Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?

We are building the world's highest temperature heat pump. It can reach 1000℉, when other commercial heat pumps usually reach a maximum of 320 ℉.

It is a big deal because factories have to rely on polluting natural gas to produce their process heat.

We estimate that it represents 3% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions and a $10B+ annual market opportunity.

We are currently building a 5kW prototype at 480℉/250C to cook french fries for McCain (world's largest manufacturer of frozen potato products), our industrial partner for the first pilot.

If you would like to support our decarbonization efforts, feel free to email us on [email protected] or to invest in our crowdfunding! https://wefunder.com/airthium

I’m having a hard time understanding the seasonal energy storage component. Can you dive into this a bit more? I wasn’t able to find much on your website.

I work in the energy industry and this is one of the largest issues that utilities (and plenty of others) face (and even go as far as installing thermostats that they can control in their customers’ homes).

I’m wondering if there’s anything that can be done to advance the 2030 timeline? Both from an investor and potential customer perspective, that’s a lengthy timeline for such an interesting value prop.

This sounds very cool. Wait, no, hot.

In a factory setting, there is a bunch of heat wasted in other processes, e.g. waste heat from machines. Is this heat collected and fed into the air source?

What is the COP of a heat pump operating against this temperature gradient?

Quoting from their linked website:

> Our heat pump can generate up to 3 times as much heat as a resistor, using the same amount of electricity.

Though it doesn't mention the temperature at which this is achieved, only that the range is from 160 to 550°C.

we published a calculator if you would like to dig deeper! https://airthium.github.io/airthium.com-calculator/

The COP gets lower as the temperature difference increases as you can expect.

For those, like me, who didn't know this term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance

> The coefficient of performance or COP (sometimes CP or CoP) of a heat pump, refrigerator or air conditioning system is a ratio of useful heating or cooling provided to work (energy) required.[1][2] Higher COPs equate to higher efficiency, lower energy (power) consumption and thus lower operating costs.

Those chips should come in special packaging saying they're eco friendly

ball grid array perhaps has the right thermal properties

Plastic packaging is more eco-friendly than any alternative. Lightweight, carbon sink, and as long as it's not dumped in the ocean, has a very small and environmentally friendly waste footprint.

The dumping in the ocean part is an issue in countries with under-developed waste management infrastructure, not something inherent to plastics.

The issue is plastic doesn’t reasonably biodegrade when left alone and doesn’t recycle well. We can make transport use cleaner energy, but we seemingly can’t make plastic meaningfully more disposable/reusable.

Are the plastics in your blood responsible for the content of this post?

I think there may be an angle here, but it’s distracting to so drastically minimize the environmental impacts

Or, serious suggestion, dehydrated potato skin, held together with starch. Fun gimmick anyway.

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 problems, and ended up selling the software we use internally to DENSO (a large japanese company) which funded the development. See https://tanatloc.com

- tackling a market that doesnt exist yet with a seasonal energy storage solution (a change of engine architecture allowed us to use the same engine but for industrial heat pumps, an existing market much easier to tackle)

- finding the right industrial space,

and so on :)

> ... 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?

I can't go into details for confidentiality reasons but we published a paper last December on one of the simulation models : https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-12019-0_...

Yep, for deskwork. We shouldn’t sit for extended periods of time, but moving is usually too interrupting. We pair with a standing height desk and make it trivially easy to change posture every few minutes without disturbing your focus.

We did the simplest study that surprisingly chair makers don’t do- can you prevent pain. Our chair prevented discomfort for 100% of participants compared to a high end ergonomic chair.

More here: https://www.movably.com/

We're building a closed loop artificial pancreas (think dialysis but for blood sugar) for hospital use -- the first of its kind in the US. There's a massive unmet need; all critical care patients, and all people with diabetes in the hospital could benefit. Studies have shown you can achieve a 30% reduction in mortality, and 25% reduction in length of stay, in addition to the hours per day you save nurses from managing blood sugar. It's a win/win/win on the lives saved/cost savings/nursing time saves, so we think it'll be pretty important when we hit the market!

Sad to see how few other hard healthtech people there are here, they seem to be few and far between.

Amazing! I'm a doctor and founded a software company (https://www.piahealth.co) - even for software as a medical device (SaMD), the regulatory hurdles are tricky and time-consuming, I imagine it's at least 10x for hardware. I have huge respect for what you're doing and hope it makes a big impact.

Can you tell me the difference between your product on the types of prescription cgm + insulin pump combos like dexcom/tandem which offer some level insulin control?

I'm just curious. I run an xDrip set up and I've played around with a couple of the "DIY" closed loop setups.

Our device is for inpatient use, so it's a little more complicated than your typical DIY APS you might be used to as a T1/T2. You have to account for all kinds of different drug interactions, perfusion issues, undergoing surgical procedures, etc etc. The biggest single difference is that we use dextrose as a way to quickly recover from lows (like an automated orange juice dispenser).

