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Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

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Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#631

Post by fts_newnorm »

fts_newnorm wrote: post #619

We’re here to make ethically-made tech sexy so it becomes the Newnorm (yup that’s the brand name). We just launched our first product ‘Sound’ last week: a pair of earbuds, headphones, and speakers in one modular system. Check it out here newnorm.tech/sound and pre-order it if high-end wireless audio is your cup of tea! If not, we’ll have many configs and allow Nike-style customization next year so keep an eye on us.…

Forgetting https is like forgetting your name, so here you go https://newnorm.tech/sound

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#632

Post by Temporary_31337 »

pjc50 wrote: post #607
franckl wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are building more than a heat pump, it is a novel stirling architecture, that is, a machine that converts electricity to heat, and heat to electricity. The idea is summarized on this picture https://imgur.com/a/f5T1NYi and is as follow: - solar/wind energy would be converted to heat using our engine and stored into a thermal storage unit (molten salts or sand). This would provide up to 30-40 hours of energy for da…

This all sounds excellent, but I'm wincing at how many different pieces there are that are either (a) semi-unproven or (b) have a really high capital cost to value ratio. And they all have to work for the business to work. > H2 electrolyzers Do you have a platinum-free solution for this? > small haber-bosch plant Is this a thing already? Wouldn't this be more directly marketable into the fertilizer industry, which ne…

why not rely on the grid those few days in a year? I kind of get self sufficiency is the goal, eventually, but for now sounds cheaper to go gradually?

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#633

Post by bdavbdav »

sgt wrote: post #596
bdavbdav wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why only lap belt? Isofix is so easy.

Isofix is easy in theory but if you don't know exactly where the fixing points are, then it's like fumbling around in the dark. Sometimes it's hard to see the fixing points while trying to get the seat on. I think that situation is something many parents recognize. Usually when the baby is screaming etc.. wonderful. Once you've click the base in, it's easy next time though. Yet, my wife still considers fitting the se…

Parent here too, with three different seats (two are rotating, permanently affixed to the base, 0-3yrs, one is a removable base, 0-~1). All of which seem to have little torches on the isofix lugs, and the little one feeling infinitely more stable when using the isofix and leg as opposed to just the base. I will say the permanently affixed ones / bases weigh a tonne. Being able to click in and out was a delight when we were able to use the little seat.

I'm not sure if its a brand thing, but the isofix bolts on my last cars (Volvo, BMW, Audi) were all really well signposted, and in little plastic housings which you couldn't miss, even fumbling around. The ones on my wife's Ford are just sort of hiding behind the cushions, which doesn't seem as elegant.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#634

Post by aquaphile »

bdavbdav wrote: post #587
aquaphile wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get both: isofix/latch as well as lap-belt. Each car seat is sold with an accompanying Latch (aka Isofix) base so you can roll with whatever you prefer. However, lap belts are ubiquitous and work really well. Reasons to use a base: 1) Convenience. It is nice and fast to click-in, click out with a car seat. Super fast and easy. 2) Protect the seat cushions of the car. 3) More constraints on pitch rotation. Which c…

Many thanks for the thoughtful reply! Coming from Europe here where it’s been on every car for about 20 years so has become very much the norm. Belt (1) troubles me slightly in that it’s easy but not necessarily intuitive enough for grandma to get it right every time (and indeed many don’t). The base has the great benefit of being definitively installed correctly (all goes green / stops beeping). The reported numbers…

A good dialogue is always fun. Thanks for bringing some science to the thread.

You've hit the nail on the proverbial head regarding misuse. Misuse is a problem across installation types: belt-only, and with Latch/Isofix. Some people get so confused they install with both methods.

Lowering misuse is a top design goal. Stated differently: we want to make things so simple that people have to work hard to make a mistake.

You are absolutely correct that belt misuse is a problem (per the cited GDV study). Latch misuse is still a problem too, though.

The studies make clear that misuse is common across installation types, to various degrees. The studies don't do a great job of exploring why the misuse occurred (The 2005 NHTSA study below did ask some good follow up questions). For example, Why did someone not use the belt path correctly? Was it because the slot was too narrow? Was it not visually obvious? Why did someone install both the Latch/Isofix anchors onto the same mount point? Why did someone leave too much slack in the Latch/Isofix anchor or the seat belt? Etcetera. The reasons why people misuse a seat are very valuable to improved public education and improved product design.

