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Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#81

Post by [deleted] »

9oliYQjP wrote: post #37
acgourley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone working on a hardware startup I feel like I can only create a competitive price by sourcing and assembling overseas, and yet it seems like once you do that every turn is fraught with peril and counterfeit. It would be awesome to hear more advice or stories, if you have them.

This is par for the course. I have friends who have had to manage manufacturing processes in China. You have to be very specific, to the point of utter paranoia, in the instructions that you provide. Wherever, and I mean absolutely wherever a corner can be cut, it will be cut at this level. One friend had to get rubber household cleaning gloves made in China. He worked for a retailer and this would be for their store…

[deleted]

Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#82

Post by callmevlad »

catch23 wrote: post #53
callmevlad wrote: post #20

I stopped using mine the day I got it because it emitted a annoying loud whiny noise the second I plugged it in. I immediately thought "cheap Chinese manufacturing" and started using my white iPhone charger instead. Glad I did. What makes this more serious is that the WakeMate seems to be really power hungry and needs almost constant charging - I've noticed that it usually can't go 2 straight nights without a recharg…

The fitbit tech is pretty primitive -- it looks like it only has a pedometer inside the device. It's probably why it isn't very accurate at tracking sleep. I've been using my fitbit for a few weeks, but it doesn't seem very accurate at all in general.

According to https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fitbit uses a 3D accelerometer, so it seems to be more complex than just a pedometer. I've found it to be quite accurate for daytime activity, especially tracking when I'm being really active. But I'm just now starting to use it to measure sleep (and to compare the results to the WakeMate while I'm at it), so can't speak much to its effectiveness yet.

Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#83

Post by bugsy »

user24 wrote: post #57
bugsy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a place I worked a few years ago we had to individually retest every single unit of our products. This involved opening up packaging and repacking and reshrinkwrapping afterwards. In between unpacking and repacking there was testing and finding about 1/3 of them always had problems. Some boards could be fixed by diagnosing to the component level, replacing components and even resoldering incorrectly wired interboa…

darn those pesky environmental laws. edit: oh wait! We'll just dump it in Asia instead! Yay!

Exactly, and then it flows down the rivers into the Pacific ocean and swirls around to the US or sinks and poisons the fish that are caught and sold to US. Hm.

(For those dislike any and all criticism of, well, China, a possible solution would be to require that trade partners implement and enforce similar levels of environmental regulations on manufacturing so that international trade is not just "exporting pollution". This is not simple though because China has a habit of fake-certifying things (for example much Chinese-grown "organic" food is organic in certification alone). So to work in reality and not theory, this would involve non-Chinese inspectors throughout the country with full access to inspect things, which would probably not be acceptable to Chinese State officials. In reality, things will continue as they have been going until the oceans can no longer support life, followed by massive extinctions of other animals such as humans and all other species whose ecochains have links relying on healthy ocean functioning to live.)

Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#84

Post by bugsy »

davidk0101 wrote: post #47
bugsy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a place I worked a few years ago we had to individually retest every single unit of our products. This involved opening up packaging and repacking and reshrinkwrapping afterwards. In between unpacking and repacking there was testing and finding about 1/3 of them always had problems. Some boards could be fixed by diagnosing to the component level, replacing components and even resoldering incorrectly wired interboa…

So you were basically saving $180 in exchange for a more polluted planet. Great exchange if I ever saw one.

Yes, that is basically correct, although the difference in cost wasn't all environmental obviously, there was also the advantage of using a labor pool with few rights compared to the US, poor health care, and other factors.

On top of unit costs there is cost to stock in store, cost of the store's profit, etc. Let me ask you this, would you be willing to pay $10,000 for a computer Made in USA? Is the computer you are working on right now Made in USA, or are some components from China?

That's the answer right there. We can pay $1000 for a Chinese made laptop or $10,000 for an entirely USA made one top to bottom. What market is there for the eco and labor friendly USA one, and what is the chance that a company selling these would stay in business for even 6 months? Is the chance greater than 0%?

Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#85

Post by ericd »

davidk0101 wrote: post #54
maayank wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realisticlly, if you don't do it then a competitor will and not only will he pollute the planet, but drive you out of business with his cheaper units.

That's a shitty justification for causing irreparable harm simply because you need to make a buck.

No, it's very reasonable, and it's the reason that these things need govt. regulation. Otherwise, it's just tragedy of the commons all over the place.

Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#86

Post by bugsy »

oasisbob wrote: post #27
bugsy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a place I worked a few years ago we had to individually retest every single unit of our products. This involved opening up packaging and repacking and reshrinkwrapping afterwards. In between unpacking and repacking there was testing and finding about 1/3 of them always had problems. Some boards could be fixed by diagnosing to the component level, replacing components and even resoldering incorrectly wired interboa…

This type of testing sounds like a huge pain, but makes a big difference for customer satisfaction to the point where a company can differentiate themselves by doing it. A company called Yongnuo makes some fantastic speedlights (photographic flashes), which are inexpensive alternatives to the fully-automatic Canon/Nikon standards for strobist photogs. Think $40 instead of $400. The trade-off is that many of them arri…