Because we're in the hospital and can access IV lines, we also have rapid access to data, and the drugs we infuse get taken up much quicker (5-10 minutes for insulin, 3 minutes for dextrose).

The terminology is overlapping but the space is very different than outpatient glucose control.

Why use dextrose instead of glucagon for lows? B/C patient liver function may be compromised more often in the in patient setting?

In addition to liver function, you can't always rely on patients to have glycogen stores to draw from.

Additionally, dextrose is inexpensive, more available (rural county hospitals don't stock glucagon), easier to mix and store, has a longer shelf life, and most importantly, has a far quicker response time.

Glucagon has promise for outpatient work, where the volume of fluid is much more of a factor, though the stability and cost are still unsolved problems. The patients we treat are in a bed, monitored periodically by trained healthcare providers, with routine access to a pharmacy.

TL:DR Hospital control is just a different beast!

Cool - check out my company: https://replica.health - We automatically log a bunch of data for diabetics based on things like activity and location, and provide an LLM powered search engine for that data. You can ask our system questions w/ natural language like "show me data about whenever I get low post-exercise". If theres any crossover, I'd love to chat about it.

I'm mostly curious about the modelling that goes on under the hood; are you just using deep learning, or also integrating something like UVA-Padova to fit your absorption curves?

Hey, my wife has diabetes, and she's had really awful luck with automated blood sugar monitors. Somehow their readings are always off by insane amounts vs a finger poke

Have you done much research into that area? Do you know if there's a brand we should check out or any common gotchas? (I can't find much reasonable info on this online due to my poor Google skills and all the bad info out there..)

Consumer finger pricks are actually less reliable than CGMs these days (relative difference of up to 25%, vs 10% for something like a Dexcom G6). That being said, a few things you can try:

1. Wait 24 hours, the CGM needs time to adjust to your body

2. Don't overcalibrate in the first 24 hours, or when sugars are in flux. You'll mess up the factory calibration which can lead to worse accuracy over the session.

3. Try a different insertion site. Behind the arm and on the abdomen are the two most common ones.

4. Talk to your endo

5. Call your CGM maker, they will almost always overnight you a replacement if it's demonstrably failing.

This is fantastic, good luck to you. We need more of people like you.

That's awesome! At least in my limited experience developing health care hardware is much more challenging when there isn't a clear "regulatory path" that has been done before. Which makes it harder for completely novel devices (eg versus making an improved pacemaker which already has been approved)

The good thing for us is that artificial pancreases are regulated not as one device, but as three separate (interoperable) devices: the pumps, the sensors, and the control software. Only our control software is under a de-novo pathway ("totally new thing" pathway), everything else is 510k ("we know what this thing is" pathway). We also have Breakthrough Device designation, which really accelerates the regulatory timeline

We are making flying robots over here . We build a transportation drone in our shop in Austin: composite, CNC, additive manufacturing, EE etc on the hw side + ML/realtime on the software side. http://www.skyways.com If you are up for a challenge and you are interested to join the team feel free to reach out to me directly on linked in https://www.linkedin.com/in/gbinet

We make the world's best baby car seats. https://www.kioma.us Fatherly Magazine calls it "The Car Seat of the Future". It's been crash tested, flight inversion tested, flammability tested and mom tested. It is full of patented innovations to make kids safer and parenting more enjoyable.

It required lots of material science, production techniques, supply chain adjustments, and a surprising amount of software (to model dynamic stress, and to run the robot and CNC trim paths). Once you get to the point you can clearly articulate your BOM and Specs to a manufacturer for MOQ=50, things get a lot easier. At the prototype stage we built everything ourselves, but now we use OEM manufacturers.

The price is insane man. The best of the best car seat according to lots of reviews(Cybex Anoris-T) is "only" £599, your thing is significantly more and I don't see why it's any better.

Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to justify.

I am always entertained by the extra amount people are willing to pay for the tiniest bit of risk reduction (or appearance thereof) for baby and kid related products.

For example, paying an extra $900 for a car seat, but then taking the kid on unnecessary car rides, which are magnitudes riskier than not taking the kid in a car. If you are willing to pay that much for such an immaterial decrease in risk, surely you should avoid taking the kid in a car unless absolutely necessary.

Although, I guess some of it is also showing what you can afford.

Our risk assessment is as emotional as is logical.

When it comes to driving specifically, my friends will buy a 50k SUV to feel safe, but will then buy cheapest plasticy tires or refuse to join me in advanced safety class.

That being said - kids are vulnerable, fragile, and don't make their own decisions. As a newish parent myself I 100% understand the extra pressure that puts to make the best possible decision for them.

I don’t think kids are even that fragile. In many ways they bounce back from more than adults!

I mean I know people who seem to get in an accident once in a while — sometimes completely their fault — and other people who have driven 20 years everywhere and clearly drive better and react quicker than anyone else I know.

