smart cameras for industrial automation and robotics. We are on our 3rd generation design with a 20.5TOPS Toshiba ASIC and Sony image sensors. A lot of sweat and tears have gone in the hardware and software design. You can load AI models like YOLO, resnet, MiDAS onto it and we are working on porting some generative AI models onto it as well. We have tried to make this as easy as possible for non-devs to be able to use it: https://docs.labforge.ca/docs/bottlenose-file-utility https://docs.labforge.ca/docs/bottlenose-file-utility We offer monocular and stereo versions. The current gen is 8MP/4K.
• metonymy 3y ago
  We're in agtech building mushroom growing systems for the kitchen counter. After two years of limited production active systems, we're shipping a totally passive solution that can grow a wide variety of mushroom varieties. Systems come with everything needed, including mushroom liquid cultures and growing media. We continue to iterate the design while testing new varieties and media. More info at https://mycelerator.com https://mycelerator.com
• hito 3y ago
  We are building Hito (https://hito.xyz https://hito.xyz) - easy to use crypto hardware wallet. I am a solo founder. We've built everything from scratch - hardware, firmware, backend, mobile. First year from MVP to sales - 200 devices shipped in Q1-Q2. We are assembling devices in my room in Mission district, San Francisco. Feel free to come and say "hardware is hard" to me, I would love to prove you another ;-)
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• themehdi 3y ago
  We are developing a teledriving system (driving a car remotely by a human operator). Although we don't build our cars, we design and develop our own ECU. www.vay.io
• andrelayer 3y ago
  I built a healthier men's dress shoe with a faux heel that allows you to walk barefoot while still maintaining a professional silhouette. https://OAKAStudio.com https://OAKAStudio.com. Footwear is the most technical and health detrimental part of our wardrobe.
• jimbooonooo 3y ago
  Rocky Mountain Servo builds fine pointing devices for free space optical comms and space science applications. Our devices are highly reconfigurable, low cost, and easy to integrate. Check out more here: https://www.rockymountainservo.com https://www.rockymountainservo.com
• hugs 3y ago
  #handWaveEmoji. Hello from Tapster Robotics, where we make small shoebox-sized robots for testing phones and other touchscreen devices (like payment terminals). Kind of an extension of my web and app testing work with Selenium and Appium.
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• alj 3y ago
  We've built Matic - A privacy-preserving autonomous home robot 5.5 years ago, we started building an autonomous home robot with these goals: * Reliable autonomy — no user interventions, it should just work * Everything on device — no cloud storage or compute, robot-to-app data through local WiFi * Usefulness — solve a genuine problem that will impact real people To achieve this, we * wrote the robot's software stack in Rust * used only RGB cameras and Mics as input — humans can navigate with only these sensors, so why can’t a robot? * developed SLAM and computer vision algorithms that run on-device, in real time, with centimeter-level precision and semantic understanding * gave our robot a purpose — starting with floor cleaning allowing us to develop specialized hardware for vacuuming and mopping w/o chewing up wires or getting stuck. We're a small team of <60 people singularly focused on building something that we’ve all dreamed about: a mobile indoor robot that solves a real problem without jeopardizing our privacy. We're still developing Matic and iterating, but we’re proud of what we’ve built so far. Let us know what you'd be interested to learn! We'll also answer questions here and look forward to your feedback :) https://matician.com/ https://matician.com/
  • jallbrit 3y ago
    Wow, this is really cool. The pricing is way above my budget, but I can see the market for a premium device like this- if it really does what it looks like it does. The “point and tell” demo is particularly amazing. Great homepage, by the way- makes it very easy to tell what the robot can do (and I appreciated the FAQ). The $75/month ($900/year) price tag is quite steep, but between the feature set, the intelligence built into the device, and the free repairs and replacements, I think this provides a lot of value for homeowners. I subscribed to your email list. Good luck!