NHTSA's 2005 large field study found 39% of CRS (aka baby car seats) were incorrectly installed with Latch. Many of those had multiple errors (e.g. twisted belt plus latch connector turned upside down). Table 11 has the details in https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/latch_report_12-...

10 years later, NHTSA's 2015 study with NCRUSS data found misuse was still persistent: "Overall misuse is considered as having at least one defined misuse present in the car seat or booster seat – the seat may have one or multiple misuses, where one misuse has the same contribution as multiple misuses. The overall misuse is estimated to be 46 percent with a 95 percent confidence interval ranging from 39 percent to 52 percent. By car seat or booster seat type, estimated misuse rates were 61 percent for forward-facing car seats, 49 percent for rearfacing infant car seats, 44 percent for rear-facing convertible car seats, 24 percent for backless booster seats, and 16 percent for highback booster seats." Source: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

So for all those parents out there, read your seat's user manual. The user manual will make it clear how to properly and effectively use the seat belt or the Latch/Isofix anchorages.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#635

Post by LoganDark »

northzen wrote: post #606

We are building high resolution panoramic cameras which are easy to use and do not require additional PC in the car and can be operated. Also we've got a highest panoramic resolution camera (Viking) with six 6k x 4k modules shooting incredible dynamic range. https://www.mosaic51.com/cameras/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5cmaa1QGr0 (shit, YT compression is heavy on this one)

Are these products available to buy and what is the actual price?

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#636

Post by LoganDark »

redat00 wrote: post #602

At my company we're working on building smart boilers, where what's actually heating the water is servers. We then send customers computation to those boilers. This way of doing things allow us to eliminate a lot of carbon emission for computation that would otherwise have been done in classic hardware where the heat is not reused at all. You can learn more about it at https://qarnot.com !

I remember seeing this and think it's absolutely awesome. If I were someone with such a boiler installed in my home, would I be able to run my own workloads on the device as well? I'd be kinda sad having that much compute but only being able to use it for heat.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#637

Post by LoganDark »

ezekg wrote: post #50

Took me awhile to remember what it was called, but TinyPilot [^0] by mtlynch is pretty cool. Michael sometimes writes about running a hardware business on his blog [^1]. Not exactly a startup, but a small business. [^0]: https://tinypilotkvm.com [^1]: https://mtlynch.io/posts

1080p makes it a total non-starter for me, that sort of resolution is over a decade out of date, even for small laptops. Not sure why people think it's an acceptable maximum.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#639

Post by mastax »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #394
bryanmgreen wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crystal is stronger than standard glass which is why it can be so thin. Modern production of lead-free crystal is generally pretty good now. Old leaded crystal is extremely brittle and prone to chipping and fractures which definitely soured people's perception of its durability. Our glassware uses titanium as a strengthening additive which really helps durability as well as sparkle. Most of our hospitality partners u…

How do you mix the Titanium into the crystal, and does it bond in some way, or how does it strengthen and improve the durability?

Glass is normally made with 50-75% silicon dioxide (sand, basically) and the remainder various metallic salts or oxides like lead oxide, soda, potash, etc. These are combined as powders and when you melt them down they all dissolve together into glass.

From a layman's perspective all these metallic compounds seem really different from glass but in reality that's the magic of glass. I'm no chemist but SiO2 doesn't seem chemically very different from PbO or TiO2.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#640

Post by dazhbog »

moneywoes wrote: post #555
dazhbog wrote: post #77

I run 2 small IoT startups. One is smart agriculture related, we do ambient and soil moisture sensors https://pycno.co Second, (from the learnings of the first one) offers a smart IoT gateway (cellular, WiFi,LoRa, etc.) with modular cartridges (like SNES) for connecting sensors and actuators from any 3rd party vendor https://deeporbital.com

Seems very niche May I ask how you got in this venture?

Totally random, wanted to do home automation first but it wasn't a big pain for customers (it was a nice to have) and the market was very crowded.

Started talking with agriculture companies and just developed whatever they wanted (HW/SW). Agriculture is a slower moving industry, which gave us time to learn from our plethora of mistakes.

At the end of the day, home automation or agriculture, both needed some measuring, uploading and graphing of data.

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