So by all means, someone doing something or not doesn’t mean much.

People can do both, though: drop unnecessary rides and also have the safest seats.

And some of it is buying convenience. The peace of mind from knowing you have the safest seat allows risking more rides which frees up impromptu errand scheduling. Whether the math actually works out is orthogonal to the psychological effects.

Ya - if I could afford this and didn't, and the kid died - I'd always wonder if the better seat would have saved them. I have a really good seat (this didn't exist), and also (probably equally...or more importantly?) a very highly rated car.

Safety is a great way to sell this product, though the price may limit who buys it.

It's about convenience. Refraining from taking certain car rides to reduce the risk is inconvenient. But for a wealthy customer, there is no difference between buying car seat A or B, but if A is $900 more and slightly safer, it's logical and just as convenient to choose it.

"The baby's okay, they're safely nested in a unibody machined aluminum enclosure. I've been told those are indestructible."

What counts as an unnecessary car ride for you? If I'm going to the grocery store and there's someone else to watch my toddler, I don't need to take her with me, but I think the bit of stimulation of getting out of the house and seeing a new place, new experience, and new people has a benefit that outweighs the almost inconsequential odds of a major car accident as I drive there and back on roads with a speed limit of 35 MPH.

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 completely get it if the Kioma seat is too expensive for your preferences.

As a side note, if you want to be blown away by prices check out the $10,000 cribs (https://nurseryworks.net/collections/cribs/products/gradient...), $1000 bassinets (https://www.happiestbaby.com/), and $5000 strollers (https://silvercrossus.com/category/strollers/).

Thanks for the feedback!

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?

I am a parent, and in my opinion, spending $1k on a car seat is completely unreasonable. (We bought ours used as part of a package deal with some other used baby stuff. It would have been nowhere near $1k when new.)

It depends.

The thing about the baby market is that, because it’s driven by emotional decisions, there are buyers at every price point - and it isn’t even directly related to wealth. Some people get into debt trying to make this harsh world safer for their newborn, even though safety benefits taper off as the price increases.

For me, I picked the lower bound and my wife picked the upper bound on the price range we were looking at. She is frugal above all else, I am safety conscious above all else. We met in the middle and found one that suited.

It required some negotiation to begin with though, because her upper bound was lower than my lower bound - and was firmly in the “dodgy unbranded wholesale, sold on a website with an invalid SSL certificate, claiming to be UK based but registered to a Chinese address” territory.

What do you think about spending $1k on a phone?

My question is why it's $1000 and not $999.

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.

What’s the value? Lol I’ve used the same $250 one for 3 babies now and 0% of them would have noticed “high end materials”.

The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually. Those brackets need to be braced and not just bolted through plywood.

Having patents on innovations is necessary, but if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US10967762B2/en?oq=1096776...

This this TOS usual for a piece of regulated safety equipment?

Terms of service The legalese.

The KIOMA Car Seat is provided “as-is, where-is,” without representations, conditions or warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The recipient or buyer is solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using the KIOMA Car Seat.

Not sure what you are referring to about a strap being a single point of failure.

Patents > We don't work for free, and we can't buy groceries by giving away years of R&D. Companies are welcome to license our safety innovations, and they know how to reach us. The invitation to do so is on our website.

TOS > Kioma seats come with an industry standard 1 year warranty. The website TOS are different than the product warranty that comes with each seat. Thanks for the heads up though. I'll have the marketing team clarify that.

“We don’t give years of R&D away for free” is a pretty flippant response. You make money selling car seats, and if another company can produce better seats at a lower price then consumers win and lives are saved. Which is ostensibly exactly what you want to happen? Otherwise why even be in the car seat business?

That’s a pretty naive way to look at it. A lot of patented products have a positive impact on the world, should all of these be shared?

What if a small player tries to break into a market with a nee solution? They should give away their IP to the big player purely because it has a positive impact on the world?

Just because their product is more safe doesn’t mean they automatically have to share this with everyone. They put time and a lot of effort into this, and that should be rewarded. The world rewards people with money. Sure some people might be happy with knowing they saved more lives, but eventually most people just want to be rewarded.

> A lot of patented products have a positive impact on the world, should all of these be shared?

Yes. It’s bad to criminalize innovation. Most patentable innovations are not so unique but only a logical next step given prior inventions.

Also, patents favor the big players in any market because they have the money and the will to grind down any newcomers with legal action. The upstart with fewer resources should always be in favor of a level playing field.

Likewise, the big players in any field spend vast resources on R&D to produce the better products, and the patent is the only thing that makes that sustainable.

It’s all well and good wanting the world to be a safer place, but every company is beholden to its shareholders and debtors. Resources spent must be recovered or it all falls down.

Strange how all those smaller companies filing patents are so idiotic to work against their own interests. Somebody should tell them.

