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The biggest hurdle for most of the hardware I've been working on over the last few years, is the touchscreen. It's very hard to get good quality (IPS panel, ca

by learc83 13y ago

The biggest hurdle for most of the hardware I've been working on over the last few years, is the touchscreen. It's very hard to get good quality (IPS panel, capacitive) 7-10" touchscreens in low quantities for reasonable prices (I know of 1 company who sells them for under $200, but they constantly run out of stock). I've found it's cheaper to buy cheap android tablets for ~$100 and use them as thin clients, but then you have to deal with all of the restrictions google puts in place (mainly the lack of a kiosk mode). You can create your own ROM to get past the restrictions, but 2 months later the tablet you were using is at end of life, and you're back at square one. Someone could make a killing creating low cost android backed thin clients to use as interfaces for this "hardware revolution".

iamwil 13y ago
The direction many hardware startups have gone is to write networking code instead--if your customer demographic are people that are likely to have smartphones--, to have the interface on the phone instead of on the hardware device itself.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Yup, the smartphone-as-UI paradigm makes a lot of sense, as much as it irritates me sometimes.
mng2 13y ago
Screens and cameras are two of the worst offenders for hobbyist/small-scale dev efforts. They're obviously everywhere, and obviously could be affordable, but either you can't find documentation for them without an NDA or they're way too expensive. Clearly somebody benefits from this secrecy.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  No, they benefit from the scale. Any factory in China cranking out millions of 7" LCDs for the appliance and tablet markets isn't going to bother with support and service for a group that wants 100. That's why they're expensive and that's why you can't get datasheets for them. If you're a serious customer and you can convince a local distributor of a manufacturer like Okaya, Sharp, or Ampire that you're serious (translation: you represent $$$), they'll give you all the stuff you want. Usually for free.
  - mng2 13y ago
    But that's exactly the problem I'm getting at: they make so many of these things, and while you can find them on eBay as replacement parts, there's no documentation on using them from scratch. I don't even care about support. Does Atmel provide support to Arduino end-users? They just need to sell it to me with good enough instructions to make it work.

by learc83 13y ago

iamwil 13y ago

The direction many hardware startups have gone is to write networking code instead--if your customer demographic are people that are likely to have smartphones--, to have the interface on the phone instead of on the hardware device itself.

sliverstorm 13y ago
Yup, the smartphone-as-UI paradigm makes a lot of sense, as much as it irritates me sometimes.

mng2 13y ago

Screens and cameras are two of the worst offenders for hobbyist/small-scale dev efforts. They're obviously everywhere, and obviously could be affordable, but either you can't find documentation for them without an NDA or they're way too expensive. Clearly somebody benefits from this secrecy.

joezydeco 13y ago
No, they benefit from the scale. Any factory in China cranking out millions of 7" LCDs for the appliance and tablet markets isn't going to bother with support and service for a group that wants 100. That's why they're expensive and that's why you can't get datasheets for them. If you're a serious customer and you can convince a local distributor of a manufacturer like Okaya, Sharp, or Ampire that you're serious (translation: you represent $$$), they'll give you all the stuff you want. Usually for free.
- mng2 13y ago
  But that's exactly the problem I'm getting at: they make so many of these things, and while you can find them on eBay as replacement parts, there's no documentation on using them from scratch. I don't even care about support. Does Atmel provide support to Arduino end-users? They just need to sell it to me with good enough instructions to make it work.