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• paperfiber 3y ago
  We are building a cyber foundry in Los Angeles to reshore American manufacturing. Using in-house composites, Rangeview 3D prints highly complex ceramic parts and pours molten metal into them autonomously. Our process can make components with material and geometric specifications no other metalic manufacturing process is capable of. We have worked with Rivian, Boeing, Airbus, and are aiming for military spares for planes like the F22. The founding team met doing VEX, FRC and Battlebots. https://rangeview.co/ https://rangeview.co/
  • digdugdirk 3y ago
    Very cool. Are these investment casts? Or are they reusable?
    • paperfiber 3y ago
      Investment castings, we break the mold off and recycle the ceramic. That way you don't need draft angles or other limitations.
      • digdugdirk 3y ago
        How does the ceramic recycling process work? I'm guessing just crushing and heating the ceramic does a decent job of separation, but there has to be some level of impurity leftover. Is there enough pressure in the casting process that you'd be worried about localized weakness in the tool?
  • i-use-nixos-btw 3y ago
    That sounds very cool. I have to ask - do you build parts for your machines using your machines?
    • paperfiber 3y ago
      Of course, all good additive companies do
• pedalpete 3y ago
  We're building a sleep EEG headband which improves the efficiency of deep sleep https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co We use closed-loop auditory stimulation (sound) to boost slow-wave activity in deep sleep. This doesn't help you get to sleep, but makes the time spent in deep sleep more effective. Lots of studies look at the impact on immune function, cognitive performance, nervous system response, etc. Peer-reviewed, published research is on our website at https://soundmind.co https://soundmind.co
• mmmeff 3y ago
  Rockets! www.stokespace.com
• mmmeff 3y ago
  Fully reusable rockets! www.stokespace.com
• eschneider 3y ago
  Working on self-driving stuff in the Ag-space, though not at a startup, but this is after two hardware startup stints: one doing security related computer vision, and then people sensing for space management. Hardware is fun, but you rarely have the profit margins of a pure software play, so if you're not working on something creating an 'ecosystem', you're upside is probably more limited than a pure sw company. Still, I've liked the hardware products I've worked on, so I don't regret the tradeoff.
  • c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
    One trade-off is that you have a certain level of physical stickiness over software, especially if you have a large fleet of distributed hardware. Tearing out and replacing hardware is expensive and time consuming, that's assuming you can find the right people do it and they are available.
• jhallenworld 3y ago
  I work at a design firm: working with hardware startups is our business. Hardware is hard, but we are available to help: http://www.nklabs.com http://www.nklabs.com We help with mechanical design, engineering simulation, PCB design, embedded systems, FPGAs, firmware, agency testing, and can help set you up with a contract manufacturer.
• Ken_At_EM 3y ago
  We build downhole electronics. High temperature (175C/350F operation) devices. Multiple circuit boards, sensors, analog and digital, tons of firmware.
  • wildzzz 3y ago
    Would love to hear more about this, I'm a (mostly) fullstack digital/RF design engineer with 7 years in designing/building/testing tactical space SDRs. Based out of the Washington DC area. wildzzz256 at gmail
• alefil76 3y ago
  We are developing an innovative one-piece 3D printed travel guitar designed to fit into a suitcase while maintaining regular tuning. Our instrument incorporates a hollow neck acting as a resonance body, making it unique in the market. Unlike other guitars, our design eliminates the need for assembly before playing. However, this poses a significant challenge due to the immense tension it must withstand. You may check it at https://minicorda.com https://minicorda.com
• WaitWaitWha 3y ago
  Building an inexpensive VOC gas sensor tuned for methyl sulfides, hydrogen sulfides and benzopyrroles with MQTT feature. Currently both price and power draw are too high. If it is business successful, I will add other MQTT enabled wireless devices.
  • c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
    Where would you expect to encounter these specific VOCs?
    • WaitWaitWha 3y ago
      WCs, toilets, lavatories, restrooms, loos, johns, bogs, heads, khazis, commodes and such.