If it was obvious, why didn’t some big company already do it?

Cmon be nice to the car seat people :). Let’s say it cost $10 to develop this groundbreaking car seat technology, and $1 to make a car seat, so the company charges $1.50 to make up their investment in 20 sales. If they gave away their patent, then another company (who didn’t have to pay that initial cost) could sell the same seats for $1.

This is episode 1000 in our favorite series: why and how capitalism strangles innovation

The flip side is that R&D is a lot easier and cheaper when you don’t have to worry about accidental infringement. But your last paragraph suggests we’re already in agreement.

In any case, I’m fine with companies making the pragmatic choice to pursue patent protection. But being defensive and flippant about it isn’t a good look. It’s much better to argue for instance that you put yourself at a disadvantage if you’re the only business that doesn’t patent their innovations, and that a patent portfolio also has a defensive function.

> The flip side is that R&D is a lot easier and cheaper when you don’t have to worry about accidental infringement.

Not when you're a hardware company. You typically rely on external vendors and long feedback loops between iterations for development and have to pay people along the way and in-between. Your remark that someones is morally obligated to give their innovation away before R&D costs are paid for, or really at all outside of a licensing model, is so far left field it might have a seat with the cars.

I mean, you could just be more flippant in response and suggest that the best car seat is the one without a car in the first place

Thank you for the support. You have eloquently explained the innovation conundrum.

> The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually.

That's not how our Recaro seat works, nor our original baby seat, nor the booster for our older son. Each of them attaches to the seat anchors using a single strap with clips on either end, one on a length adjuster.

This design looks pretty much the same; the plywood is just protection for the car upholstery, and doesn't act as a load-bearing element.

I wonder if there would be a market for in-built hard modular mount points for the back seats. Like, let's say I'm Tesla. I build in mount points for the back seats. And then I sell accessories for the mounts. Tesla branded baby seats. Child seats. Storage/shelf solutions. Dog cages. Pizza delivery rack. Who even knows how many things one could put back there

Like isofix? I think even Teslas have that. Or do I misunderstand?

Your Tesla manual may call it Latch (the US version of EU's Isofix). Same thing but different name.

Adding to the list of “same thing - different name”: in Canada it’s known as UAS (universal anchorage system)

Any seat belt in an automobile is a single point of failure by your logic. Seat belts are fantastic tech, though. Seat belt webbing is designed to take 11,120 Newtons (FMVSS 209). Textile science is pretty cool.

>if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all...provided “as-is, where-is,” without representations, conditions or warranties of any kind

no, individuals should play by the sames rules of the collective as everybody else.

There is nothing wrong with you advocating and/or successfully changing the rules of the patent system so all players must behave this way, but trying to shame a small entrepreneur into being boy scout is ihmo bad for all of us. I bristle at all the moralizing people do on the daily.

I'm advocating for "think globally, act locally", just without puritanism or maoism.

if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all.

One way would be for you to buy or license the tech and give it away. Is that something you're considering?

Looks nice and easy to clean. I don't know why the regular "Target car seats" have so many creases and folded layers, it's a major PITA to clean :)

Some are better than the Target basic ones, but even the "good" ones are way too complicated to clean, and it's like they've never even considered a kid might barf whilst in one, and some of the effluent will disappear into some weird crevice never to be revealed again.

Thanks! All the cushions are removable (velcro) so you can hit it with a hose and separately wash the cushions. The interior chassis surface is smooth, which is a big point of pride for us as it is easier to clean.

I am a bit skeptical dad but damn these look nice! The price is justifiable, although personally I'd hesitate because the seat is only good for about 2 years, and the seat seems to weigh higher than Nuna products which we got.

More like 18 months or less based on the height and weight limit, completely impractical pricing

You totally underestimate how much baby fever tax first time parents are willing to pay using the logic "once in a lifetime only".

This is exactly what I meant when I said the price is justifiable. It is designed to be advertised as a premium product to an exclusive set of customers.

Sizing > Realistically, the seat fits average kids up to 3 years. At the 95% percentile on height most kids will outgrow a rear-facing car seat at 18 months (the growth of the torso is the limiting factor). From a labeling perspective we have to be careful, though, because the US regs on sizing are really terrible. Keep in mind the regs were written in the 1970s when we were still teaching Americans to wear seat belts. So there are 2 "options" in the US regs: 22 lbs 12-month test dummy, and 39 lbs 3-yr old test dummy. Lots of manufacturers claim their seats fit the 39 lbs mark, but they squash the test dummy's legs into an unrealistic position for a child (passes the test by the letter of the law, but misses the spirit of the law). Basically, we designed this seat to fit kids until they are ready for a front-facing seat.

Pricing > It isn't for everyone. The Kioma seat is like a Maserati, but some people prefer a Ford Taurus. We have to charge a price to cover our production and design costs, and there is a quantitative and qualitative difference in the materials and performance of a Kioma car seat.

