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Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

pearlauto.com

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Re: Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

#81

Post by PantaloonFlames »

suprgeek wrote: post #77

Great Product - Congrats on thinking thru and designing for a "Wire-Free" experience, with Solar batteries and the clever hack of the OBD port connector to offload some functions (wake-up on reversing etc). That said - it seems it is 2-3 years too late to be launching this. 1)By 1 May 2018, all new US Cars will have back-up cameras by law [1] 2) Most Cars sold since 2011/12 seem to have integrated back-up cameras 3)…

Yep, with the coming regulatory requirement on manufacturers to equip new cars sold in the USA with builtin backup cameras, the potential addressable market in the USA will shrink steadily as time goes on, and as newer cars replace older ones. Even so there are (guessing) ~100MM cars on US roads that do not have backup cameras and might want one. And also commercial trucks - where a camera is sorely needed.

And of course there are international markets. China buys more cars than the US, these days.

Re: Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

#84

Post by Riseed »

mrshoe wrote: post #38
jbob2000 wrote: post #6

Very cool! I'm interested in your thoughts about car manufacturers including them on cars now. In Canada, all new car models must have a backup camera, for example. (Kinda funny how you feature brand new Porsches and Audis in your product demos; both these cars have backup cameras!) I still think there's a market for the product for older/used/classic vehicles, but wondering what your perspective is on this.

Excellent question. It takes decades for new features to fan out to the majority of new cars. After that it then takes decades more for those features to reach saturation of all cars on the road, because only 7% of the car population turns over each year. The bottom line is it's generally 40 years from the point when features like seat belts, air bags, traction control, and backup cameras are first introduced and whe…

Excellent answer. Feature propagation & saturation is also a reason to offer/develop a version that doesn't require an OBD port.

Your customer base consists almost exclusively of those who are both willing to spend $499 on an accessory and who don't already have a reverse cam. Many potential customers won't have an OBD port in their car because OBD-I wasn't around until the '90s. Muscle car enthusiasts and parents (happy to spend $499 to prevent an accident) passing down an older car come to mind.

It would be great to see a second generation version that works without OBD.

Re: Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

#85

Post by astrange »

stevewilhelm wrote: post #82

I might pay for something like this if it was: 1. designed for the front license plate 2. recorded the last n minutes of driving to memory 3. could trigger a copy of the last n minutes to a SD memory card or to my phone.

The dashcam market is well developed, with the only real issue being you have to run a USB cable in your car to power it. I don't think this would add enough value over the ones you stick to your windshield.

For instance, I have this one; it's very small and not likely to get stolen:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UUS52YG?psc=1

Hasn't gotten me anything yet but I hope to get Youtube karma someday.

On the other hand, this product does add value, it just happens to be evil:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11934455

A backup camera would be great, since my car doesn't have one and there are kids living next door, but my OBD port is already in use by another tech gimmick…

Re: Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

#86

Post by brandon272 »

suprgeek wrote: post #77

Great Product - Congrats on thinking thru and designing for a "Wire-Free" experience, with Solar batteries and the clever hack of the OBD port connector to offload some functions (wake-up on reversing etc). That said - it seems it is 2-3 years too late to be launching this. 1)By 1 May 2018, all new US Cars will have back-up cameras by law [1] 2) Most Cars sold since 2011/12 seem to have integrated back-up cameras 3)…

The rear visibility in my car isn't great. Saw the homepage and thought, "Sold!" within about 10 seconds. Clicked "Pre-Order" to be disappointed by the price point. Was expecting something in the $249 or $299 price range.

$500 ($650 CAD) is way too high for me. Disappointing.

Re: Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

#87

Post by dang »

dsl wrote: post #69
mrshoe wrote: post #2

It's such an amazing feeling to put your blood and sweat into a product for months and finally be able to share it with the world. It's great to take our startup out of stealth mode today! I couldn't imagine a better group of people to do it with, either.

How long has your team been working on this project? It seems like it is 2-3 years too late to market.

> How long has your team been working on this project? It seems like it is 2-3 years too late to market.

That reads like a dismissive swipe. Please guard against that here, especially when responding to new work. It may be the default human tendency, but it's destructive of thoughtful conversation. Not all new work is good, but most things that do turn out to be good start small, and all invite a litany of obvious objections while embryonic.

A better way to bring this up would be to provide more detail about your comment's context (example: products X, Y, Z came out 2 years ago) and then expressing your point as a sincere question (example: how is your product different from X, Y, Z and isn't there a risk that the market is already mature).

Re: Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

#88

Post by popey456963 »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #60
ww520 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. The site is kind of hard to scroll. The PgDown key doesn't work at the second page. Pictures after full screen pictures with no delimitation is a real turn off.

It's even worse with this site than most like it, since it randomly switches between "scroll slightly to trigger a transition animation" and "scroll normally to go down the page", and you can never predict which it's going to be until you try and wait a few seconds for something to happen.

So infuriating, see [0]

[0] http://blog.arronhunt.com/post/66973746030/stop-scrolljackin...

Re: Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

#89

Post by Terretta »

suprgeek wrote: post #77

Great Product - Congrats on thinking thru and designing for a "Wire-Free" experience, with Solar batteries and the clever hack of the OBD port connector to offload some functions (wake-up on reversing etc). That said - it seems it is 2-3 years too late to be launching this. 1)By 1 May 2018, all new US Cars will have back-up cameras by law [1] 2) Most Cars sold since 2011/12 seem to have integrated back-up cameras 3)…

Problem 4, OBD port contention, cost them three pre-sales. I have Automatic in the OBD port on the three vehicles. All between 10 - 20 years old, but each with only 10k - 30k miles, so great candidates for this otherwise.

Re: Tell HN: We built a solar-charging wireless backup camera for your car

#90

Post by Terretta »

mrshoe wrote: post #27
tzm wrote: post #8

Great idea. Why use an OBD port? I suspect this will compete with other OBD-dependent solutions in the future.

Aside from power, we do use the OBD port to detect things like reverse and speed (to stop the video automatically when you hit 10mph). In general we want to integrate our products into the car and the driving experience as much as possible.

That choice cost you three pre-sales. I have Automatic using the port, as do many people I know with cash to spend on expensive car gadgets and older cars to gadgetize.

I think you understand why Automatic, useful over 10 mph, needs to be more integrated into the driving experience than you do.

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