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DeskHog, an open-source developer toy
- sibeliuss 1y agoThis thing is rad. So many props on the Series D fundraise. Well deserved. (Best company ever.)
- knowitnone 1y agohow many are you buying?
- bitwize 1y agoHog Speed. You're a hedgehog that runs fast. Sounds like a lame game concept with niche appeal at best. This thing looks seriously cute and next to useless. Like a mini Chumby. A perfect gadget for "the street to find its own uses for".
- rideontime 1y agoI still can't believe this company is named "post hog."
- joshdavham 1y agoWhy is it called PostHog anyways?
- vasco 1y agoIf only there was a tool for finding answers to our questions: https://posthog.com/docs/posthog-direction#:~:text=PostHog%20was%20born.-,Why%20the%20name%3F,'Hog'%20comes%20from%20hedgehogs. https://posthog.com/docs/posthog-direction#:~:text=PostHog%2...
- throwaway314155 1y agoBut then there'd be no one for you to be condescending towards!
- schwartzworld 1y agoI don’t think that’s the full answer. Post Hog is internet parlance for “upload a picture of your penis”. Someone had a sense of humor when they picked that name.
- thih9 1y agoI’m unfamiliar with the slang but even without it the name is weird. The “hog” alone would never make me think of a hedgehog instead of a regular hog. > a domesticated pig, especially a castrated male reared for slaughter https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/hog https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/hog
- wink 1y agoAh, "spotted hog", as my English teacher (6th grade or so?, ESL) had said: for some reason this is one term most pupils will remember, no matter how unimportant. Guess he was right, or maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- joshdavham 1y agoI used chatGPT to ask this question at first and it spat out nonsense so I just decided to pose the question here haha. I guess I should've just RTFM'd as they say.
- vasco 1y agoI copy pasted your comment onto Google and it was the first result.
- aitchnyu 1y agoTIL highlights work perfectly in Firefox.
- notpushkin 1y ago> The parallel is by auto-capturing event data, we can help you draw meanings after your users are long gone. That’s kinda dark?
- julianeon 1y agoJudging by the amount of free publicity it generates, I think it was the right choice.
- jnsie 1y agoPost hog ergo propter hog
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago27 lawyers in the room, anyone know...?
- harshitaneja 1y agoAfter hoc, therefore something else hoc...
- mananaysiempre 1y ago> Can it play Doom? >...We're working on it. Seriously though, can a ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather[1] (dual-core Xtensa @ 240 MHz, 512KB built-in RAM, 2MB external PSRAM, 4MB Flash) play Doom? As usual with these microcontroller-type things, it looks like storage poses a harder limit than compute, but maybe just a bit of Doom could be crammed in? [1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/5691 https://www.adafruit.com/product/5691
- tecleandor 1y agoSeems like you can do it using Retro-Go, that's using a port of PrBoom 2.5.0. (No sound, though) https://www.hackster.io/naveenbskumar/yes-arduino-nano-esp32-can-play-doom-ccfde1 https://www.hackster.io/naveenbskumar/yes-arduino-nano-esp32...
- shakna 1y agoEspressif do publish one [0] themselves, but that requires extra RAM - 4MB, not the two this seems to have. So its probably doable, but may require a few modifications. [0] https://github.com/espressif/esp32-doom https://github.com/espressif/esp32-doom
- madduci 1y agoSince it's an ESP32 board all the way down, it should be possible. You can already run Super Mario NES edition on it
- bradleykingz 1y agoWorking at Posthog must be fun
- hugs 1y agoyou saying that is probably the reason they did this.
- jatins 1y agoDevelopers: "Ha I don't fall for silly marketing" Also, devs: "They are shipping a toy, must be a fun place to work" It may be a fun place to work fwiw, but this is just marketing not something a team of engineers decided to ship between jira tickets!
- fuziontech 1y agoThis was literally something someone did on the side between other stuff. We don't use Jira.
- jatins 1y agoI stand corrected. Sorry for cynical take
- fuziontech 1y agoIt is :3 It's exactly how you think it would be like working here. And we are hiring. Come join us! https://posthog.com/careers https://posthog.com/careers
- QRY 1y agoOkay I am definitely applying, but I need to build one of these first!
- fnord77 1y agoFYI, my Pihole is blocking this domain.
- IAmBroom 1y agoYou can't fit posthog in your pihole? Try more ClotdMilk-Fat.
- enlightens 1y agoThey do web analytics so definitely end up on block lists for people who don’t want to be tracked. (I’ve used PostHog on several projects and feel that they are better for privacy than, say, GA, but understand why people would block them)
- joshdavham 1y agoThis looks really cool, but I'm not really sure why they made it. PostHog is primarily web analytics software from what I understand. Why build hardware?
- vasco 1y agoFrom the looks of it, for fun.