> The Kioma seat is like a Maserati

Perhaps not the best brand to invoke for a product where reliability is paramount. If you want to convey both luxury and reliability I'd go with Lexus (fancy Toyota).

$1000 is too much for Target and Walmart, but for Beverly Hills, the Hamptons, etc. that's nothing. If your living room has space for a Peleton bike, this will fit right in.

You don't put your Peloton in your living room like some peasant if you're buying a $1000 car seat.

What if you live in a $9000/month 900 square foot condo in the bay area?

Lots of couples stair-step their kids. It’s not 18 months for a lot of families. It’s 4-6 years with hand-me-downs.

We actually sold our 2 year old nuna for nearly 75% of it's original price to another family. It had 10 year warranty and not recall/accident. I doubt how much these would go for secondhand. Which is not an issue if you stair-step the seat.

Baby seats have expiration dates and it’s scary how many parents fall for the emotional manipulation around that. It makes the used car seat market dead as well as hand-me-downs

>it’s scary how many parents fall for the emotional manipulation around that

Are you saying that the expiration dates are bogus? I knew that rated sports helmets and similar products had expirations, but not car seats. Maybe I'll go check the handed-down seat my son is using...

They're basically bogus but put out because people don't bother inspecting the components and the makers really like selling additional ones.

And basically all thrift stores and other used good dealers won't touch them because of the perceived liability.

I wouldn't care about an expiration date, but I avoid the hand-me-down car seat market for the wreck reason. The carseats are only designed to be in one. I personally wouldn't know how to definitively say it had never been in one.

Hand-me-down, to me, connotes reuse within the same (possibly extended) family.

I'm fine sharing our used carseat with my 6yo only child's grandparents so that they can more easily help with my nieces and nephews (2 weeks, 1yo, 3yo, 4yo, and 5yo - oof!). My wife and I know it's not been in an accident, we would not misrepresent that to the detriment of our own family.

But I would not buy one from even the most trustworthy Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace listing imaginable.

I personally would love tamper-evident components within a carseat - think "Tip and Tell" [1] but for 3-axis accelerations. Impact-sensitive product labels exist such as those at [2], but I'm not convinced that the same accelerations and crashes that would damage polystyrene impact-absorbing foam would set off a glass ampule designed to break when you drop a rental camera lens or something like that.

1: https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-866/Damage-Indicators...

2: https://spotsee.io/impact

I'm the kind of guy that thinks I might be able to sell it for a good price, if it is high quality, after the use. Making the total money spent way less. But that begs the question, why not rent these out for 18 months at a time?

renting assumes previous users properly maintained these seats. Car seats are "supposed" to be disposed of in the event of a collision due to possible cracks or other fatigues in the structure not necessarily visible to the end user. If you rent, you have to assume the seat was not in a structurally significant event. That's a lot of trust.

Given how these car seats are advertised as having high-tech materials, I wonder if the manufacturer can install a crash detection module in them.

The foam doesn't stay good for long, I think the car seats we had expired after 6-7 years?

Also car seats can't be used after a crash, even if visually they looked ok. Maybe they could be refurbished (new foam, etc), but obviously this is a liability concern and probably isn't worth it.

Most likely because you can't guarantee how it has been used once the first customer has used it. And that will lead to major legal problems if e.g. it has been in a crash and is now compromised, but nobody noticed, then failed to protect the 2nd child.

For anyone else who doesn't know off hand what MOQ stands for...

BOM: bill of materials, aka list of what it takes to manufacture a product

MOQ: minimum order quantity, the lower limit the manufacturer will accept

One big problem with all car seats is that after 3-4 you have to dump an expensive and still usable seat. And I mean dump, since they cannot be donated AFAIK. It would be great if the seat can be disassembled to be used for another purpose.

<sarcasm> Think of the dollar cost amortization! You need to have more children to average down the cost. So you can use the car seat across 3-4 kids. </sarcasm>

In all seriousness, the problem with donations is people are afraid of attached liability. It is a shame, because car seats can often be used for several years across multiple children. If you keep it in the family and use it across your own kids, everyone is cool with it. As soon as you donate it to someone else, people worry about liability.

I know it isn't much solace, but we try to minimize use of non-recyclable material. The 5 pounds of aluminum in a Kioma car seat is recyclable and will net about $4.00 at current Al spot rates. So you could disassemble it.

"Mom tested" might not be the best thing to say if you want moms to buy your product

Someone further down the thread had a similar negative response to that phrase and suggested maybe "parent tested" as a substitute? Thanks for the feedback!

We also have a baby seat that can pretty much say all the same things. There must be tons of these on the market with swivel etc. What makes this better than the rest?

