I love the mindset and the design process. But I never hung any cloths so it is not for me.
I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
271–280 of 456 posts
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, this really shows that marketing is now the most crucial skill. It has become easy and affordable to design products, the process is now almost fully commodified with all those OEM and production services. The only thing that now stands between your idea and financial success is your ability to reach the target market, i.e. marketing. Also, such a slick KickStarter campaign typically costs $10k plus ad spend i…
Marketing is only important if your product is equal to existing or worse. For example, if you find a way to make some product two times cheaper (like Uber), you won't need much marketing.
That is not true, at least not for all types of products.
I make an e-paper calendar. There is nothing like it on the market. Regularly, I have customers who say "wow, I have been looking for this for years!".
Some of these customers have googled for such a product before mine existed, and found that none exists.
Without marketing, how would these people learn that the product they've been looking for does now exist?
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am so happy to have discovered this here. I've wanted this product for years. I just placed an order for the coworking space I run in Brighton, UK. Super excited about all the potential applications of this. The simplicity of the developer experience [1] is exactly what I want. Seems like it will also work wonderfully with the screenshot api [2] I'm currently working at. [1]: https://www.invisible-computers.com/inv…
Holy crap, now I am impressed! If I am seeing this right, I could use your screenshot API to implement a website rendering feature for the display, super easily! I was toying with running headless chromium, but if I can get that as a service, it's an absolute winner! But I would need to see if I can afford the pricing. Providing this service to my users for an average device lifetime of 10 years free of charge is a l…
Thank you!
I have a few ideas about some tweaks we could make to support you and your customers with this.
We're up to 11 years and profitable with a small full-time team... so I'm very confident that we'll still be around in another 10 :)
I'll drop you an email to discuss.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#274I just love the maker's mind. > I want something that does not exist, I will make it. Making things has never been so accessible, if you don't know how to start, join a community and ask, if they are hostile, just ask chatgpt and start from there. 3d printers are 200$, esp32 is the same cost as arduino nano. Want to make AI things? Make them. Want to make coat hangers? Make them. Want to make a book stand? Make it. I…
I think the best ideas come when you make something that you really want for yourself. In 2020, I really wanted an eink calendar to hang on my wall. Still, many people built one for themselves and never turned it into a commercial product. It’s a lot of work and some of it is boring. And you have to pay for certification and worry about all that paperwork that comes with a business. It took me 3 years: https://shop.i…
This looks nice. The website is a bit thin on description/documentation. How much does the display weigh? What's the power usage (Watts)? Presumably the device connects via Wifi? Does it support WPA3? Does this work with private iCloud calenders (e.g. as described in [0])? Is all processing on-device, i.e. doesn't involve any cloud services and would work in a closed home network if the calendars are served on that network? What's the update frequency/interval? Can it combine multiple calendars (i.e. private and work)? Is the frame user-replacable?
[0] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-find-your-icloud...
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly, 3D printers are still cheaper. I once needed to make a few customized gears out of food safe plastic. I asked several online services for quotes and I called several on-location shops in northern Germany. The quotes I got were all around $1800 per unique gear shape. Since I needed 4 different shapes (i.e. $7k for outsourcing), it was much cheaper to buy a 3D printer, watch some tutorials and spend two working…
Would you consider the parts you made foodsafe? Or would you have to use the parts to make a mold, then produce foodsafe parts? The nooks and crannies in 3d printed plastic, plus the less controlled melting/cooling has concerned me for making something which is food safe. Mostly the concern about places for bacteria to hide on the parts.
Probably the only way to make it reliably foodsafe without a lot of postprocessing would be replacing the parts frequently. It's possible to perfectly merge the layers by printing with 100% infill, burying the part in fine grained salt and then remelting it in an oven, but that takes time.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#276I spent 3 hours writing this message ... that is, I started 3 hours ago, paused that immediately, then went and did other things for 2:59:30hrs, finally I came back and finished typing this textual masterpiece.