• speransky 3y ago
  We are doing a military IoT products, for blue force tracking, supply chain control and low bandwidth datalink operations. Full stack - cases, pcb, firmwares, antennas, software and deployments. Can’t do show as we have only one customer now. As we are working in aggressive environment sometimes it is hard to keep cost in a reasonable range. Also finding a VC or fund interested in dual purpose or military hardware is hard and differ from a consumer products, so still FFF model of financing and this produce issues with scaling
  • wildzzz 3y ago
    Would love to hear more about this, I'm a (mostly) fullstack digital/RF design engineer with 7 years in designing/building/testing tactical space SDRs. Based out of the Washington DC area. wildzzz256 at gmail
  • moneywoes 3y ago
    How did you secure that first customer? Congrats
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• gbin 3y ago
  We are making flying robots over here . We build a transportation drone in our shop in Austin: composite, CNC, additive manufacturing, EE etc on the hw side + ML/realtime on the software side. http://www.skyways.com http://www.skyways.com If you are up for a challenge and you are interested to join the team feel free to reach out to me directly on linked in https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbinet https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbinet
• chaibiker 3y ago
  Yep, for deskwork. We shouldn’t sit for extended periods of time, but moving is usually too interrupting. We pair with a standing height desk and make it trivially easy to change posture every few minutes without disturbing your focus. We did the simplest study that surprisingly chair makers don’t do- can you prevent pain. Our chair prevented discomfort for 100% of participants compared to a high end ergonomic chair. More here: https://www.movably.com/ https://www.movably.com/
• ahaucnx 3y ago
  Achim from AirGradient. We design and manufacture open-hardware low-cost air quality monitors. We sell and maintain very popular DIY air quality monitoring kits [1]. I think there are a few things that set us apart from other hardware startups: - Most of our air quality monitors are open-source software and open-source hardware under CC license and we do NOT have any patents ;). All our code, drawings, schematics etc. are freely available on our website [2]. You can easily flash the monitor with your own software adjustments and point it e.g. directly to your home assistant server. - Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental health risk and paradoxically the countries with the highest air pollution e.g. in Africa have the lowest dense network of air quality monitors. We try and keep our monitors as affordable as possible to enable disadvantaged communities and countries to monitor their air quality. Me and my co-founder are personally impacted by heavy air pollution and the first priority for us is to make an impact (and by making a good job, hopefully some profit). - We are fully self-funded and were able to pull off the design & development by having an ideal set of prior experiences and skills, able to aquire customers at an early stage and enough own funds to reach that stage. Working from a low-cost base in Thailand also helped keeping costs down. - We don't believe in prorietory algorithms and work transparently with many research partners in 4 continents to better understand the performance of low-cost air quality monitor. [3] - You can read more about our journey and some of the unexpected things that happened in my blog post "Good Hardware Takes Time- The Journey of the AirGradient DIY Kit Production" [4] [1] https://www.airgradient.com/kits/ https://www.airgradient.com/kits/ [2] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/instructions/overview/ https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/instructions/ov... [3] https://www.airgradient.com/research/ https://www.airgradient.com/research/ [4] https://www.airgradient.com/blog/diy-pro-kit-journey/ https://www.airgradient.com/blog/diy-pro-kit-journey/
• demodifier 3y ago
  We make an IoT device that is used for precision agriculture data collection out in the field, close to the crop that is being grown. We specialize in capturing spectral data related to plant growth and can also cat as a hub for connected sensors from other companies measuring complementary data.
• notthetup 3y ago
  Not technically a startup anymore, (our bizdev manager likes to call us a "grownup startup",) but we're making underwater acoustic wireless communication devices. We're taking a more software defined approach allowing us to be much more leaner, flexible and do more more IoT-esque things in an underwater wireless network. It's an strange but interesting field. Loads of real, physical problems still left to solve and space for innovative solutions. Lots of hard engineering (software, hardware, etc) to do. But the marine tech industry is traditionally very slow to adopt any new technologies. Makes for some fun conversations. :P https://subnero.com/ https://subnero.com/
• aetherspawn 3y ago
  We are designing some turnkey programmable ECU products that suit a range of applications such as low volume electric vehicles, motorbikes, hobby cars, watercraft etc. They are programmable using visual tools that have some guarantees ie generated code won’t crash. The ecosystem will provide some additional tools such as data logger and OTA updates with a subscription. Hardware design 80% complete. The software will be difficult.