1. Safety (* see below)

2. Ease of Installation (* see below)

3. Bauhaus Design

4. 1-Hand Operation

5. Ease of Cleaning

6. Built in Rocker (a full one)

7. Quiet (* see below)

* Safety > The US regs are pass/fail so lots of seats on the market have mediocre test scores that don't reflect the real danger of severe concussions. For those of you interested in digging into the obscure world of Head Injury Criterion: greater than 390 HIC is linked with severe concussions (Source: Proposed limits for HIC From Kleinberger et al., 1998, and Eppinger et al., 2000.) Kioma seats do a number of things (crumple zones, etc) to create a lower (better) HIC score. By comparison some of the top sellers in the industry are at 600+ HIC.

* Installation > The regs don't have standards that really address this, but the incredible complexity of legacy car seats has led to a lot of installation errors by parents and caregivers. This can lead to some really unpleasant outcomes and injuries. We designed KIOMA to minimize use and installation errors by making things as simple and intuitive as possible. This seat is optimized for lap belt use only (no base required). The companion base has a number of innovations too that make it intuitive and easier to use.

* Quiet > There are no clicking or snapping or button parts that wake a sleeping child (with the exception of the harness buckle). This is the quietest baby car seat made.

Regarding safety, do you have any links around the test results for the Kioma, or other car seats? You've mentioned a lot about the safety scores/test results in comparison to other car seats, but I couldn't seem to find a single mention of that stuff on the website? I also tried to see if something like Consumer Reports had a review of a Kioma car seat (either the current one or the carbon fiber one) but they had nothing.

Test Results > NHSTA used to publish their test results of all car seats, but no longer do so. FMVSS 213 (the US standard) tests for Head Injury Criterion (36 millisecond), Excursion, and Peak Acceleration in a frontal car crash. So keep in mind the utility of the results has limits, and doesn't test for a whole lot of things that are part of real-world usage in and out of a car. *Big grain of salt.*

I'll give you some real numbers and leave the comparison for you to do (lawyers get itchy if we do the comparing directly). Our carbon fiber seat's best result is HIC 197 in FMVSS 213 testing with a Crabi 12-mo old test dummy. Our friend Eli at Magic Bean's reviewed it in a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGaU9R6jHCQ The current car seat for sale is of a similar class but doesn't have the $2500+ price tag of a carbon fiber seat.

If you're still curious, we can take this off HN: drop me a line at [email protected] and just mention HN and your HN profile name.

You get both: isofix/latch as well as lap-belt. Each car seat is sold with an accompanying Latch (aka Isofix) base so you can roll with whatever you prefer. However, lap belts are ubiquitous and work really well.

Reasons to use a base:

1) Convenience. It is nice and fast to click-in, click out with a car seat. Super fast and easy.

2) Protect the seat cushions of the car.

3) More constraints on pitch rotation. Which can be good or bad depending on how the seat is designed and rotation is used.

Reasons to use a lap belt only (no base):

1) It is intuitive. Everyone -- including grandma, grandpa, and the babysitter -- knows how to use a lap belt (as opposed to a latch/isofix base).

2) It is ubiquitous. Every automobile and plane seat has one. So if you're hopping into an Uber, no problem.

3) Lab belts are designed to stretch which is actually really good in a collision. The stretching lowers peak acceleration, and therefore lowers the likelihood of injury.

4) Total system weighs less, which translates into less force in a collision (F=ma).

It looks just like a regular one. When the special features are plastic and foam that doesn't scream high quality to me.

Why not make one that's solid steel and can tank a direct hit from a bus? You could make some really funny advertisements with crash test dummies.

I like your sense of humor. The engineers used to jokingly call this the "Orphanator -- the seat so safe only the kids survive the crash." Our marketing people told us to leave the ideas to them....

In a collision, rigidity is actually the enemy. A well designed seat should never be reusable after a crash because all the materials yielded to dump energy. It is better to have energy diverted into stretching, bending, and breaking materials than have it channeled into a baby's body.

We don't use steel (except for one rod), but we do use a lot of 5000 series machined aluminum which is powder-coated. Aluminum is preferable because it is better for creating crumple zones where the materials yield. The other primary material we use is polycarbonate because it has fantastic impact resistance (polycarbonate is used in "bullet-proof glass"). I'll let the marketing team know their materials description failed to impress you :)

These look amazing, like they solve all the pain points I've had with car seats over the past five years. I'm a little past that stage now but wish these had been around when I had little babies.

Just gonna throw this out there - your pitch is awesome, and “mom tested” put me off. Maybe I’m just a Californian but “parent tested” is a bit more 2023

Great feedback. Thank you! I'll pass it on to the marketing team.

Will you sell in Europe and does tha car base have an isofix mounting?

1. Yes, it has an Isofix mounting which in the US is called "Latch".

2. We cannot currently sell directly into Europe, though we'd love to at some point. If you're a distributor please drop me a line!

