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Show HN: The Wifi Block – Let your guests connect to WiFi with just a tap

thewifiblock.com

21–30 of 43 posts

Re: Show HN: The Wifi Block – Let your guests connect to WiFi with just a tap

#21
post #17

Instead of explaining the tech and how it works, the site is just asking me to pick one of the wood species...

I imagine this is mostly for retail businesses, airbnb, etc. In which case, the technical details don't really matter -- if it works, then it just needs to look good, and that's the end of it.

But anyways for HN purposes, the hints are there -- WiFi Easy Connect Protocol exists as a standard; NFC requirement specified in the text;

It's a wooden wrapper around an NFC sticker that's being set to include the details necessary for WiFi Easy Connect to ... connect to your wifi.

Technically, I don't think this is notable at all really. The fact that its possible, and the imagination of having a simple block to slap your phone against when you enter a random shop/restaurant, are the main notable aspects.

Sitewise, it's ugly with no real color scheme, stupidly large spacing and gaps, and doesn't seem to be well tested (can't scroll the example images on mobile, they're entirely missing on desktop)

But content wise, this is pretty much ideal from an HN complaint perspective -- it's extremely clear about what they're selling you -- the only thing missing is that there's no pricing information on the front-page, for what I imagine is a single-price object

edit: Actually this site is pretty annoyingly broken, with clear bugs all over the place. And for god knows what reason, the chosen font (non-changeable?) is some kind of abomination of comic sans? The Peach Pit font on the front page is clearly cleaner and more professional -- why not just keep using that? For what was a pretty reasonably simple and pretty neat little product, the site has really turned me off of it.

Re: Show HN: The Wifi Block – Let your guests connect to WiFi with just a tap

#23
post #18
post #17

Instead of explaining the tech and how it works, the site is just asking me to pick one of the wood species...

They don't want you to know it can be done with a $1 NFC sticker

Is it still $1? I thought the price had dropped by now.

Re: Show HN: The Wifi Block – Let your guests connect to WiFi with just a tap

#24

So it's a $40 piece of wood with a NFC sticker in it? Feels like it would be cheaper to just print out a QR code and get people to point their camera at it to connect. Could even order a super cheap NFC sticker and stick it to the back of the QR code.

Hi there! At a basic level yes you are absolutely right. The wood however has to be rough cut, assembled with the NFC tag, precision cut, routed multiple times, sanded, laser engraved, and then have multiple coats of acrylic sealant applied to it. Not bad for only $40? We hope that others will find a custom designed Wifi Block sitting on their shelf a lot more appealing than a printed QR code with a sticker on it, bu…

So, how about a $4 or $5 version which is the size of a coaster and only has the wifi symbol on it? You could have them manufactured in china by the thousands for a few pennies apiece.

Re: Show HN: The Wifi Block – Let your guests connect to WiFi with just a tap

#25
post #17

Instead of explaining the tech and how it works, the site is just asking me to pick one of the wood species...

https://www.digitaltrends.com/how-to/diy-nfc-coasters/

Seems like phones have an easy way to make your own DIY stickers, but I'm sure it's just a standard format that you could write with any username/pw/ap that you wanted.

Re: Show HN: The Wifi Block – Let your guests connect to WiFi with just a tap

#27

I am more curious about the technical aspect. I could not find any android documentation on building wifi nfc tags that are automatically connected to by the system. Can someone explain how this is working? Hidden apis? A NFC spec, or something else?

https://www.digitaltrends.com/how-to/diy-nfc-coasters/ This has some steps to use your phone to create the NFC Sticker.

Re: Show HN: The Wifi Block – Let your guests connect to WiFi with just a tap

#29

This is for largely android Users right? If you’re at my house but not in my or my wife’s contacts (and thus it can’t request access to our wifi automatically) I doubt I want you to have wifi access anyway.

It’s mostly for retail businesses that would otherwise write Wi-Fi passwords on signs.

Re: Show HN: The Wifi Block – Let your guests connect to WiFi with just a tap

#30
Cool product! I wouldn't worry about the HN naysayers too much (very "just use rsync to a VPS"-esque vibe here). I think you should clarify on your site that the app is only required for setting up the block, and that your guests won't need it -- I knew that from using the NFC wifi feature before, but not everyone does, and right now centering the app makes it seem like everyone will need it. You could also maybe make a business-centric landing page? I think this would go over GREAT with coffee shops etc. Especially if you have the option to get a logo image engraved instead of just text. Not sure how possible that is with your current setup, though -- I know laser cutters can do an image, but it needs to be SVG or another vector format I think? Maybe you could use the Inkscape auto-vectorizer to do that conversion for raster images, though (it's usable from a script IIRC).

Cool business! Good luck!

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