I made a person seven years ago. They started out pretty useless, just eating and pooping and crying a lot. But now they can walk, talk, think, read, write, act, sing, and love.
Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
91–100 of 694 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#92An artificial heart: https://news.ohsu.edu/2018/03/08/have-an-artificial-heart I've also been part of (or lead) the design teams of several LVADS (one of which is in the Smithsonian), a dialysis machine (Outset), a surgical navigation camera for NuVasive, and most recently a couple soft tissue surgical robotics systems. First, Ottava from Auris/Verb/J&J, and most recently the Maestro from Moon Surgical: https://www.m…
That article seems really interesting, but it's over five years old. Are there any updates on the artificial heart? Did it ever make it to human trials?
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#93Does a garden count? In a small, urban plot I grow grapes, tomatoes, strawberries, mint, elderberries, and carrots. A work in progress but I'm building a modular synthesizer. I've built the power supply and have the VCO started on a strip board. Planning on adding some bits to that, making a step sequencer, and some filters.
yes, very much so
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#94You guessed it, boats. I have built a stitch and glue (plywood) sea kayak[0], an Aleutian-style skin-on-frame sea kayak[1], and a skin-on-frame canoe[2]. All were fairly approachable and straightforward projects (I built the first two with basically some hand tools, a drill and a jig saw, on my deck, but a table saw is highly recommended for skin on frame). Tons of fun and the feeling of being a couple miles offshore…
Very cool! I've been wanting to build either a Cape Falcon canoe or F1 kayak for a few years (and might get the chance -- read, "have the space to" -- soon). If you see this & can elaborate, how did the Cape Falcon build process compare to the stitch and glue CLC and to the non-Cape Falcon skin-on-frame?
Also, do you find yourself using one or the other of the boats more or less?
Either way/no matter what, fun to see this answer on HN! Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#95Two children. Still amazed how they came to be!
It's a bit creepy to refer to people as "things"
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#96Building a hardware business is hard, but it teaches you a lot about product management, supply chains, and empathy.
A few years ago, I launched Bedtime Bulb [0], a light bulb meant to be used before sleep. Since then, my team has reached 10s of thousands of customers, and the reception has been overwhelmingly positive.
It hasn't all been rosy, however. We learned a lot from customers about where the product fell short and what features were missing. We had to pull the product from some markets due to performance issues. We learned the hard way about customs issues, damage in shipping, and much more.
Unfortunately, hardware has long and expensive iteration cycles. But my biggest advice would be to stick with it and continue to learn if you have some feedback from the market that this could be successful. My biggest role models both went through long periods of failure: James Dyson's 5,000+ prototypes and Tony Fadell's years of building ahead-of-their-time products.
And stick with it we did. We are going to release a new version of the bulb in coming months that fix all the issues of the previous product, as well as introduce some new features we think will move the lighting space forward. And we are combining our vision and additional feature requests to release even more advanced products.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#97it’s not finished but I’m working on an astrolabe https://mastodon.social/@jes5199/110454794966272609
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#98does my kid count?
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#99I'm an EE by trade, and my work has shipped in numerous consumer products. I was lead hardware designer for Sonos Amp, Sonos Port, and a few of the IKEA/Sonos collaboration products.
I've since moved on from that job, but it's a very cool resume item. It's also a pretty cool shameless self promotion thing to point out when I need to.
Was asked by an executive why I should run a hardware development effort at my current company and my pitch was: "Because I've designed and shipped more circuit boards than everyone else at this 500 person company combined. You probably own some of them." Turns out that said executive just got his new house wired with Sonos Amps.
Since I mostly work from home these days, I've done some fun little projects around radio just to prove that I can. I made a little AM receiver with 74xx series logic inspired by a post I saw on HN, and now I'm working on a digitally tuned FM receiver with a Si5351 as LO and an STM32 as controller/HMI.
Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
#100I bought a house that was sold as "uninhabitable" in Amsterdam, pulled out all the interior walls, applied insulation, then taught my self plumbing and did the plumbing, redid the wiring, installed the gas heater, laid radiant heating. I built new interior walls and did all the interior finishing except for plastering downstairs and pouring cement over the radiant heating, which I had professionals do. Coolest single…
>> I probably could've just taken a job at a bank or some big tech co in Amsterdam and afforded the same or even nicer a year or two later.
Yes, but now you know how to fully renovate a previously-deemed-uninhabitable house.
Many, especially people that make large $ in tech may disagree, but I find this to be extremely valuable knowledge & experience. Tangent, but I experience second hand humiliation & embarrassment when I see an adult paying hundreds into thousands of dollars for something that can be fixed in well under an hour with basic tools.