There's zero videos on your website, and zero videos of it on youtube. As someone in the market for this that's the first thing I checked. Get some videos up on Tiktok as well!

I'll add it to the marketing team's todo list. Thanks for the heads up!

Yes, but my kids have outgrown them. When my son outgrew his seat, he sometimes still used it as a rocking chair to read his books in his room.

Ok, I'll bite.

I don't want to expose my child to exotic glues, adhesives, PFAS, or any other foreign molecules in their car seat.

How does your product stack up?

Why are you driving them inside a car that has literally all of these in the first place then?

GP's asking a legitimate question about chemical outgassing etc. Parents have concerns like this, and some parents more than others.

let me go pedantic and teach: "The customer is always right" does not mean that no matter what a customer says, you give them a false smile, and pretend you agree with them.

"The customer is always right" means "you are hearing actual feedback from your target audience; somebody giving attention to your product is experiencing friction and wants information or reassurance, and is taking the time to let you know"

Do you know how valuable that is? Most people exposed to your product (ads, PR, etc.) just move along. Customers who don't like your product generally just disappear.

Free market research should not be ignored. This customer is not only right, but is representative of a whole class of customers that you need to learn to win over.

>>GP's asking a legitimate question about chemical outgassing etc. Parents have concerns like this, and some parents more than others.

Obviously, and outgassing happens a lot in any car especially if it's brand new. So I'll ask again - why drive kids in a car at all if this concerns them this much?

I have zero alternative to cars where I live. I do everything possible to minimize my sons exposure to chemicals, which run rampant in our society.

Every single purchase I make, I try to be as informed as possible.

Does this offend you?

> why drive kids in a car at all if this concerns them this much?

do you want to be right and nyah nyah nyah the guy, or do you want to sell him a carseat that you worked hard on that's safer than any other car seat you know? If your car seat is made of the same materials as every other car seat, or if by chance your car seat is actually safer than other car seats, why wouldn't you want to let them know rather than you telling the guy "you're an idiot for putting your kid in a car!"

all car seats go in cars. Wouldn't it be nice to have a car seat that did not add to the danger?

>>or do you want to sell him a carseat that you worked hard on that's safer than any other car seat you know?

I don't want to sell him anything. Have you confused me with the OP maybe?

>> why drive kids in a car at all if this concerns them this much?

Because they have to

Genuinely confused what stance you're taking here

>>Genuinely confused what stance you're taking here

That a car is going to expose your child to an order of magnitude more "chemicals" than a baby seat ever could - it's like asking how much sugar is in your coleslaw that you're having on the side of a large five guys milkshake. Probably some, but if you're concerned about sugar you have much bigger things to worry about.

if you are having a large milkshake, I would advise against adding more sugar to your meal. I'm not wrong, I'm giving healthy advice. To follow my advice, you simply need to ask if there is sugar in the other things you order, it's a simple, meaningful question.

>This customer is not only right, but is representative of a whole class of customers that you need to learn to win over.

That's not always true. If a certain subset of customers wants something ridiculous, they can either go elsewhere or learn to adapt. For better or worse, companies often times have the ability to drive public sentiment just as much as they have the responsibility to pander to it. When Apple removed headphone jacks from all their products they did so against a torrent of outrage, but fast forward 5-7 years and they absolutely made the right call. People learned to get over it.

Catering to bordering-on-harmfully-obsessive parents isn't always the best call.

I didn't say cater to every whim of every person.

I said listen to the customer because it is a legitimate point of contact, and they are not going to be the only one thinking what they're thinking, and even if you want to ignore them, you don't want to create a scene in front of other customers, so you can still think about and learn from the experience. The customer is always right from the customer's perspective, and you need to understand your customers' perspectives.

The user you're replying to appears unconnected to Kioma, so I don't think they have any winning-over to do here.

I assume you are worried about off-gassing, and direct ingestion of harmful chemicals.

TLDR: We stack up really well.

1) No flame retardants are used in the upholstery. We worked really hard to meet the flammability requirements with materials that aren't doped in endocrine-disrupting flame retardants. So that was a big win, because that is the largest chemical exposure in legacy car seats (in my opinion) and it is one that the scientific literature is very clear about.

2) The chassis is mostly machined aluminum (powder-coated) and polycarbonate. On the underside of the chassis there are some bracket retention pieces that use a standard cyano-acrylic glue ("super glue").

I'm not in the market for a car seat, but just want to say that I think you've done an awesome job responding, and I'd be looking at your car seat for sure after reading these :)

Thank you! Encouragement is always welcome.

Exotic glues? Foreign molecules?

I wonder. Are you aware that keeping your living space exquisitely clean compromises the development of a childs immune system?

I don't think the human immune system develops against offgassing like it does pathogens

Hand-blown titanium crystal glassware for whisk(e)y and spirits.

Produced in Europe by a glass factory that has been operating since the late 1700's.

