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Taking over a Dead IoT Company
141–150 of 213 posts
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually had written more about the exploit & vulnerability in my original drafts but I cut it out because it was a bit boring to read. You are correct that with domain control I am able to serve content to any sign but the content will only be loaded once at boot time. Any future updates would have needed to come from their defunct AWS IoT connection (ignoring full restarts). Using the exploit I remove the connect…
Would you mind posting that content somewhere? I would find it very interesting!
Sure I took out the relevant section and put it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTYSTUp3eTjfD-hG...
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#143Thoroughly enjoyable read.
Maybe if i play devils advocate it will add some value: People have castigated the high RPi cost (among others) and they are probably right about it, but there is something remarkable about been able to ship even a small number of devices with a full blown computer and a unique UI.
Maybe the more fundamental problem was not so much the hardware cost but not shipping enticing enough software to get people excited about the device?
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#144Woof. Adafruit + Raspberry Pi in a shipped product screams to me that they did not have a real electronics guy on their team. https://ukdepartureboards.co.uk/ is the British equivalent of this, and it seems to do everything right (don’t own one, but have seen on Twitter)- optional subscription, and nice looking hardware (seems like they contracted out for that). Though at the minute I suppose there are barely any tra…
> and it seems to do everything right Last time I looked they were missing CE conformance, which afaik is pretty illegal. Surprised they haven't been found out yet.
Additionally, the composition of certified products does not lead to a certified product. Even adding an enclosure around a certified board implies the recertification.
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#145Articles like this are part of why I love Hacker News so much. I've done a little investigation into producing hardware myself and concluded it was just too big a task for someone without the background who didn't want to put up a ton of capital or deal with overseas manufacturing. I loved reading this.
I am new to hn, and really liked this article. If you know about other interesting articles like this, please mention them. I would love to read.
I'm semi-frequently submitting electronics/hardware hacking articles here. Maybe browse my history of submitted articles to see if there is something among them. Here are some examples:
- "I hacked a Joy-Con controller to have a Capacitive Trackpad", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329927
- "Smartknob – an open-source input device", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30646371
- "DVD Laser Scanner Microscope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26012652
- "A simple 11.2 GHz radio telescope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26078761
- "Home-Built Scanning Tunneling Microscope", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740968
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
ESP32 is perfect for this application. RPI is far too beefy, unless you really want to do everything locally (without relying on an external server to package up the train data for you)
Sure, though 240Mhz, 32bit, optional gobs of PSRAM, etc, aren't usually what comes to mind when you hear MCU. Edit: Yes, you could even use an ESP8266, though 32x128x3 plus X bits of PWM brightness would mean being limited to drawing from storage rather than in-memory manipulation. I'd jump right to the WROOM type devices with PSRAM.
You are quite right that the ESP is way over-specified for many tasks, but it's not like the uC is gonna quit and take a more fulfilling job elsewhere. You can get tiny boards for close to $5/ea, or under $5 if you don't need the USB connector. - and that's in single-digit quantities. The hardware configuration is very flexible, eg if power consumption matters you can run it a lot slower, switch off subsystems you don't need, use a watchdog timer to simplify exception handling etc.. There's a rich and constantly expanding SW ecosystem so you can get to a working prototype very fast.
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#147Very interesting read. Based on our experience developing and manufactoring air quality monitors, making a customized PCB should be done as early as possible in the developing process.
With easy to use editors (e.g. easyEDA) and cheap and fast PCB production/assembly (even for small quantities), there is no reason to use overized MCUs/mini computers like the Pi and expensive modules e.g. from Adafruit.
Also, BOM components selection is key. For the same functionality, e.g. a multiplexer there are many different chips available -often at very different price points. Availability in times of chip shortages are also key to keep an eye on.
Technically this product is very simple and the BOM costs they had were a magnitude too high. Too bad because it seemed that the market was ready and they could have become a very successful business.
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#148This was really interesting - a well deserved spot at the top of the front page. It's rare to see an article that combines the technical and business analysis so well. It's amazing to me how quickly the company loaded itself up with staff. Being kinda familiar with ESP32 development, I thought at the beginning that the company would have 4-6 people - 1-2 technical, 1-2 production, 1 business/sales/marketing, 1 admin.…
I think the 600$ price point was inflated with the Pi and the Arduino being used. Simply changing some parts for cheaper ones would have allowed to reduce the BOM cost and thus reduce the price. The author mentions this in his post. Also seemingly not a lot of people paid 600$ for the sign, with a lot going for a lot cheaper than that.
That's a part of what the article dives into. For example the LED matrix hat they were using from Adafruit was probably the most expensive option they could have used at $25/unit, and the article gave examples of much cheaper (i.e. 10% of the cost) parts that would have done the exact same job with a little extra engineering time/effort. Replacing the Pi with an ESP32 would have saved money, but like the article mentions using a Pi wasn't entirely a bad idea considering the free marketing they got from the foundation.
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#149Not to take away anything from the article but what does this have anything to do with IoT?
Re: Taking over a Dead IoT Company
#150Not to take away anything from the article but what does this have anything to do with IoT?
it was an IoT product (internet-connected LED sign)