A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
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A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
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Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#2My favorite part:
> Bounce Imaging is planning to sell an emergency responder version for about $1000, a military version for something under $3000.
Because, you know, military.
Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#3My favorite part: > Bounce Imaging is planning to sell an emergency responder version for about $1000, a military version for something under $3000. Because, you know, military .
Building it with mil-spec parts can legitimately raise the cost. Generally, components have a higher failure rate early in their life, then that failure rate goes down, and eventually goes back up. Mil-spec components are the ones which survive the early failure rate curve, so you're paying for that component, plus the others which didn't survive, plus the initial wear-in process itself.
Now, the $1000 price point on this seems somewhat high, but is difficult to judge without more specific specs on what's in it.
Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#4My favorite part: > Bounce Imaging is planning to sell an emergency responder version for about $1000, a military version for something under $3000. Because, you know, military .
Actually they could cost the same. It just said under 3000.
Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#5 What it can’t do quite yet is survive a hard fall, but the company is working on that and expects to have durability testing finished this year...
Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#6My favorite part: > Bounce Imaging is planning to sell an emergency responder version for about $1000, a military version for something under $3000. Because, you know, military .
I'd assume that these would end up being re-usable in many circumstances, though certainly not all.
It sounds like they still need to figure out the durability issue -- but at that point it could be re-usable in some cases I'd think (does seem like they'd figure out durability first though).
Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#7What it can’t do quite yet is survive a hard fall, but the company is working on that and expects to have durability testing finished this year... Isn't its durability kind of one of the major selling points? The primary use of these is to throw them into hazardous environments. It seems to me like getting the electronics into a package that would survive the beating would be priority #1
If they reasonably believe durability is possible (though expensive or otherwise deferrable), it makes perfect sense to build a fragile but feature-impressive initial version, to demonstrate the benefits, then harden later.
Look at their team:
http://bounceimaging.com/?page_id=260
Do you really think they've missed something simple like the right prototyping priorities for selling into their target markets?
Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#8This idea (a throwable ball with imaging and other sensors) and several prototypes have appeared on HN before, the first one around 2 years ago. This exact product has reached the HN front page in the beginning of 2013 [1].
I find it strange that none of the prototypes have actually managed to reach a production stage, given that the potential market - military, LE, emergency responders is (supposedly) there. Maybe the price point doesn't make much sense, given the usual (low) prices for fixed-focus camera modules - there is no need for very high resolution here, and the balls better be semi-disposable.
There are a few other designs (and patents associated with the concept) - [2], [3] and [4].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4757971
[2] http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/21/surveillance-...
[4] http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera (and HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3109899)
Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#9My favorite part: > Bounce Imaging is planning to sell an emergency responder version for about $1000, a military version for something under $3000. Because, you know, military .
Building it with mil-spec parts can legitimately raise the cost. Generally, components have a higher failure rate early in their life, then that failure rate goes down, and eventually goes back up. Mil-spec components are the ones which survive the early failure rate curve, so you're paying for that component, plus the others which didn't survive, plus the initial wear-in process itself. Now, the $1000 price point on…
For custom hardware with a substantial fraction of the feature-set of a modern smartphone, plus way more sensors, $1000 seems ambitiously cheap.
They aren't going to sell a billion of them, R&D and tooling costs are going to push the price up a lot.
Re: A Bouncing Ball To Make Danger Zones Safer
#10What it can’t do quite yet is survive a hard fall, but the company is working on that and expects to have durability testing finished this year... Isn't its durability kind of one of the major selling points? The primary use of these is to throw them into hazardous environments. It seems to me like getting the electronics into a package that would survive the beating would be priority #1
If they reasonably believe durability is possible (though expensive or otherwise deferrable), it makes perfect sense to build a fragile but feature-impressive initial version, to demonstrate the benefits, then harden later. Look at their team: http://bounceimaging.com/?page_id=260 Do you really think they've missed something simple like the right prototyping priorities for selling into their target markets?
That's quite a team. The article's light on details, but I have to assume that they have already been doing durability design and that the article is just light on the details.