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Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

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Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#241

We 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…

The price is insane man. The best of the best car seat according to lots of reviews(Cybex Anoris-T) is "only" £599, your thing is significantly more and I don't see why it's any better. Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to justify.

Thanks, though, for taking a look!

I used to know some of the Cybex people (it was a European company), and they congratulated us on beating their best safety scores at the time. Now Cybex is owned by an Asian conglomerate (Goodbaby).

The Kioma difference in materials quality and performance is both quantifiable and qualitative. We have to charge a price that covers our work in design and production costs. But I completely get it if the Kioma seat is too expensive for your preferences.

As a side note, if you want to be blown away by prices check out the $10,000 cribs (https://nurseryworks.net/collections/cribs/products/gradient...), $1000 bassinets (https://www.happiestbaby.com/), and $5000 strollers (https://silvercrossus.com/category/strollers/).

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like 18 months or less based on the height and weight limit, completely impractical pricing

Sizing > Realistically, the seat fits average kids up to 3 years. At the 95% percentile on height most kids will outgrow a rear-facing car seat at 18 months (the growth of the torso is the limiting factor). From a labeling perspective we have to be careful, though, because the US regs on sizing are really terrible. Keep in mind the regs were written in the 1970s when we were still teaching Americans to wear seat belt…

> The Kioma seat is like a Maserati

Perhaps not the best brand to invoke for a product where reliability is paramount. If you want to convey both luxury and reliability I'd go with Lexus (fancy Toyota).

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#243

We're building a closed loop artificial pancreas (think dialysis but for blood sugar) for hospital use -- the first of its kind in the US. There's a massive unmet need; all critical care patients, and all people with diabetes in the hospital could benefit. Studies have shown you can achieve a 30% reduction in mortality, and 25% reduction in length of stay, in addition to the hours per day you save nurses from managin…

This is fantastic, good luck to you. We need more of people like you.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#245
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do these compare to the Luxonis cameras? https://www.luxonis.com/

Not OP, but I'm very familiar with both. Luxonis is way more powerful and has an Intel VPU (Movidius). It's not really meant to be a standalone platform, so it needs a host board (Linux SBC like the Pi). It takes a lot more power, but it can do 60fps on small Yolo models. Its resolution is a lot higher as well. ESP32-S3 has a pretty small memory capacity, and doesn't have H264-H265 hardware encoding, so you'll be on…

Ngl I really wish Luxonis cameras supported running standalone after being configured once, OpenVino is such a heckin chonker to install and manage.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#246
Pretty much every business (mostly start-ups) I've been involved have been a combination of hardware and software; anyone who can work both is never going to be out of a job.

These days I tend to mix both of those things with bicycles just to add some spice to the challenge :)

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#247

We 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.

How does knowing someone is on site lead to an increase in anything production wise? All they'd have to do is wander around and look busy. Some people are willing to do this over real work despite it being a task in itself.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#248
I'm working on the world's brightest lamp: https://presale.getbrighter.co/

There has been a lot of writing about the benefits of bright light in your house and how to set up your own rig (e.g. https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/), but nobody has built a mass market consumer product (one that's easy to set up, has all the right features (dimmable, adjustable color temp, high CRI), and looks aesthetic).

Feel free to contact me at team@getbrighter.co

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#249

Space robotics, trying to build the Caterpillar of construction and maintenance on orbit. Not a lot to show yet but that’s unsurprising because it takes quite a while to get this sort of thing built up to the point where your printing prototypes or bending metal, and it’s along road from there to putting anything into orbit. Didn’t make the cut for YC Summer 2023, looking forward to applying again with 6 more months…

Any thought given to the fact that every startup in the past decade that attempted in-orbit manufacturing failed or had massive trouble?

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price is insane man. The best of the best car seat according to lots of reviews(Cybex Anoris-T) is "only" £599, your thing is significantly more and I don't see why it's any better. Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to justify.

I am always entertained by the extra amount people are willing to pay for the tiniest bit of risk reduction (or appearance thereof) for baby and kid related products. For example, paying an extra $900 for a car seat, but then taking the kid on unnecessary car rides, which are magnitudes riskier than not taking the kid in a car. If you are willing to pay that much for such an immaterial decrease in risk, surely you sh…

And some of it is buying convenience. The peace of mind from knowing you have the safest seat allows risking more rides which frees up impromptu errand scheduling. Whether the math actually works out is orthogonal to the psychological effects.
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