I think it would be nice if someone made a high-performance ASIC specifically for tinygrad.
Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
71–80 of 726 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#72Took 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
Is TinyPilot hardware - it looks more like software?
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#73I own multiple interactive entertainment concepts. We build room scale hardware and props. So definitely a bit different than normal consumer hardware, but still have a lot of the same problems. One of our issues is we our low volume and unique use cases for our hardware.
I’d love to connect with anyone else doing similar things. My info is in my bio.
Breakoutgames.Com Activate.games
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#74https://darkhive.ai small uncrewed aerial systems for public safety. Other companies still dominate the market and for good reason. We aim to bring US-made equipment that is competitive and affordable.
This is very cool! Is the intent that it'll have a bunch of modular stuff so law enforcement can equip it to do different tasks (e.g., different cameras or sensors)? Not sure if you ever saw the Axon (Taser) announcement that was quickly halted but they pitched doing something like this for schools with a taser attached. A bit dystopian but maybe useful given the awful number of school shootings and poor response times as evidenced by Uvalde
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#75We're working on "life support systems" for algae photobioreactors. This includes monitoring the health of the algae, monitoring and controlling the environment to optimise algae growth, providing feedback to users on growth and experiment progress, and uploading data to our own cloud.
We're more software than hardware, but without the hardware capability we wouldn't have been able to attempt it.
Previously we tried little "Singing Christmas Trees" as well [0], and while they were certainly nifty, we couldn't find the market for them at the price.
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#76We 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…
For anyone else who doesn't know off hand what MOQ stands for...
BOM: bill of materials, aka list of what it takes to manufacture a product
MOQ: minimum order quantity, the lower limit the manufacturer will accept
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#77I 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
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#78We 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…
These look amazing, like they solve all the pain points I've had with car seats over the past five years. I'm a little past that stage now but wish these had been around when I had little babies.
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#79As someone who used to work at an IoT company the consumer space is brutal. Unless you've got something you can sell for 10x BOM, or there's naturally a subscription based model then it's not worth the blood, sweat, and tears.
10x BOM? Why is the bar so high for profitably? There are manufacturing costs, marketing and inventory risk. But still… what am I missing?
Supply chain into consumers is brutal: retail outlets mark up products by 100% (ie you sell them something for $100, they sell it for $200). If you use a distributor, that's another 100% markup. 10x BoM on consumer price means that some of your biggest sales channels to consumers (BestBuy, Walmart, Target) are paying you 25-33% of what they get from customers. To get your own markup, you need 8x BoM.
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#80At Sense we make a home energy monitor that provides real-time appliance-level monitoring using machine learning. Hardware is indeed hard as everyone said it would be! https://sense.com
This seems exactly like neurio, but Generac seems to have shuttered that product.