She's a successful inventor & youtuber, good on her. the product is not bad actually, a great impulse buy (gifting), just not for me.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#277I spent 3 hours writing this message ... that is, I started 3 hours ago, paused that immediately, then went and did other things for 2:59:30hrs, finally I came back and finished typing this textual masterpiece. She's a successful inventor & youtuber, good on her. the product is not bad actually, a great impulse buy (gifting), just not for me.
This is a very critical reply, and for what? Throwing "just not for me" at the end doesn't negate the 95% of the message that's unnecessarily harsh.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
She has tried (and quite successfully imho) to move away from that image and become a respectable creator/inventor. I think the highlights of her maker-career is Truckla, her Tesla she repurposed as a truck and drove to the cyber truck reveal. And her everyday calendar, which is a board of 365 LED and you can click each for everyday you complete whatever your everyday goal is and end the year with a lot board. As I r…
I'm sure the success was partly due to the fact that the "shittiness" of the robots was because they were iterative prototypes, not because she was inept. Part of what's great about her (and other similar creators') content is that you get to actually see the design and development process, including the failures, which is both entertaining and educational.
The shitty robots were built to be shitty. They were successful because they were funny.
Her initial period as the queen of shitty robots has little to nothing to do with what she does today or how she approaches problems.
She has talked about the anxiety that came with going from “no one can really criticize my stuff because it’s meant to be bad” to “this is actually supposed to be good, but is it good enough?”
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
exactly - I would call this the "forgetting the entertainment value" fallacy :) Also you can't turn your time into money as fungible as spending money is. So Tme is more "liquid" than cash. That said I got a 3d printer in mid-2016 and basically printed daily getting to know it until the start of 2019 - I had sooo much fan turning the wooden printer i started out with into something reliable. Nowadays i mainly print s…
Time is not money. When you spend money - you lose money. When you don't spend time - you lose time!
Eh, at some point you end up with a backlog of things to do where you never have unspent time.
I've got about 3-500 hours left on a home renovation project, 10-20 on a playhouse for my daughter, 50 or so on a desk for myself, 1000 on a personal programming project, I really need to spend about 500 hours getting back into shape, and all of that is competing for the time I have left after the weekly commitments I have to my day job, my family, and basic self-care.
Practically speaking I'm working with about 10-20 hours a week here of discretionary spending, maybe 30 or so if I'm really tight and can use all the disjoint minutes effectively, and will get through my current backlog in 2-3 years. If nothing else comes up that's higher priority.
Re: I spent 3 years working on a coat hanger [video]
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the best ideas come when you make something that you really want for yourself. In 2020, I really wanted an eink calendar to hang on my wall. Still, many people built one for themselves and never turned it into a commercial product. It’s a lot of work and some of it is boring. And you have to pay for certification and worry about all that paperwork that comes with a business. It took me 3 years: https://shop.i…
This looks nice. The website is a bit thin on description/documentation. How much does the display weigh? What's the power usage (Watts)? Presumably the device connects via Wifi? Does it support WPA3? Does this work with private iCloud calenders (e.g. as described in [0])? Is all processing on-device, i.e. doesn't involve any cloud services and would work in a closed home network if the calendars are served on that n…
Hi, you are right, I need to add a FAQ section to the page!
- It weights about 400g including the wooden stand.
- It draws very little power. I am not sure how much, but you can run it on a battery pack for quite a while. (The power draw is so low that some external battery packs think that nothing is connected and go into standby, which is annoying.)
- Yes it uses WiFI. Not sure about WPA3 to be honest.
- Private iCloud calendars should work if you get the secret iCalendar URL as described in the article you linked.
- There is very little processing on-device, it needs an API backend that runs on the internet. Code that runs on an embedded device and updates only via Over-The-Air updates is always a liability in terms of maintenance and security, which I tried to minimise.
- The device polls for updates a few times a minute. But depending on the calendar integration, there may be caching going on in the backend. (For example, iCalendar data is cached for 10 minutes. The cache is encrypted.)
- Yes, you can combine calendars from multiple sources and accounts.
- You can replace the frame if you are willing to tinker a bit, re-solder a connection, and are you're careful.