• bunnie 3y ago
  We're building a device to secure your most precious secrets. https://betrusted.io https://betrusted.io (project overview) and https://precursor.dev https://precursor.dev (details). It has the form factor of a screen-and-keyboard retro-phone. Our hardware is simple and Open so it is easier to verify. There is no "hard CPU" (it is all FPGA based) so you don't have to trust anyone about what's executing your code. The entire system runs on a pure-Rust OS (Xous) which is an async message-passing microkernel, details at https://betrusted.io/xous-book/ https://betrusted.io/xous-book/. Out of the box it comes with U2F/FIDO2, a TOTP authenticator, and a password vault. It's one of the few U2F/FIDO2 tokens that you can make a backup of. As the system is fully open source, you can extend it with your own favorite apps.
  • ajot 3y ago
    Hi Bunnie! Totally unrelated to Precursor/Betrusted, but could you ever do a post-mortem for the Novena? I always liked the quirky form factor and the modularity of it (the Peek Array, the suggestion to use an eink screen if you're on a long trip with no chance to plug it in, etc). Do you think current projects like Framework and Pine64 could adapt/adopt some of the design principles you had in mind back then?
  • rmuratov 3y ago
    Cool! I'd considered buying something like this, but for personal journaling.
  • voxadam 3y ago
    Betrusted looks great, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. Xous looks really interesting too. I'm curious why you chose to build your own OS from scratch and not use something like Tock[0][1] which also happens to be pure Rust. [0] https://tockos.org/ https://tockos.org/ [1] https://github.com/tock/tock https://github.com/tock/tock
• linux_devil 3y ago
  At 56secure, we have embarked on the journey of constructing AI-powered cameras entirely from the ground up. Our prior experiences with third-party CCTV cameras enlightened us to the possibilities of significantly enhancing security measures. By leveraging AI technology at the edge and integrating it with on-the-ground agents, we are committed to offering users a proactive security solution that surpasses existing standards. https://www.56secure.com https://www.56secure.com
• jtolly710 3y ago
  Small company - but we've have been building tools for Guitarists, centered around our LED display system. https://www.fretzealot.com https://www.fretzealot.com Personally in charge of hardware, firmware, and too many of the things behind the scenes. About to crowdfund our V2 with hugely improved hardware and LEDs. Covid was fun with MCU shortages and years lead time, so now that we've survived that things are looking brighter. Some people like it just for the light shows, but we get lots of great feedback across the board. Been rewarding to build a tool that I actually get to use and benefit from on more-or-less a daily basis.
  • moralestapia 3y ago
    Wow this is great, thanks for sharing!
• faeranne 3y ago
  Not quite a startup yet, more a partially implemented idea, but I'm making a set of "retro consoles" to fufill a lifelong dream of making proper second screen games, in the style of Four Swords for the Gamecube. I've been honestly disappointed in the existing implementations, so I figure it's time to do it myself. Lua for game coding, fpga based gpus, and proper hardware expansion options. And that's all for the handheld. It's still in prototype stage, but it's an idea I've been mulling over since the DS released.
• deleted 3y ago
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• _moof 3y ago
  Not sure how much I can really say here, first of all because of confidentiality, and second of all because of privacy, but I guess I can say I work on space stuff. Hardware is extra hard when it needs a launch site.
