Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

chipweinberger.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 276 posts

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#161

Post by tbrownaw »

skippyfish wrote: post #132

Hardware has a reputation for being hard for three reasons. First, it scales differently than software. It's far harder to design something you want to make a million of than something you want to make ten of. Second, it's harder to anticipate, test, and correct all the things that can go wrong on the user end. Some people will put batteries the wrong way, some will drop the device on the ground, some will connect it…

> Imagine we had that for software - "your JS is too big, you can't ship until you get it under 50 kB".

... But also that needs to be an official measurement, and if you're sloppy you can measure it wrong during your own testing and then be surprised.

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#162

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

skippyfish wrote: post #132

Hardware has a reputation for being hard for three reasons. First, it scales differently than software. It's far harder to design something you want to make a million of than something you want to make ten of. Second, it's harder to anticipate, test, and correct all the things that can go wrong on the user end. Some people will put batteries the wrong way, some will drop the device on the ground, some will connect it…

> "actual regulations...emissions"

yeah, and looking at their board I see they use one of "ESP32-WROOM" modules, which has the wifi & blutooth & antennae (pre-certified by Espressif for FCC, CE so itself doesn't need testing) & flash & processor (which even has its own RC oscillator), which takes care of a whole ton of difficult stuff so all the designer needs to do is plop that module down and power it up and wire some SPI/I2C peripherals which I'm guessing don't need super fast clocks or electrical constraints. Without something like those ESP32 modules, this would be much more difficult.

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#163

Post by starky »

stefan_ wrote: post #146
bloggie wrote: post #79

Hardware isn’t hard if the hardware is easy? There’s very few components, one of which is a pre made module, and it took 3 years to make essentially a text logger.

Yeah I mean this hardware isn't hard because its a fricking breadboard. (Although I spy an SD card slot, a favorite of the "hardware isn't hard" faction that will explode in their face)

Seriously, microSD cards are the second worst hardware component to have to deal with (first being labels). For being a "standard" you end up with cards that are subtly but significantly different from each other, the slots are ALL poorly designed, and microSD cards are just inherently unreliable. Plus with the current flash shortage, the major manufacturers don't care at all to support any issues with the product.

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#164

Post by charcircuit »

skippyfish wrote: post #132

Hardware has a reputation for being hard for three reasons. First, it scales differently than software. It's far harder to design something you want to make a million of than something you want to make ten of. Second, it's harder to anticipate, test, and correct all the things that can go wrong on the user end. Some people will put batteries the wrong way, some will drop the device on the ground, some will connect it…

>your JS is too big, you can't ship until you get it under 50 kB

Not only that but every single update you push requires paying $$$$$ to get certified. It is freeing that the cost of releasing a fix or improvement to a product is $0.

In the past I considered selling a custom adapter to hobbyists, but all the certification costs just did not make it a viable option to pursue. I didn't want to up front thousands of dollars to make like $100 if I was lucky.

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#165

Post by analog31 »

sudo_cowsay wrote: post #149
skippyfish wrote: post #132

Hardware has a reputation for being hard for three reasons. First, it scales differently than software. It's far harder to design something you want to make a million of than something you want to make ten of. Second, it's harder to anticipate, test, and correct all the things that can go wrong on the user end. Some people will put batteries the wrong way, some will drop the device on the ground, some will connect it…

> impossible to find because a factory in Indonesia is on fire Has that happened to you?

Not this exact thing, but I make a hardware product akin to a guitar pedal. I designed around a component type that the semiconductor industry was phasing out. One day I noticed that the list of alternative parts at my distributor included many that were marked "obsolete." I panicked and bought the entire stock of the part number that I use.

At this point I have the only stock of this part in the world, and it's more than a lifetime supply, but otherwise I'd have been faced with a re-design and limited options.