Yes, if the customers are doing hardware testing it's a disaster for satisfaction, and you also have the cost of repair and shipping and recalls. It's very interesting trade off wise. When I worked in the semiconductor industry, there was a fail rate of something like 35% of chips cut from the wafer. Depending on the complexity and size of the chip relative to the wafer, that rate could go up to 90%, or down to 10%. This is because of things outside of human ability to control, microscopic defects in the substrate for example, or a single dust particle that got into the clean room. These were tested on the full sized wafer and marked with dots and then after cutting the ones with dots are tossed out. Needless to say, it is utterly crucial that significant parts of the chip design must be solely for the purpose of being able to completely test functionality on-chip. This results then in 100% functioning of things that went out the door. I've never even seen a CPU that went to a customer that had a known defect at that stage, so the step of tossing away a large number is just part of manufacturing. However in the case of manufacturing boards overseas, it is definitely possible to increase field significantly. The units were just as testable over there as they are here in the US, without the trouble of unpacking and repacking the retail boxes. But for whatever reason reform of the foreign manufacturing plant simply was not happening and not something they were interested in, and management apparently felt that the trade offs involved made sense, including all the extra rework and testing.

One thought that has occurred to me though is that Apple is using much more poor quality manufacturing than they were years ago, and there is a high failure rate of Apple laptops. However, they have a warranty that covers fixing everything for 1 year and everyone sane knows to buy the extended 3 year since there's something like a 1 in 4 chance you'll need it. So Apple has figured that they save enough making it in China that they can absorb the cost of fixing 25% of the ones where the customer bought AppleCare. These repairs are usually replacing the whole motherboard with spares that they buy in vast quantities for each and every model. This is all done very intentionally for sound economic reasons and customer satisfaction is very high despite the failures.

Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#87

Post by bugsy »

davidk0101 wrote: post #54
maayank wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realisticlly, if you don't do it then a competitor will and not only will he pollute the planet, but drive you out of business with his cheaper units.

That's a shitty justification for causing irreparable harm simply because you need to make a buck.

You are correct that the system is not what is best for the world, however we do not have tariff regulations that would temper the effects of exporting pollution and human misery, and corporate interests control legislation to this effect through lobbyists and bribes. Right now, if you work, the company you work for is destroying the environment. Even Greenpeace and PeTA use computer components made in China, and drive cars that use oil paid for with human misery in authoritarian and failed states. To have a job or a computer at all you become part of the system. There is the option of going completely off grid and being self sufficient in an Adobe house in Mexico, or a cabin in Alaska, but few choose this path.

Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#89

Post by avner »

bilbo0s wrote: post #68

"...The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers..." You think it is appropriate to say this in a recall notice... and this is why you fail. Sony has problems with their products, so does Apple. Neither of the…

I tried to start a hardware startup last year and actually made it to the interview with PG & co. At the end of the meeting, while the idea was good, it came down to the obvious question of assembling and sourcing the hardware. At that stage, after a lot of research and thinking, I decided to cut my losses and shelf the idea for the time being.

Why? Because hardware is hard. I may be an engineer, but scaling production of a hardware unit from a prototype to shippable products en masse is an extremely hard challenge if you're trying to source your hardware from somewhere like China. Its harder if you're not Apple or HP..or Sony for that matter. I think its unfair to judge wakemate to Sony or Apple standards.

Coincidentally, I met the Wakemate guys when I crashed at the SF hacker house during that time. While they're brilliant and dextrous folks, I certainly felt the vibe that they were finding it extremely challenging to design, produce and ship this thing. The idea of wakemate sounded great, but I wasn't convinced that being non-tech founders, they were entirely aware of the technical and logistical challenges of producing and scaling a hardware unit from scratch to the production line.

I wish them luck though. While they could learn a lesson or two about PR, they've been at it for over an year and have persisted. Customer patience may be running thin after these series of setbacks, but I still believe that they will eventually pull it off.

Re: Important Safety Notice from WakeMate

#90

Post by dhbanes »

clewiston wrote: post #10
delackner wrote: post #8

So the logical next question is are the battery paks in the band safe? What sort of safety cert was done on them?

yes the batteries are safe. we believe that the chargers are spitting out a noisy electrical signal, which is causing the battery charger IC on the WakeMate to overheat, thus causing the problem. We have only seen any incidence when the unit is plugged into the black USB charger bricks we shipped with. To date we have logged over 20000 hours of sleep on our system, so we're certain that sleeping with the Wakemate is…

I am curious how you were able to assess this situation so quickly.

Thomas posted the original email 11 hours ago and prefaced it with "From my email just now."

Very shortly thereafter (also 11 hours ago as I write this), you commented that

1. WakeMate sent the email within an hour of hearing about the first issue.

2. WakeMate believes they know the cause of the problem (noisy electrical signal from defective chargers)

3. "[WakeMate] have only seen any incidence when the unit is plugged into the black USB charger bricks we shipped with."

So over the course of a couple hours, you (WakeMate) became aware of the _first_ report of overheating (and were previously unaware of this problem), you were able to determine that the cause of the issue is a noisy electrical signal being produced by the charger, and you also indicate that you have now observed additional incidence of overheating.

Do I have that right?

Edit: formatting

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