As a student living in a small studio I hated that everyone could hear your bathroom business.
10 years later I’m now trying to solve this problem for small homes and businesses.
Loodio is a bathroom privacy device:
Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
141–150 of 726 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#142Took 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
Seems like currently the competitors to this product are the Pi-KVM and the Blikvm.
Seems like Blikvm have a number of interesting form factors, such as PCIe card and rack mount, which may be interesting to those looking into this space
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#143We 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…
Ok, I'll bite.
I don't want to expose my child to exotic glues, adhesives, PFAS, or any other foreign molecules in their car seat.
How does your product stack up?
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
More like 18 months or less based on the height and weight limit, completely impractical pricing
Lots of couples stair-step their kids. It’s not 18 months for a lot of families. It’s 4-6 years with hand-me-downs.
Baby seats have expiration dates and it’s scary how many parents fall for the emotional manipulation around that. It makes the used car seat market dead as well as hand-me-downs
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see that shipping to Europe is not yet supported. Do you have plans soon?
CE certification is extremely expensive for a bootstrapped startup. Plus there is Elektroschrottverordnung and Verpackungsrichtlinie and all that stuff. You can send me an email at info@invisible-computers.com
Is it UL certified?
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#146We make a camera system for construction sites. Using computer vision, we can identify when and for how long subcontractors show up as well as notify our customers of unwanted behavior on site. https://bedrockwireless.com/ Fun fact, we probably have the best port-o-potty detector in the world.
Many years ago I worked at a startup doing this - putting cameras on tower cranes. Fun times. Took a while to find PMF and the startup ended up going under. Good times, was super fun!
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#147We 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…
Do you use these for your children?
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#148I don't run the show and it's not my company, but I work on simulation devices for developing surgical skills. We have these MEMS and laser sensors for tracking surgical tool movements that the founder came up with.
My impression after 3 years in a product role is that it is amazing what a ~5 engineer team is capable of achieving over a couple of years. However, we're located in Poland so employees are cheap, we're heavily subsidized by huge grants and funding. Our offices/facility is in the middle of nowhere.
The engineers are quite stressed out because their work depends on many external factors that they don't have much control over (shipping, ordering components, manual assembly etc.). They literally run a workshop - they argue about who's using the tools, what the 3D printer schedule is like.
It's so many things at the same time - it's super slow, production and QA is a comedy, design changes are challenging to implement. Product certification and patenting is an enormous challenge. Business is super slow (our customers take years to make up their mind and they buy with public tenders).
But on the other hand... they do also seem happy and proud. I mean I love the product, and I love showing it off, UX testing, etc. And there are few competitors on the market, so it's also quite stable.
I think hardware is more accessible and doable than it used to be - 'hardware is hard' is something my industrial designer dad would repeat in the 90's.
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#149We make a camera system for construction sites. Using computer vision, we can identify when and for how long subcontractors show up as well as notify our customers of unwanted behavior on site. https://bedrockwireless.com/ Fun fact, we probably have the best port-o-potty detector in the world.
This is pretty neat. I'm wondering if something like this (on a smaller scale) could be used to catch the elusive illegal dumper in my neighborhood.
A regular camera can’t do this?
Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?
#150Aspinity, Inc.
https://www.aspinity.com/
We're a semiconductor startup working on ultra-low power programmable analog devices.
We're always looking to hire.
We need expertise in the following areas: analog design, semiconductor production and test, embedded systems, ML model development and infrastructure, digital/analog signal processing, PCB design and test, analog circuit simulation, compiler infrastructure, SDK development and more.
Software we use: Rust, C, Python, PyTorch.
Email me directly at nicolas@aspinity.com to connect. We're based in Pittsburgh.