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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 cli
by 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 agoDoes 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 agoIt 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 agoA 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.
- gargablegar 3y agoCurrently we measure association times our new sensors will have an extremely detailed set of roaming information for themselves as well as clients around them. We became Aruba UXI
- mosquitobiten 3y agoSo many tech channels on Youtube are watched by people who work in places your tech could help, and these channels are starving for content non-stop. You should reach out to some like LTT, Level1Tech, ServetheHome.
- jiveturkey 3y agowe use such a thing called wyebot. it fits the description of that business model but afaict they all do. we went with to not be stuck with vendor proprietary systems eg aruba uxi. it’s been horrible. feels like a hardware hobbyists product and not an actual solution. will stick with whatever the vendor offers next time. a successful version of this product seems to me much more of a software product than a hardware product. the hardware is a couple of radios in a non offensive box. it’s nothing novel unless you go with SDR and even then i mean it’s been done. maybe poe power is a real challenge on that i’m not sure.
- gargablegar 3y agoThe company became Aruba UXI ;) it’s also specifically vendor agnostic still. The hardware is not super complex it is indeed a robust Linux computer in a box. We have a insanely low failure rate since we want them running subscriptions for years. Making it robust in this sense was part of the challenge. Our power backup feature using super capacitors to keep it up after you lose power and still testing is the most novel thing. We have some secret sauce in the WiFi driver side that gets us extra information.
- jiveturkey 3y agothanks for insight. will be looking at uxi!