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Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

simonberens.com

121–130 of 427 posts

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#121
As a MechE turned SWE, always a fun read when SWE try hardware.

> Blink and you’ll get a different measurement.

This means your environment is not controlled enough. Also quality control is usually done in terms of statistics. You might want to read something called gauge R&R. That being said, you should be proud of being able to ship a physical product!

As for quality checks, software quality teams pales in comparison to hardware quality teams. Mainly as you said, there’s a lot checks you can do in software. For hardware, bigger companies have to have their vendors qualified. The vendors have to follow their customer guidelines and do outgoing inspection. Then the company has a division to do incoming inspection. There’s a traveler that follows the kit (of parts) and there’s usually subassembly quality checks. Then final full build checks before it leaves the door.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#122
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very curious why you want to avoid LEDs

No infrared spectrum https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-35389-6

You can buy IR and UV leds. All high end grow lights have these for plants. Low quality cheap led products won't include them but that is nothing to do with LEDs themselves that is just consumer preference and price conformance.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#123
I applaud his initiative for getting this through to production but as soon the market reaches sufficient size he will find multiple Chinese competitors selling an identical product at a fraction of the price. And could well be manufactured in the same factory.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymarket isn’t a source for this, lol. Maybe google trends, since there’s no reason to manipulate it. There were also reasons to anticipate the amount of the tariffs, and the absolute stupidity of the tariffs (still reeling from the Heard and McDonald islands tariffs lmao).

This is a strange position to take. Sure, Polymarket has warts, but that doesn't mean it's not a very good source for consensus opinions about the future from the past. Do you think this market was manipulated?

Search “Polymarket manipulated” or similar and examples are legion. You can even do that on hacker news. There’s a lot of incentive to do so.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#125
post #52

> As someone who generally stays out of politics, I didn’t know much about the incoming administration’s stance towards tariffs, though I don’t think anyone could have predicted such drastic hikes. I have an appreciation for very bright lamps, and the project is neat, but that stuck out to me. I'm always fascinated by people who both feel comfortable ignoring maybe the single most impactful society-determining appara…

What I find particularly galling is that he failed to learn perhaps the most important lesson: Maybe he wouldn't have these kind of problems if he hadn't outsourced his manufacturing to China but kept in on-shore instead.

Last Trump term, a small business making PC cases locally in california went out of business because of steel tariffs. I'm not sure that local manufacturing in small batches is much safer given there's aluminum and other material tariffs this time too?

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#127
post #52

> As someone who generally stays out of politics, I didn’t know much about the incoming administration’s stance towards tariffs, though I don’t think anyone could have predicted such drastic hikes. I have an appreciation for very bright lamps, and the project is neat, but that stuck out to me. I'm always fascinated by people who both feel comfortable ignoring maybe the single most impactful society-determining appara…

[deleted]

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#128
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why SaaS investors don’t understand how to invest in deeptech/hardtech, despite current trends. Like this guy, they have no clue about the differences in business model, except they’re not founders so they don’t go through the pain and they mostly don’t learn.

Hats off to the author for making it through! What a start to the journey!

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#129
Oh hey, I have one of these! I really like it. It's quite a unique design. People (especially where it snows and gets gloomy) should have more lumens, and I'd recommend this lamp for others.

One downside is that the active fan cooling design is questionable - the air goes over the top of the LEDs, and there aren't any dedicated exit holes so the air is just squeezing through the very small gap between the glass and the heatsink. There are also blotches of paint that worsen the TIM contact between the PCB and the heatsink. I used a rotary tool to remove those blotches.

Re: Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product

#130
post #11
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The controls weren't working because we had wired them up according to the labels which were wrong (which is also why the measurements didn't make sense to us).

Ah. A lesson from somebody who's built hardware that I'm sure you've now learned: make sure connectors can't plug into eachother unless they're supposed to. Even if they're different connectors, different keying, whatever, sometimes they can still be forced together.

I've seen datacenter techs successfully force an SFP optic in an RJ45 port. So yeah, the shape needs to be very different.
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