• shamoh 3y ago
  Building the future of appliances at upliance.ai. Started from the kitchen with a smart cooking assistant - gets recipes all the time, heats-cuts-stirs-chops - and helps make great dishes. We're here - https://www.upliance.ai https://www.upliance.ai (and we've been selling for a few months at this point. 50% cooks are men, and the median user is cooking on weekdays and weekends)
• elkos 3y ago
  Not a start-up but a non-profit. I'm the vice chair at Libre Space Foundation (https://libre.space).We https://libre.space).We create open-source space technologies. Some of our projects: - SatNOGS rotator: an azimuth/elevation rotator for directional antennas. - UPSat: 1st cubesat build under open source hardware licenses that got in orbit (design deprecated) - SatNOGS-COMM: next gen communications module for CubeSats - QUBIK: even smaller pico-satellites that got also in orbit in Oct 22 - PICOBUS: pico-satellite deployer also in orbit Oct 22 - SIDLOC: a spacecraft location and identification beacon protocol and hardware, will be on the last stage of the Ariane 6 inaugural launch.
  • defrost 3y ago
    I'm loving your scope, any plans to (say) add support for 'at home' garden shed cameras to add to the global fireballs network ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fireball_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fireball_Network https://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/ https://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/ https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005SASS...24...11K https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005SASS...24...11K
    • elkos 3y ago
      Not currently, but maybe in the future.:)
• fechu 3y ago
  We are building autonomous heavy construction machinery based on almost a decade of research from ETH Zurich. Automating an industry that has seen little disruption in the last 50 years and suffers a labour shortage is the perfect opportunity. https://gravisrobotics.com https://gravisrobotics.com
• mateuszbuda 3y ago
  Our front is software but on the backend we’ve built a mobile proxy pool and continue to work with hardware to improve it. More details on our blog: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/byo-mobile-proxy-for-web-scraping https://scrapingfish.com/blog/byo-mobile-proxy-for-web-scrap...
• akrv 3y ago
  Autonomous last mile delivery robots which are cargo bike sized autonomous vehicles that can carry 100kg in 8 different compartments www.heytheo.co
• mkirank 3y ago
  Not at a startup scale but building and selling, PongFox Table tennis robot. https://pongfox.com https://pongfox.com I have been recently working on integrating it with OpenAI api and adding a pad for players to serve and work on their third ball drill after service which is not available in 2Kusd robots.
• col_rad 3y ago
  I'm currently working on an Audio/Midi Recorder/Arranger for musicians/songwriters. Admittedly it's not a Startup, I rather aim to make it a SMB some day. And yes, hardware is hard. Especially for me as a Software Engineer by trade. Track8 started when I wanted to learn Rust 3 years ago. It somehow evolved into a product. https://www.thingstone.com/ https://www.thingstone.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8u0Z55G2-0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8u0Z55G2-0
  • antoinebalaine 3y ago
    I saw your design and it's fascinating. The whole concept of writing without distractions is really awesome. Good luck!
• redat00 3y ago
  At my company we're working on building smart boilers, where what's actually heating the water is servers. We then send customers computation to those boilers. This way of doing things allow us to eliminate a lot of carbon emission for computation that would otherwise have been done in classic hardware where the heat is not reused at all. You can learn more about it at https://qarnot.com https://qarnot.com !
  • lumb63 3y ago
    That’s a neat idea. Have you considered expanding to other applications, like home heating? It occurs to me that there are a lot of systems that produce heat as a byproduct, and a lot of other places which want heat, and bringing the two together would be a great accomplishment of efficiency.
    • redat00 3y ago
      That's what we we're doing in the first place ! Only problem is that people usually don't heat there home in the summer.. Obviously.. Meaning the compute would not be available through long time periods.. However public pool still needs to be heated, and same goes for industry that requires hot water, there production won't just stop for multiples month of the year !
  • LoganDark 3y ago
    I remember seeing this and think it's absolutely awesome. If I were someone with such a boiler installed in my home, would I be able to run my own workloads on the device as well? I'd be kinda sad having that much compute but only being able to use it for heat.