For another of my products, during the pandemic, the part I was using became unavailable, and I had to re-design my board to accommodate a part of the same type in a different package. Then I couldn't buy either part, but found an odd lot at a Texas Instruments factory in China, which I bought.

Dealing with shortage and obsolescence issues is a constant battle. There have been crises in the industry caused by plants catching on fire.

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#166

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

As always, "It Depends™".

There was another post, a year or two ago, about someone that really tried to manufacture a webcam, and gave up.

I spent my career at hardware companies.

Glad this worked out, but past performance is no guarantee of future success...

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#167

Post by JoshTriplett »

Very much appreciating the sentiment in the article.

Is it just me, or is there some kind of unusual photo editing going on in the photo at the bottom of the article? Something looks uncanny valley, related to the bottom of the box on the left side of the photo, and related to the background. Did some kind of "erase background" mechanism go wrong here?

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#168

Post by skippyfish »

sudo_cowsay wrote: post #149
skippyfish wrote: post #132

Hardware has a reputation for being hard for three reasons. First, it scales differently than software. It's far harder to design something you want to make a million of than something you want to make ten of. Second, it's harder to anticipate, test, and correct all the things that can go wrong on the user end. Some people will put batteries the wrong way, some will drop the device on the ground, some will connect it…

> impossible to find because a factory in Indonesia is on fire Has that happened to you?

Not literally, but I had two projects I had to fundamentally redesign due to multi-year chip shortages in the COVID years. And we're not talking about any fancy chips.

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#169

Post by dabinat »

mamcx wrote: post #153
skippyfish wrote: post #132

Hardware has a reputation for being hard for three reasons. First, it scales differently than software. It's far harder to design something you want to make a million of than something you want to make ten of. Second, it's harder to anticipate, test, and correct all the things that can go wrong on the user end. Some people will put batteries the wrong way, some will drop the device on the ground, some will connect it…

AND shipping.

Shipping physical products can open you up to more fraud, because once it’s in the mail, it’s in the mail. The customer can say it never arrived or claim their card was fraudulently used in order to keep using the product for free. Whereas with a SaaS you just disable their access.

Re: What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

#170

Post by chipweinberger »

crote wrote: post #114

Yeah, hardware is indeed not too hard if you have a trivial hardware project and ignore all the hard stuff. Complexity-wise this is probably the easiest board one could imagine. It's an off-the-shelf MCU module, a 1:1 copy of the MIDI circuit from the specification, and some ports wired straight to the MCU. Throw in a trivial I2C-connected RTC and HSM for good measure. You could probably design this in an afternoon.…

I appreciate the critiques!

First, so far, there have been 0 failures in the field. My email address is on the website, the app, and the first page of the instruction sheet, so I'd probably know if there were.

But since it's fun, I'll address some of these :) I'm not flying by the seat of my pants here as much as you expect.

- The ESP32-S3 includes ±2 kV ESD, which is respectable. Adding more is a bit precautionary IMO, but I did add it in some places where the user is more likely to touch metal (like the USB ports). The sdcard's metal housing is not exposed.

- The AMS1117 is just more available than the alternatives. Again, no failures yet so seems like the right tradeoff was made here.

- Supercaps don't last long enough for my liking. A CR2032 can go for 10+ years. A supercap, only weeks. I want correct dates even if the device is left unpowered for months.

- The 0603 47ohm resistor is a good callout. Worth beefing that up. But at 3.3v and 232 mW it's not a fire hazard. It will fail open.

- USB-B for power was very intentional. It's a great firm connector and more importantly prevents users from plugging it into their piano wrong. Many of my customers are in their 70s or older.

- USB-A for data was made for manufacturing simplicity, but again, USB-C is too complicated for many of my users. I'd only switch to USB-C if both ports could be used interchangeably, but they can't be / it's not worth the complexity.

- As for the software moat, time will tell. You can't stave off competition forever!

- The device is FCC and CE compliant.

Again, I actually do appreciate your critiques!

Post reply on HN