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> The complexity of developing hardware is driven by the number of discrete components used Sorry, that's not even close to being true. Interesting how on HN

> The complexity of developing hardware is driven by the number of discrete components used Sorry, that's not even close to being true. Interesting how on HN "hardware" seems to mean "a board with chips". You know, like a Raspberri Pi. That is one type of hardware but not, I dare say, where the $10B (and maybe even $10M) startups would exist. We are developing two hardware products right now. One is an innovative fire fighting system and the other a CNC machine. The complexity in these designs has very little to do with what chips you place on a board. For example, we expect to have to run three to six months of FEA simulations to validate aspects of the fire fighting system and then have to iterate through several design candidates over several months. Beyond that there are regulatory issues that could up-end any design if you don't know what you are doing. Packaging. I almost forgot packaging. Man, that can consume months of testing. You can design a beautiful product only to have it damaged during transportation due to incorrect packaging. Oh, yeah, you also have to have good software. Nah, harware isn't just about chips on a board.

Balgair 12y ago
Bingo! Reliability, safety, malfunctions in batches of screws, etc. Hardware is more complicated because more is going on. With software: Oops! Gotta restart the phone, shucks! With hardware: Crap, dropped it, gotta buy a new one.
joshu 12y ago
more on the CNC machine?
- rebootthesystem 12y ago
  Hmmm. What can I say? Very beefy modular tabletop gantry; AC servos; Automatic Tool Changer; probably 3HP CAT 30 or 40 spindle; coolant; Rigid tapping; weight in the 500 to 1000 lbs range. No, it's not your typical DIY 80-20 t-slot machine on eBay. This is intended as a serious step up from something like a Tormach without having to spend $100K+. No ETA yet.
  - joshu 12y ago
    Awesome stuff. I hope you post about it.
larrys 12y ago
Also there are little if any "do overs" with hardware. If you manufacture it and you make a mistake and it can't be fixed with software then you have a big problem to deal with. You will almost certainly find the mentality of people making industrial equipment (or airplanes) different than people who write software where it's just about accepted practice at this point to push products into the channel and fix them later. In a sense your customers become your beta users. Wasn't always like this (with software). I am getting software updates from Apple it seems every few days. Back in the days of floppy disks and prior to the Internet they had to spend more Q&A time because it would be rather expensive to fix problems with buggy code.
- jkestner 12y ago
  At the least, there are a bunch of strategies that you gotta learn to mitigate the cost of do-overs. It's planning for all the things that can go wrong. Trying to decide whether that logo and your heartfelt "Designed in California" should be embossed or debossed on your case? Learn what "tool-safe" means, and when the moldmaker screws up your font, you'll have a cheap fix instead of scrapping your $10K mold.
jacquesm 12y ago
> One is an innovative fire fighting system and the other a CNC machine. What kind of company developes both fire fighting machines and CNC machines? Are you employed by a prototyping company or something like that? The only other set-up I can think of where such a combination could occur is something like Mitsubishi, very interesting!
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > What kind of company developes both fire fighting machines and CNC machines? > Are you employed by a prototyping company or something like that? Yeah. Prototyping company immediately came to my mind as well. It could also be a private R&D institute that does projects on (e.g. EU) grants. I have a friend working in the second, and apart from doing various weird hardware for EU money, they do some batshit crazy stuff when they're bored at work. There's a guy there that routinely does things like driving around the parking lot with a pulsejet-powered warehouse trolley, drawing things on concrete with a DIY flamethrower or spending few months of free time on doing a beautiful, steampunk-style Geiger counter/night lamp.
- rebootthesystem 12y ago
  I own the company. We do both product development for third parties and our own products. Software, electronics, mechanical, anything. From LED's to robotics. We are also developing a neat portable barbecue system that might be launched via Kickstarter.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Very cool! That's just about as good as it gets.
    - rebootthesystem 12y ago
      Owning your own business: You get to choose which 20 hours of the day you are going to work! But, yeah, it can be fun.
jkestner 12y ago
Packaging is best thought of as another hardware product itself. Form and function have to be design-gineered, and materials and parts and assembly have to be corralled into a schedule and budget. The idea that software is eating hardware, while true on some level for some class of products, is also what leads to lots of startups with solid software backgrounds offering a beautifully designed product that suffers from cost overruns, delays, mechanical and firmware bugs (you think having to test an app across a couple of phones is a pain, try field testing your smart lock). "Move fast and break things" is very different from the mindset needed to build hardware. Be mindful of the perspective of the authors when reading these tragedies: https://medium.com/@stevekreyos/the-rise-and-fall-of-kreyos-new-ac4e2d847964 https://medium.com/@stevekreyos/the-rise-and-fall-of-kreyos-... https://medium.com/@Haje/how-a-half-million-dollar-kickstarter-project-can-crash-and-burn-5482d7d33ee1 https://medium.com/@Haje/how-a-half-million-dollar-kickstart...
- rebootthesystem 12y ago
  Right, I didn't mention such things as thermal and environmental testing. How is your widget going to work in an Icelandic winter or at the peak of summer in Death Valley? How about dirt, grime, dust, vibration and humidity, rapid cycling, cycles per day, drop, impact? The list is huge and highly dependent on the product being designed. About ten years ago a company owned by a friend of mine shipped a machine worth $800,000 to Japan. The packaging/crate was not designed correctly. The machine suffered irreparable damage during transportation. No, there was no penetration of the crate. It was purely inertial loads on components that were not supported for transportation. They bent. It was probably a combination of forklifts, trucking, port container handling, etc. The machine was a total loss. The insurance company was not happy.
  - tjradcliffe 12y ago
    Also: EMC testing, RFI, etc. Certified by a test lab that will cover both North America and Europe. On shipping: these days it's pretty common to ship everything with mechanical accelerometers in the packaging that trigger on high loads so you can tell when the crate has been dropped. Crazy how often it happens.
ubasu 12y ago
Just curious: what software do you use for you FEA simulations?
- rebootthesystem 12y ago
  Mostly Solidworks simulation tools. Flow and mechanical.

