How is fulfillment not a nightmare?
What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
21–30 of 276 posts
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please do, that'd be very interesting. I imagine it's doable to use random per-device I'd when you're hand-flashing, but probably harder on a huge production run.
Almost all commercial devices need a unique ID, private key, etc burned in on the production line. For a big enough production run, you'd likely ship an HSM to the factory
IMO it's better to ship preprogrammed ICs to the factory, so you can do your secure burning in-house.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#23Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#24This is cool! Thanks for sharing.
What understanding about hardware did you start with, and what tools did you use to learn what you didn’t already know?
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#25This is cool! Thanks for sharing. What understanding about hardware did you start with, and what tools did you use to learn what you didn’t already know?
I started with having watched ~100 hours of EEVBlog :)
Electronics, PCBs, CAD, injection molding was all new to me.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#26Wow, congrats on this project! Really cool. I majored in piano performance many years ago and will definitely check this out.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#27Good to see some hardware love! Congrats on hitting 2500 units. How’d you decide to make the first jump and actually build your first prototype?
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#28What was your anti-counterfeiting strategy? That sounds interesting.
I'm using an STSAFE chip - the same IC they use in StarLink terminals. Essentially the digital equivalent of a holographic barcode. I have some other protections too. e.g. Random 128-bit per-device IDs / product-keys. iMessage uses this strategy. Maybe I'll write an article about that.
Please do! Trying to imagine how this works.
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#29How is fulfillment not a nightmare?
It sort of is. I'm at an annoying scale where most 3PLs don't want to deal with me yet.
At the same time, it doesn't take much time at all, and is a good excuse to get out of the house!
Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard
#30It's a poor take to be honest. I'm an EE with main expertise in IC design but I design a lot of the chip packages, PCBs, mechanical stuff like custom made sockets etc and write a ton of SW, be it tools for myself for development and testing, be it the firmware of the chip I'm designing or another chip I use on the board. For me it never felt like SW was the hard bit, because you can write and test it pretty immediate…
I’m working on my own PCB and it’s my first time working on a hardware project.
Any tips on how or where I could get my design reviewed?