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Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

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Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#371

Post by shariqm »

We're building hearing aids that work in noisy places (AudioFocus[1], YC S19). We use novel machine learning and microphone array design to help patients hear better in loud restaurants, weddings, & family gatherings better than any other AI hearing aid.

It's a big deal because untreated hearing loss is associated with social isolation & depression and while 37M people have hearing loss in the United States, only 8M use hearing aids. Hearing in noisy places is the biggest reason for lack of adoption.

We just got our behind-the-ear (BTE) hardware prototype running and already have several excited patients. Listen to an audio recording from it here[2]. We're currently working on a pilot study with a professor in San Francisco.

If you, or someone you know, is interested in participating in the pilot study let me know. And if you know interested investors, I'm happy to chat with them. I can be reached at shariq@audiofocus.io

[1] www.audiofocus.io

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orU5Wx6_RfA&t=24s

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#372

Post by _boffin_ »

clobmclob wrote: post #337

I work for a hardware startup in NYC and HK called Looking Glass (www.lookingglassfactory.com). We create light field displays. Coming from a primarily software background, I quite agree that hardware is harder. We are venture funded but we are very lean due to the challenges of bootstrapping a display business and the capital requirements needed for manufacturing. We only have about 10 software engineers that are sp…

I actually had our chief innovation officer pick up a screen from you guys out in NY a few years back. I love your tech and wish you the best of luck

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#373

Post by gambiting »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #333
aquaphile wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, though, for taking a look! I used to know some of the Cybex people (it was a European company), and they congratulated us on beating their best safety scores at the time. Now Cybex is owned by an Asian conglomerate (Goodbaby). The Kioma difference in materials quality and performance is both quantifiable and qualitative. We have to charge a price that covers our work in design and production costs. But I comp…

You can tell that guy's not a parent, haha. It's a shitload of money, but at least in this case I know that I'm getting value out of it. It's very easy to piss away a fortune on badly-made Chinese plastic trash in the world of baby accessories.

>>You can tell that guy's not a parent, haha.

I find it really interesting that you reached that conclusion. Me and my wife spent what feels like an absolutely insane amount of money on a car seat, definitely more than any of our friends have spent(the beforementioned Anoris-T, because as far as I can tell it is the best seat you can buy) and the idea of spending $1000 on a car seat just doesn't fit in my head. It's just too much.

>> but at least in this case I know that I'm getting value out of it

Really? how?

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#374

Post by mosquitobiten »

gargablegar wrote: post #277

Hardware is hard:founding hardware engineer, we were acquired 4 years ago by a corporate. We place WiFi sensors around your network that behave like typical clients. We report on user experience and show when there are issues in your network. WiFi technician in a box. The fact that it’s subscription based is what made us float. The initial capital outlay, supply chain, compliance and design work is so funding intensi…

So many tech channels on Youtube are watched by people who work in places your tech could help, and these channels are starving for content non-stop. You should reach out to some like LTT, Level1Tech, ServetheHome.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#375

Post by 3flp »

Early stage here - self funded. After many years in land mobile radio industry, I decided to start my own thing. Hand held radios are still around, and will be, for many years. We're making them much better - the range, battery life, .. and open sourcing them.

As other said, development can be very expensive and iterations long, unless you're smart about it.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#376

Post by genmud »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #333
aquaphile wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, though, for taking a look! I used to know some of the Cybex people (it was a European company), and they congratulated us on beating their best safety scores at the time. Now Cybex is owned by an Asian conglomerate (Goodbaby). The Kioma difference in materials quality and performance is both quantifiable and qualitative. We have to charge a price that covers our work in design and production costs. But I comp…

You can tell that guy's not a parent, haha. It's a shitload of money, but at least in this case I know that I'm getting value out of it. It's very easy to piss away a fortune on badly-made Chinese plastic trash in the world of baby accessories.

Agreed, my only thought on the $1000 price tag was that I already have a seat that is well rated and don’t want to throw away or donate a perfectly good $800 car seat/stroller system.

Like cheap end car seats when we looked were in the 200-400 and nicer ones were in the 600-1200 range.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#377

Post by farhadnoorzay »

johndmcmaster wrote: post #368

We are making computer controlled microscopes more accessible: better software and lower cost. We are working on tightly integrating output images with cloud services (ex: AI analysis, data viewers) to make the data more usable. We also have FOSS Python host software that enables a lot of user customization. We rely on a lot more COTS components and software correction than traditional players to keep the cost low (e…

Pricing is definitely hard. Something we're testing out and learning about right now. Luckily we do have a subscription model too which can give us some flexibility. I'm happy to chat. My email is in my bio.

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#378

Post by zodzedzi »

franckl wrote: post #360
V__ wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really cool. Can you talk about some interesting challenges/problems you encountered?

We started in 2016 with just an idea, and we probably encountered every problem you can think of ! - hard to raise funds for large deeptech projects (thank you YC and Wefunder for unlocking that one!) - a corrosion issue in 2019 that nearly killed us (we found a way around it after months of brainstorming and completely got rid of corrosion issues) - we had to build our own physics algorithm for very specific problem…

> ... we had to build our own physics algorithm for very specific problems, and ended up selling the software ...

Like a simulation algorithm? Can you elaborate on what kind of algo and the problem it solved?

Re: Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

#380

Post by ilaksh »

Tepix wrote: post #315
ilaksh wrote: post #71

I think it would be nice if someone made a high-performance ASIC specifically for tinygrad.

Would this be similar to the Google's Coral Edge accelerators?

I guess but I think Hotz said that tinygrad was specifically designed to _not_ be Turing complete, which allows for potentially much greater optimization and performance than existing accelerators which have to accommodate that.
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