    • redat00 3y ago
      You can use the compute as a client of the compute interface, but not really for your own boiler. Something worth to point out : Those boilers are more for industry oriented usage, such as heating a pool, or industry that requires hot water, not really home-grade boiler.
• northzen 3y ago
  We are building high resolution panoramic cameras which are easy to use and do not require additional PC in the car and can be operated. Also we've got a highest panoramic resolution camera (Viking) with six 6k x 4k modules shooting incredible dynamic range. https://www.mosaic51.com/cameras/ https://www.mosaic51.com/cameras/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5cmaa1QGr0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5cmaa1QGr0 (shit, YT compression is heavy on this one)
  • LoganDark 3y ago
    Are these products available to buy and what is the actual price?
    • northzen 3y ago
      Yep. All products you see on the site you can actually. With Viking camera it is a bit more complicated process, but yes, you can order it too. It is necessarily to go through sales@mosaic51.com Here are case studies from our clients: https://www.mosaic51.com/case-studies/ https://www.mosaic51.com/case-studies/ Here is the video from one of our clients: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1rK4N82UEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1rK4N82UEE Here is the videos and examples on our YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mosaic360cameras/videos https://www.youtube.com/@mosaic360cameras/videos
• Aromasin 3y ago
  It's a side income, as the market is way to small to make it a full time thing, but I've designed a digital score card for tabletop wargaming, with relevant tokens for each game (starting with the Warhammer franchises, Bolt Action, BattleTech, Marvel Crisis, Star Wars Legion, Malifaux, and ASOIAF). It's basically a few 7-seg displays, and buttons to tick them up or down, and smaller ones for wound tracking on specific models. The main draw is the different cases depending what army/faction you're playing, which you can paint to match your color scheme. I've yet to scale it beyond my local clubs and the occasional tournament, but feedback thus far has been great. Website on its way, with a Kickstarter in progress so I can hire a designer to help me we the casing. Also selling STLs so people can 3D print their own.
  • Firmwarrior 3y ago
    Man, that sounds friggin awesome I'll go ahead and cyberstalk you, haha.
• fts_newnorm 3y ago
  We’re here to make ethically-made tech sexy so it becomes the Newnorm (yup that’s the brand name). We just launched our first product ‘Sound’ last week: a pair of earbuds, headphones, and speakers in one modular system. Check it out here newnorm.tech/sound and pre-order it if high-end wireless audio is your cup of tea! If not, we’ll have many configs and allow Nike-style customization next year so keep an eye on us. Throw at me your thoughts, questions, concerns, whatever it might be. Everything helps!
  • fts_newnorm 3y ago
    Forgetting https is like forgetting your name, so here you go https://newnorm.tech/sound https://newnorm.tech/sound
  • LoganDark 3y ago
    Those headphones look like the most uncomfortable things on the planet. Are they supposed to be over-ear or on-ear?
    • fts_newnorm 3y ago
      Over-ear. Curious, why do they look so uncomfortable to you? Is it because of how the earpads look on the render or anything else related to the headband frame?
      • LoganDark 3y ago
        The cushions look like they have pretty sharp edges. In general, I'm really sensitive to that sort of thing and have to use very specific over-ear headphones; ones that actually go over the ear and don't squeeze around or against it. (I am not sure if yours do) I'm pretty astonished by the price, my current headphones are studio monitors that costed $50, and according to your website, the retail price of your system will be 16 times that. It's difficult to imagine justifying that, even if you also get earbuds.
        • deleted 3y ago
• p_gloom 3y ago
  We developed a sensor enabled flooring material that replaces the fiberglass structural layer in typical commercial flooring and it turns the floor into a massive readable surface. We use that to create a "spatial API" for applications to be developed for the built world. Our most popular application to date has been one that we developed with the Department of Energy where buildings that have our floor sensors integrate real time occupancy data to the building management system and it intelligently controls the HVAC in real time in order to reduce waste. We typically save 30-35% of a building's energy waste/cost all without impeding on occupant privacy or comfort. Another interesting application under development is using the sensors as a way to predict fall events in senior living environments through the ongoing analysis of a patient's gait
  • conmans11 3y ago
    This has absolutely piqued my interest. Just trying to think of solutions or entertainment options that are better suited with this than CV. Seems like CV would suit the DOE at a lesser cost. Although the privacy is of concern there.