- daniloc 1y agoHere's the truth: it was a weird idea from our Slack – build a tamagotchi! – that I took too seriously. In a couple of evenings, I had a prototype working. Then everyone was so excited we just ran with it. Our audience is developers: we make you happy, you'll love us and make us the first part of every project you do, on your own and at the workplace. Meanwhile, man, hardware is just so much fun. But most folks have no idea how much easier it is to build now. Basically, if you can use open source software, you already know how to hack on microcontroller. So this foray into developer toys is about helping you have fun with something that maybe you wouldn't have played with otherwise. But you can also display real-time PostHog data on it, out of the box. Which means you can expense it. A merch win-win.
- joshdavham 1y agoDid you make an HN account just to reply to this? If so, I think that was really cool of you to do!
- daniloc 1y agoIt was a good question! Thanks for asking.
- Aeolun 1y agoThere’s a walking little toy on my posthog dashboard already. I have no idea why they made it, but I sure do appreciate it.
- h1fra 1y ago
- swyx 1y agoi would buy it if the screen looked a bit better. based on this website it looks really small and not super useful for the "keep analytics up on screen" usecase
- fuziontech 1y agoSounds like something that might show up on a DeskHog Pro
- seveibar 1y agoHardware is becoming more accessible, so more software companies are going to release hardware products or build hardware products for internal purposes. The future of physical world innovation isn't going to come from legacy hardware corpos, but from software companies that run hardware experiments that become real hardware products. Hats off to Posthog for making it cool! The reason hardware has sucked in the past is poor tooling. But now open-source solutions are getting pretty good, and AI is covering many knowledge gaps.
- fidotron 1y agoThis is the truth - my recent work has dragged me into doing exactly this, building hardware "giveaways" to promote SaaS in niche industries, and enabling the backend devs to have an API they can understand to control it. It has made me wonder why such things haven't been more popular attached to Grafana. For example, take a LED strip and use that as a gauge or similar. Many devs seem to fetishize screens and enjoy extra displays in their environments, while normies (at least the feedback from the recent work) have been telling me they actively want to get away from any screens. OTOH using LED strips rapidly turns anywhere into a vape shop.
- oersted 1y agoCould you elaborate on these hardware projects? They sound cool. If your workflow lets you crank out hardware quickly and cheaply enough for just a marketing stunt, you must be using methodologies we could learn from. I’m not convinced developers just like normal screens though, tactile/analogue widgets are always cool and welcome!
- fidotron 1y agoIt's not my place to go into details as to what it is at this time, and there are other people involved on here! The build is neither cheap nor fast, though the proof of concept was. If you are aiming at a dev/maker audience telling them to configure things with ESP Flasher will work. If it's for some random person then it won't, and the complexity explodes. I would caution anyone going into this because almost everyone you speak to will radically underestimate the difference between the proof of concept and a shippable product, even a giveaway one, with the consequence that most people respond as if it's a high school science project and not real work.
- doubleorseven 1y agoi still wish i had a small keyboard with like 9 configurable keys that can execute what ever i want like "start debug" or "open tty at a specific folder" or "git status a specific repository" and so on...
- EricBetts 1y agoHave you heard of, or considered, a elgato stream deck?
- fader 1y agoAdafruit makes a keyboard kit that you can assemble and write your own macros in Python: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5128 https://www.adafruit.com/product/5128
- fragmede 1y agoMacropad keyboarda exist, just need to do the software configuration for your particular use case. I have one with a rotary knob that I hooked up to my debugger so that I can step forwards and into fluidly.
- ctxc 1y agoBrilliant usage of the rotary knob!
- sandebert 1y agoThere are lots of keyboards like that. I use an eight-key version that I found on Amazon. Works just fine, no complaints.
- ctxc 1y agoHey, the website on your profile is broken. Btw I did exactly that! I cut (literally) a cheap keyboard at the numpad boundary. Installed AHK (Windows) which runs macros on button click. Postits to label each button. Now I have one of those fancy few-button keyboards that do my bidding. I've been meaning to post it. Would that be interesting?
- kamranjon 1y agoWell that’s certainly one way to make me want to work at your company.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- madh 1y agoepaper version would be cool
- teraflop 1y agoDon't get me wrong, this seems like a fun thing to play with. But it feels very weird to see so much marketing and branding poured into something that's literally just a plastic enclosure and software for an off-the-shelf dev board made by somebody else. Like, the page says: > Want more hardware? We included an I²C expansion port, just for people like you. No you didn't! Adafruit did! You didn't even add a connector.
- allknowingfrog 1y agoI'm no expert, but it seems like the value add is the firmware they wrote to turn this into a more accessible platform. Hardware is always composed of other hardware, so "included" is not inherently the wrong word, though it maybe takes too much credit. In general, the intent feels wholesome to me. As a software guy, I had no idea that hardware could be so approachable, and I'm suddenly excited about the possibilities.