Balgair 12y ago

Bingo! Reliability, safety, malfunctions in batches of screws, etc. Hardware is more complicated because more is going on. With software: Oops! Gotta restart the phone, shucks! With hardware: Crap, dropped it, gotta buy a new one.

joshu 12y ago

more on the CNC machine?

rebootthesystem 12y ago
Hmmm. What can I say? Very beefy modular tabletop gantry; AC servos; Automatic Tool Changer; probably 3HP CAT 30 or 40 spindle; coolant; Rigid tapping; weight in the 500 to 1000 lbs range. No, it's not your typical DIY 80-20 t-slot machine on eBay. This is intended as a serious step up from something like a Tormach without having to spend $100K+. No ETA yet.
- joshu 12y ago
  Awesome stuff. I hope you post about it.

larrys 12y ago

Also there are little if any "do overs" with hardware. If you manufacture it and you make a mistake and it can't be fixed with software then you have a big problem to deal with. You will almost certainly find the mentality of people making industrial equipment (or airplanes) different than people who write software where it's just about accepted practice at this point to push products into the channel and fix them later. In a sense your customers become your beta users. Wasn't always like this (with software). I am getting software updates from Apple it seems every few days. Back in the days of floppy disks and prior to the Internet they had to spend more Q&A time because it would be rather expensive to fix problems with buggy code.

jkestner 12y ago
At the least, there are a bunch of strategies that you gotta learn to mitigate the cost of do-overs. It's planning for all the things that can go wrong. Trying to decide whether that logo and your heartfelt "Designed in California" should be embossed or debossed on your case? Learn what "tool-safe" means, and when the moldmaker screws up your font, you'll have a cheap fix instead of scrapping your $10K mold.

jacquesm 12y ago

> One is an innovative fire fighting system and the other a CNC machine. What kind of company developes both fire fighting machines and CNC machines? Are you employed by a prototyping company or something like that? The only other set-up I can think of where such a combination could occur is something like Mitsubishi, very interesting!

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> What kind of company developes both fire fighting machines and CNC machines? > Are you employed by a prototyping company or something like that? Yeah. Prototyping company immediately came to my mind as well. It could also be a private R&D institute that does projects on (e.g. EU) grants. I have a friend working in the second, and apart from doing various weird hardware for EU money, they do some batshit crazy stuff when they're bored at work. There's a guy there that routinely does things like driving around the parking lot with a pulsejet-powered warehouse trolley, drawing things on concrete with a DIY flamethrower or spending few months of free time on doing a beautiful, steampunk-style Geiger counter/night lamp.
rebootthesystem 12y ago
I own the company. We do both product development for third parties and our own products. Software, electronics, mechanical, anything. From LED's to robotics. We are also developing a neat portable barbecue system that might be launched via Kickstarter.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Very cool! That's just about as good as it gets.
  - rebootthesystem 12y ago
    Owning your own business: You get to choose which 20 hours of the day you are going to work! But, yeah, it can be fun.

jkestner 12y ago

Packaging is best thought of as another hardware product itself. Form and function have to be design-gineered, and materials and parts and assembly have to be corralled into a schedule and budget. The idea that software is eating hardware, while true on some level for some class of products, is also what leads to lots of startups with solid software backgrounds offering a beautifully designed product that suffers from cost overruns, delays, mechanical and firmware bugs (you think having to test an app across a couple of phones is a pain, try field testing your smart lock). "Move fast and break things" is very different from the mindset needed to build hardware. Be mindful of the perspective of the authors when reading these tragedies: https://medium.com/@stevekreyos/the-rise-and-fall-of-kreyos-new-ac4e2d847964 https://medium.com/@stevekreyos/the-rise-and-fall-of-kreyos-... https://medium.com/@Haje/how-a-half-million-dollar-kickstarter-project-can-crash-and-burn-5482d7d33ee1 https://medium.com/@Haje/how-a-half-million-dollar-kickstart...

rebootthesystem 12y ago
Right, I didn't mention such things as thermal and environmental testing. How is your widget going to work in an Icelandic winter or at the peak of summer in Death Valley? How about dirt, grime, dust, vibration and humidity, rapid cycling, cycles per day, drop, impact? The list is huge and highly dependent on the product being designed. About ten years ago a company owned by a friend of mine shipped a machine worth $800,000 to Japan. The packaging/crate was not designed correctly. The machine suffered irreparable damage during transportation. No, there was no penetration of the crate. It was purely inertial loads on components that were not supported for transportation. They bent. It was probably a combination of forklifts, trucking, port container handling, etc. The machine was a total loss. The insurance company was not happy.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  Also: EMC testing, RFI, etc. Certified by a test lab that will cover both North America and Europe. On shipping: these days it's pretty common to ship everything with mechanical accelerometers in the packaging that trigger on high loads so you can tell when the crate has been dropped. Crazy how often it happens.

ubasu 12y ago

Just curious: what software do you use for you FEA simulations?

rebootthesystem 12y ago
Mostly Solidworks simulation tools. Flow and mechanical.