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

Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 726 posts

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#221

Post by ijustlovemath »

wanderingmoose wrote: post #208
ijustlovemath wrote: post #159

We're building a closed loop artificial pancreas (think dialysis but for blood sugar) for hospital use -- the first of its kind in the US. There's a massive unmet need; all critical care patients, and all people with diabetes in the hospital could benefit. Studies have shown you can achieve a 30% reduction in mortality, and 25% reduction in length of stay, in addition to the hours per day you save nurses from managin…

Can you tell me the difference between your product on the types of prescription cgm + insulin pump combos like dexcom/tandem which offer some level insulin control? I'm just curious. I run an xDrip set up and I've played around with a couple of the "DIY" closed loop setups.

Our device is for inpatient use, so it's a little more complicated than your typical DIY APS you might be used to as a T1/T2. You have to account for all kinds of different drug interactions, perfusion issues, undergoing surgical procedures, etc etc. The biggest single difference is that we use dextrose as a way to quickly recover from lows (like an automated orange juice dispenser).

Because we're in the hospital and can access IV lines, we also have rapid access to data, and the drugs we infuse get taken up much quicker (5-10 minutes for insulin, 3 minutes for dextrose).

The terminology is overlapping but the space is very different than outpatient glucose control.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#222

Post by xeonmc »

sitkack wrote: post #188
aquaphile wrote: post #23

We make the world's best baby car seats. https://www.kioma.us Fatherly Magazine calls it "The Car Seat of the Future". It's been crash tested, flight inversion tested, flammability tested and mom tested. It is full of patented innovations to make kids safer and parenting more enjoyable. It required lots of material science, production techniques, supply chain adjustments, and a surprising amount of software (to model…

The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually. Those brackets need to be braced and not just bolted through plywood. Having patents on innovations is necessary, but if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10967762B2/en?oq=1096776... This this TOS usual for…

[flagged]

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#223

Post by aquaphile »

sitkack wrote: post #188
aquaphile wrote: post #23

We make the world's best baby car seats. https://www.kioma.us Fatherly Magazine calls it "The Car Seat of the Future". It's been crash tested, flight inversion tested, flammability tested and mom tested. It is full of patented innovations to make kids safer and parenting more enjoyable. It required lots of material science, production techniques, supply chain adjustments, and a surprising amount of software (to model…

The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually. Those brackets need to be braced and not just bolted through plywood. Having patents on innovations is necessary, but if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10967762B2/en?oq=1096776... This this TOS usual for…

Not sure what you are referring to about a strap being a single point of failure.

Patents > We don't work for free, and we can't buy groceries by giving away years of R&D. Companies are welcome to license our safety innovations, and they know how to reach us. The invitation to do so is on our website.

TOS > Kioma seats come with an industry standard 1 year warranty. The website TOS are different than the product warranty that comes with each seat. Thanks for the heads up though. I'll have the marketing team clarify that.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#224

Post by fsckboy »

sitkack wrote: post #188
aquaphile wrote: post #23

We make the world's best baby car seats. https://www.kioma.us Fatherly Magazine calls it "The Car Seat of the Future". It's been crash tested, flight inversion tested, flammability tested and mom tested. It is full of patented innovations to make kids safer and parenting more enjoyable. It required lots of material science, production techniques, supply chain adjustments, and a surprising amount of software (to model…

The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually. Those brackets need to be braced and not just bolted through plywood. Having patents on innovations is necessary, but if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10967762B2/en?oq=1096776... This this TOS usual for…

>if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all...provided “as-is, where-is,” without representations, conditions or warranties of any kind

no, individuals should play by the sames rules of the collective as everybody else.

There is nothing wrong with you advocating and/or successfully changing the rules of the patent system so all players must behave this way, but trying to shame a small entrepreneur into being boy scout is ihmo bad for all of us. I bristle at all the moralizing people do on the daily.