- teraflop 1y ago> Hardware is always composed of other hardware In general I agree, but there is absolutely no composition at all happening here. (Unless you count buying a dev board that's designed to run on a battery, and plugging a battery into it.) I truly think it's great that they've made software that people find approachable. It's the branding of someone else's hardware product as their own that rubs me the wrong way. They aren't saying things that are technically false, but it still feels misleading.
- INTPenis 1y agoI instantly pictured this being a rubber duck. And then I started thinking, how could a virtual rubber duck help you deduce things? Mostly you'd want it to listen and be supportive I guess. But maybe, just maybe, could AI somehow summarize a very short suggestion or response based on what you say. That is something I'd buy. Tactile, can be thrown around a bit, listens at the press of a button, responds with a random short suggestion or idea.
- joshvm 1y agoThat's a fun idea, just have it ask questions like the little IQ toys and have a yes/no button. Turns out this works reasonably well if you only allow binary responses. If you also had an "I'm not sure" or "I don't know how" button it might work even better. https://chatgpt.com/share/6849eb45-6700-800d-ad3b-57458eb5c712 https://chatgpt.com/share/6849eb45-6700-800d-ad3b-57458eb5c7... (Asking chatgpt how to put up shelves without it knowing what the task is and only allowing yes/no responses)
- bodge5000 1y agoBrainstory was trying to do something similar, but using AI to kind of prompt you using Socratic questioning. Seemed like a neat idea, but unfortunately it got shut down. https://github.com/brainstory https://github.com/brainstory Looks like it got turned into a VSCode extension by one of the people working on it though, so that's something. Might be interesting to try if you already use Copilot: https://github.com/cassidoo/brainstorm-buddy-extension https://github.com/cassidoo/brainstorm-buddy-extension
- catlifeonmars 1y agoThe beauty of the rubber duck is that that’s all it is. That being said, I’d buy your “live” rubber duck as well. Even if it gives mild Furby vibes.
- newman314 1y agoWhile cool, instead of buying this, I wonder if anyone has tried to used their Flipper for this use case.
- anigbrowl 1y agoChuckles in M5stack
- kreetx 1y agoEnjoyed the joke in the cookie banner! Have been mildly surprised how people controlling larger websites haven't been casually poking fun at this before.
- quinndupont 1y agoThe hardware is UGLY.
- jasperry 1y agoI like the idea of this enough to search a bit for similar projects. The deal breaker on this for me is the 1.14-inch screen. Middle age has made it much less pleasant to look at things that small.
- mikestew 1y agoGoodness, my watch has a bigger screen (my watch has a higher resolution, too). But I’m about to be eligible for a lot of senior discounts this year, so perhaps it isn’t built for the likes of you and me.
- socalgal2 1y agoIt's a amazing to me what can be made / sold for so cheap. A friend recently got one of these https://www.surenoo.com/products/23280116 https://www.surenoo.com/products/23280116 (note: the picture with the hand is way off scale. Thing is slightly larger than a MagSafe phone charging ring (since one way to power it is to put it over such a ring) $25 Unfortunately I have no experience on how to mod it and after searching for 10-15 mins it seemed like more work than I wanted to deal with. Seems like you need to build your own firmware and re-flash it. I found someone had used it to build a nest like control for Home Assistant https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guition-1-8-360x360-esp32-s3-jc3636w518-smart-display/750515 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guition-1-8-360x360-es... If I'd found an easier way to just write some python or JavaScript I might have spent a few hours/days making some round games or demos.
- jonah 1y agoSounds like you can make your own software (firmware) for it with micropython: https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/esp32/tutorial/intro.html https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/esp32/tutorial/intro....
- 8954144039 1y ago[dead]
- bobby322 1y ago[dead]
- voidUpdate 1y agoIve had a project a lot like this on my infinite todo list for a while now
- smallbread 1y agoIf you want something with ESP32-S3 and a bigger touch screen to hack on (the current software is very young), there's the UM squixl. https://unexpectedmaker.com/shop.html#!/SQUiXL/p/743870537 https://unexpectedmaker.com/shop.html#!/SQUiXL/p/743870537. They also make a WOPR kit that can tie into home assistant.
- UK-Al05 1y agoIt looks way to small to be of any practical use. To small to display useful information, to small to play games on it? What's the use of this?
- kube-system 1y ago> toy
- UK-Al05 1y agoToy still needs fun activity you can do on it.
- kube-system 1y agoThe page says it plays games.
- citrus1330 1y agobut what is it for?
- bieber 1y agoDeskHog pops up with cute animations when builds finish or tests pass—like a digital high-five.
- slajob 1y agoIdk... I don't see any real use. Just another gadget toy
- tomjuggler 1y agoThe S3 is a really amazing upgrade to ESP32, dual core with FreeRTOS and Arduino side-by-side. I'm using the same chip for my upcoming product launch - having a good look at this firmware now to see if I can learn something..
- daniloc 1y ago[dead]
- stuaxo 1y agoWhat is this? If it's not a hackable toy pig it'll be disappointing.