• nudgeee 3y ago
  Side gig designing and maufacturing niche tools for DJ's: https://cardinia.net https://cardinia.net
• limrod631 3y ago
  We're working on a modeling and simulation tool for engineers who design and test embedded systems and next-gen hardware. We help companies shorten their development cycle, reduce costs, and launch faster using model-based design. It is kind of unfortunate but hardware design tools haven't seen the same level of cambrian explosion that cloud and AI tools have over the past several years. We hope to change that so engineers can design embedded software, simulate algorithms, simplify verification and validation, and use models as digital twins seamlessly. If you would like to see what we do, check us out at: https://www.collimator.ai/ https://www.collimator.ai/
  • alhirzel 3y ago
    Pleased to hear of your efforts. Can you help me understand the contrast between your product and Synopsys Virtualizer [1], mbeddr [2], Dymola [3], or dSPACE VEOS [4]? [1]: https://www.synopsys.com/verification/virtual-prototyping/virtualizer.html https://www.synopsys.com/verification/virtual-prototyping/vi... [2]: http://mbeddr.com/ http://mbeddr.com/ [3]: https://www.3ds.com/products-services/catia/products/dymola/key-advantages/ https://www.3ds.com/products-services/catia/products/dymola/... [4]: https://www.dspace.com/en/inc/home/products/sw/simulation_software/veos.cfm https://www.dspace.com/en/inc/home/products/sw/simulation_so...
• binbag 3y ago
  After how many years do you stop being a startup?
• tomasero 3y ago
  We’re building the MouthPad, a smart mouthwear that serves as a universal Bluetooth controller. Using tongue, jaw, head, and breath gestures, users can interact with devices like smartphones, tablets, computers, and IoT gadgets. Our solution offers expressive, unobtrusive, always-available hands-free control. We’re addressing a significant gap in assistive interfaces. Current technology has not kept pace with users’ needs, especially those with hand impairments, limiting their engagement with the digital world - a crucial space for learning, socializing, and working. We’re driven to unlock their potential and enhance independence. Our immediate target is helping individuals living with quadriplegia in the U.S. However, globally, with conditions like Muscular Dystrophy, SMA, ALS, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Cerebral Palsy, stroke aftermath, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and other SRIs, the number of potential users is vast. Beyond assistive use, we’ve also attracted developers intrigued by the productivity gains from hands-free interfacing and the prospect of an always-available, private AI+AR interaction interface. Know anyone who might benefit from the MouthPad? Join our waitlist: https://augmental.tech/waitlist https://augmental.tech/waitlist
• vax425 3y ago
  I’m building novel GPS-enabled digital clocks, mostly for myself and family, but I also plan to sell a few on Etsy. These never need setting or configuration since they grab time/date/location data from the satellites. My first design is HanuKron, an automatic Hanukkah menorah for sale on Etsy http://HanuKron.com http://HanuKron.com LunaKron is up next. It shows the current phase of the moon. I am working to get the first prototype running today. I have ideas for other clocks: a sunset chime; a clock that displays the current astrological sign; advent calendar, etc. If you’ve got an idea and would like a unique clock made, I’d like to hear about it!
• wigiv 3y ago
  We turn shipping containers into microfactories that can be deployed anywhere on Earth. We also retrofit containers for all kinds of fun modular commercial, industrial, and even residential purposes.
• ulaw 3y ago
  I'm working on distributed electronics and control software for high performance torque controlled robots. https://arbite.io https://arbite.io
• RMPR 3y ago
  Zivid is building amazing 3D cameras, everything is vertically integrated. The low-level challenges look amazing. I'm mostly working as on infrastructure. I encourage you, do check it out.