I'm advocating for "think globally, act locally", just without puritanism or maoism.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#225

Post by godelski »

arandr0x wrote: post #177
DDickson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this were a camera that identified when and for how long a software engineer showed up to the office and notified their employer of "unwanted behavior", how long would it take for that story to end up on the front page of this site and torn apart as invasive and infantilizing?

Software engineers have full-time managers (which are a lot more overhead to pay for but kinda serve that purpose from the client perspective) and are paid well enough and consistently enough to usually only work one job on a given day. Subcontractors sometimes do decide not to show up to your job site because another employer offered them a bonus to do theirs that day instead. The point isn't (only) to humiliate or…

> it's to counter an economic incentive they have.

I think economists would call that a feature and not a bug. It is essentially an auction (something economists LOVE). You could instead take that money that you're spending on surveillance and instead spend it on giving the contractors a bonus to show up to your place instead.

I really don't buy that this would "shame" them into coming to your place first. Everyone already is aware that they don't always show up because you got out bid. You're "solving" the problem the wrong way because you're not addressing the actual problem.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#226

Post by moffkalast »

konschubert wrote: post #20

I am making and selling an eink smart screen. It can display a google calendar. You can also point it to any url that serves an image. Is it okay to post a link? https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale... I am planning to release more applications for it and I am opening the platform for 3rd party applications.

For the same price one can buy a 10.5" Galaxy Tab A8. But still, very cool. I wish e-paper wasn't expensive as hell and so dreadfully slow to update, it would cut down on energy usage in so many applications.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#227

Post by iiJDSii »

A few years ago I made a Kickstarter for an augmented reality helmet -

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/realjds/spartan-hud-nex...

Fun project, made some sales and a small profit, then hand-built and delivered the units from my apartment. Lots of learnings.

Applied to YC and got an interview but ultimately didn't get in - I agree with their feedback that the platform was too general and "lacked a killer app". But it's a cool research platform due to its generality: you get a full Linux computer in your heads-up display, and can connect arbitrary USB peripherals (we had a version with a depth-sensing camera).

Over the last year on weekends I've been working on a new light-weight version that allows one to drop in their smartphone or other ~5" screen, and actually orienting a specific version towards the sport of airsoft. Polycarbonate encasing around a modified helmet protects the electronics as well as the user's head.

Hope to try it out sometime later this year; lately I've been pre-occupied with my day job and learning all the new AI software and theory out there.

If anyone is interested in this project and wants to connect, ask questions, etc, feel free to reach out via email (in my profile). Cheers!

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#228

Post by ijustlovemath »

roland35 wrote: post #218
ijustlovemath wrote: post #159

We're building a closed loop artificial pancreas (think dialysis but for blood sugar) for hospital use -- the first of its kind in the US. There's a massive unmet need; all critical care patients, and all people with diabetes in the hospital could benefit. Studies have shown you can achieve a 30% reduction in mortality, and 25% reduction in length of stay, in addition to the hours per day you save nurses from managin…

That's awesome! At least in my limited experience developing health care hardware is much more challenging when there isn't a clear "regulatory path" that has been done before. Which makes it harder for completely novel devices (eg versus making an improved pacemaker which already has been approved)

The good thing for us is that artificial pancreases are regulated not as one device, but as three separate (interoperable) devices: the pumps, the sensors, and the control software. Only our control software is under a de-novo pathway ("totally new thing" pathway), everything else is 510k ("we know what this thing is" pathway). We also have Breakthrough Device designation, which really accelerates the regulatory timeline

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#230

Post by abfan1127 »

o_m wrote: post #198
huskyperv wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like 18 months or less based on the height and weight limit, completely impractical pricing

I'm the kind of guy that thinks I might be able to sell it for a good price, if it is high quality, after the use. Making the total money spent way less. But that begs the question, why not rent these out for 18 months at a time?

renting assumes previous users properly maintained these seats. Car seats are "supposed" to be disposed of in the event of a collision due to possible cracks or other fatigues in the structure not necessarily visible to the end user. If you rent, you have to assume the seat was not in a structurally significant event. That's a lot of trust.
Post reply on HN