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The rise and fall of snake oil

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Re: The rise and fall of snake oil

#51

Post by pedalpete »

com2kid wrote: post #50
pedalpete wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The back-end costs aren't high. We decided to go with a low device cost and subscription to make it cost effective to purchase when finances allow us to get to a monthly instead of yearly subscription.

> We decided to go with a low device cost When I worked on Microsoft Band, we wanted to have really nice side buttons. Great feel, not only the material, but the perfect spring tension, a great clicking sound, everything. We had someone who obsessed over them month after month, trying different polishes, colors, materials, spring types, everything. $2 a button, 2 buttons, $4 total on the BOM. Absurd. Yes the buttons…

I have a brand new Microsoft Band still in the box! When I ordered one, Microsoft sent me two and refused to refund me and take the 2nd one back :) I still look at that device fondly.

What makes you think an EEG headband is not just a smartwatch in a different form-factor? We're running an nrf53 plus extra storage. We don't have a screen, but screens are fairly inexpensive. We've got a full EEG system.

We have actually done pretty well at limiting the number of parts. The headband is so thin it's buttonless. We didn't have room for a button and created a fully buttonless interface.

There are parts you wouldn't think would be expensive but are. Bone-conduction transducer, heart-rate sensor, etc etc. Yes, we could ditch the HR and save some money but we feel it will be beneficial.

Watches are a thing that exists. EEG sleep headbands aren't. We had to create our own materials for EEG sensing. Everything else on the market have limited life and aren't comfortable enough for sleeping.

Of course, all the plastics and TPU are custom. The fabrics are custom. Our scale is also very small right now, so I fully expect the cost to come down significantly with scale.

Re: The rise and fall of snake oil

#52

Post by com2kid »

pedalpete wrote: post #51
com2kid wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We decided to go with a low device cost When I worked on Microsoft Band, we wanted to have really nice side buttons. Great feel, not only the material, but the perfect spring tension, a great clicking sound, everything. We had someone who obsessed over them month after month, trying different polishes, colors, materials, spring types, everything. $2 a button, 2 buttons, $4 total on the BOM. Absurd. Yes the buttons…

I have a brand new Microsoft Band still in the box! When I ordered one, Microsoft sent me two and refused to refund me and take the 2nd one back :) I still look at that device fondly. What makes you think an EEG headband is not just a smartwatch in a different form-factor? We're running an nrf53 plus extra storage. We don't have a screen, but screens are fairly inexpensive. We've got a full EEG system. We have actual…

Yeah I get the custom parts thing, curved screen, curved batteries, and our optics stack for hr was custom built, now days those are off the shelf and a dime a dozen.

I guess my main point is that your device's price is firmly in the luxury impulse purchase category. It is only low price from the perspective of high earning coastal tech workers.

> Of course, all the plastics and TPU are custom.

Ugh getting the coating right on band took so long. Sunscreen stains everything.

That and a lens cover for the UV sensor that was transparent to UV and not just cheap plastic that'd shatter the second you slightly banged into it.

Re: The rise and fall of snake oil

#53

Post by Aerroon »

ccimmergreen wrote: post #28
Aerroon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My quality of life improved by a significant amount when I started supplementing magnesium. Better sleep and a bunch of other things. It's actually scary how much of a difference something so simple (and cheap) made.

Sounds like placebo effect. Which works too, but it doesn't have to be magnesium, zinc, or snake oil for that matter.

Perhaps, but at the same time my blood pressure reduced too. I think people dismiss supplements a bit too easily, but hey, that's their choice.

Re: The rise and fall of snake oil

#54

Post by pedalpete »

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #47
pedalpete wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my co-founder and I were discussing this yesterday. It was always in the plans, we're all actually on Android, but we wanted to get the user experience right on one platform and not spread ourselves too thin, but we're thinking AI makes a big difference here, so... no announcement yet, but it was never going to be iPhone forever. I still can't say for sure we'll have android at launch, but we'd like to.

If you're all on Android, the inability to dogfood iOS will hinder that "get the user experience right", won't it? Not being an app developer, I'm curious why a cross-platform framework wasn't chosen. Aren't there several good ones to choose from these days?

We have have iPhone dev phones, I just mean that for our daily use we don't use iOS. When I'm travelling I use iOS as my 2nd phone as well. So we dogfood it, but it's more like a snack specifically just for our app.

The structure of the app is in rust, so that is shared across platforms. The challenge is in the UI elements, and the cross platform stuff just isn't as good as going native there. You end up building a bunch of custom components anyway.

I'm also a bit wary of BLE on Android. iOS, is a bit more of a known entity.

It isn't just iOS and Android either. Because we support researchers, we also have a web app that they use. It surprising how large our technology footprint is across services, firmware, web, and apps.

Re: The rise and fall of snake oil

#55

Post by roysting »

ccimmergreen wrote: post #23
roysting wrote: post #19

Snake oil may have died, but the snake oil salesmen sure did not die out. If anything they’ve only proliferated.

They've become bolder with the subterfuge too. You can see the glass bottle is empty but they continue insisting it's filled to the brim.

Now if only one side did not insist that their snake oil sales(wo)men were the good snake oil sales(wo)men, whereas the other sides' are the fraudulent con artist ones.
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