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Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

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Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#571
post #328

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 Follow the development process here: https://hackaday.io/project/191398-ydrip

Wow! Would love to compare this to Flume! Been using it for some time but can’t quite catch one tiny leak I have

Interesting. Do you mean the leak is intermittent and Flume isn't able to detect it? I would love to know more.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tell that guy's not a parent, haha. It's a shitload of money, but at least in this case I know that I'm getting value out of it. It's very easy to piss away a fortune on badly-made Chinese plastic trash in the world of baby accessories.

I am a parent, and in my opinion, spending $1k on a car seat is completely unreasonable. (We bought ours used as part of a package deal with some other used baby stuff. It would have been nowhere near $1k when new.)

When buying used car seats, remember to check the "use before" date that is marked on it. They only claim to achieve the designed strength/protection for a number of years. At least in Europe.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#573

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. Fr…

What’s the name?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the name?

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 li…

I guessed it was Orqa but was surprised about some of the other tech mentioned - I had no idea that they had merged with ImmersionRC!

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#575

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…

"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

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.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#576
Not a start-up but a non-profit.

I'm the vice chair at Libre Space Foundation (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.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#577

We make the world's best baby car seats. 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…

The price is insane man. The best of the best car seat according to lots of reviews(Cybex Anoris-T) is "only" £599, your thing is significantly more and I don't see why it's any better. Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to justify.

I have no experience whatsoever with baby carseats.

But I get so frustrated with garbage on the market, and the struggle to find decent quality goods. I've created my own where they don't exist (eg. current limiter for plugging in laptop power brick on a plane, untrasonic eyeglass cleaner and dryer, tongue-activated mouse button) which is hugely labour intensive. If I need your thing, your thing is as good as you say, and you can sell it to me for less than that costs me in time, materials and lost opportunity, then for me the math is simple.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a parent, and in my opinion, spending $1k on a car seat is completely unreasonable. (We bought ours used as part of a package deal with some other used baby stuff. It would have been nowhere near $1k when new.)

What do you think about spending $1k on a phone? My question is why it's $1000 and not $999.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#579
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One big problem with all car seats is that after 3-4 you have to dump an expensive and still usable seat. And I mean dump, since they cannot be donated AFAIK. It would be great if the seat can be disassembled to be used for another purpose.

Think of the dollar cost amortization! You need to have more children to average down the cost. So you can use the car seat across 3-4 kids. In all seriousness, the problem with donations is people are afraid of attached liability. It is a shame, because car seats can often be used for several years across multiple children. If you keep it in the family and use it across your own kids, everyone is cool with it. As so…

There's probably a business model around refurbishing the "core" of the car seat. Take it back, run it through a CMM to make sure it's not been in any again impacts, then resell as a refurb or 2nd life unit with new padding and absorb the liability. A $600-$700 upcycled unit would be appealing. Or offer re-certification as a service. CSaaS

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#580
post #576

Not a start-up but a non-profit. I'm the vice chair at Libre Space Foundation ( 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 smalle…

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://fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/

https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2005SASS...24...11K

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