PG's mantra "do things that don't scale" has been a great inspiration.

I wanted something comparable to high-end wine stemware and it shockingly did not exist, so I designed it during COVID. This is my first physical goods venture and my goodness, it comes with a lot of challenges (as an American I've intimately learned the difficulties of Brexit, for example) but I wouldn't change anything for the world. It's so satisfying to see people use a shining piece of glassware made by real human craftsmen.

The speed at which the glassware been welcomed in the community is overwhelming (both emotionally and from a pure business logistics perspective) and I couldn't be more grateful. Now, just 18 months post-launch, it's used in distilleries ranging from Scotland to Jamaica and Michelin starred restaurants.

For the HN friends, use the code HACKER for 10% off glassware :)

https://www.bennuaine.com/

"Lots of good advice simply doesn't scale." —Paul.Graham

I definitely think "Made by Humans" will become an increasingly-popular product highlight.

Beautiful effort. Wish I still served alcohol =D

These look great. I went to order a pair of the tumblers, but the hacker discount code didn't work:

> HACKER discount code isn’t valid for the items in your cart

Ah, should have been more clear. The code is just for the stems.

The new tumblers are 33% off (automatically) though since they're on a pre-order special right now!

Fascinating. It’s like a cross between a Teku glass and a white wine glass. Gorgeous.

Thanks! I like seeing how many folks know about the Teku beer glass. Very different use case, but the shape philosophy is similar.

With Bennuaine it was really about fine-tuning the dimensions through a ton of research and prototyping to reduce ethanol burn while at the same time highlighting finer notes.

Neat! Ordered a pair. I especially love the dishwasher safety and lead-free elements

Love it! Thank you!

Usability was very important in development. The crystal is dishwasher friendly and as is the design itself (I wanted them to be able to fit in the top-racks of consumer dishwashers as most wine glasses are too tall.)

What's the brittleness like compared to glass? Is it more/less shatter resistant than other crystals?

Crystal is stronger than standard glass which is why it can be so thin.

Modern production of lead-free crystal is generally pretty good now. Old leaded crystal is extremely brittle and prone to chipping and fractures which definitely soured people's perception of its durability. Our glassware uses titanium as a strengthening additive which really helps durability as well as sparkle.

Most of our hospitality partners use them in service every day in commercial dishwashers with very little breakage. Having a shorter stem also greatly reduces both tipping and twisting scenarios which are the most common sources of breakage.

How do you mix the Titanium into the crystal, and does it bond in some way, or how does it strengthen and improve the durability?

Crystal consists of many raw materials with silicon dioxide making up the majority of the mix (70+%). Titanium dioxide is melted in with everything in a brand-new solar powdered furnace that runs up 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit iirc.

Titanium has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of any metal which is why it's used in the most demanding applications like rockets.

Each glass manufacturer uses their own recipe and pretty much all of them use aluminum, rather than titanium, as their strengthening additive simply because it's exponentially cheaper.

Cheers. Nice to see something whiskey related that isn’t trying so hard to communicate the usual whiskey stereotypes.

It's something I battle against every day.

I'm constantly told that whisky shouldn't be served in a stemmed glass. Honestly, I think half of my job is education.

The masculinity of the marketing message towards spirits is deeply embedded in American culture, which is why big tumblers are commonplace even though they don't do spirits justice. You don't see those stigmas in wine. The community is definitely way more gender friendly now though which is great. If my glassware can play even the tiniest part in making spirits more accessible, I'd consider this business a success.

Are glencairns not common in the states? Whilst most pubs in the UK would serve me a whisky in a short tumbler style glass, I would be disappointed if a decent scotch bar did not at least offer me a choice.

In bars with decent brown spirits programs they probably use them, but no they're not anywhere near as common as they are in Europe.

I've also never seen them in Michelin-level restaurants here because the quality of the glass isn't up to that standard.

We started in 2017 aiming to build world’s best video headset for drone pilots ("FPV goggles", for those in the know). Based in Europe, where we do all our R&D and MFG.

Surviving these last three years was, well, as hard as you can expect. Raising money was a challenge (hardware, in Europe, Central and Eastern Europe). We started scaling MFG just as the COVID started closing down China and crippling supply chains. Front row seat at the chip shortage horror show: just as we started delivering the first units of our first product, we saw our critical components go from €5 to €100 a pop, and lead times go from "shipping tomorrow" to "we may be tell you when it may be available in a few months, but not sure."

Today, we’re alive to tell the story. We expanded from headsets to pretty much every piece of tech you need in a drone; all designed and built in Europe. We do FCs, ESCs, control links, analog video links, data links (WiFi, 5G/LTE, SDR), flight computers, as well as drones, drone controllers, etc. We have a drone sim with 500k total downloads. We also do our own private mobile networking infra (5gc/epc RAN, gNB/eNB). We do HW, FW, and "normal" SW.

We’ve pretty much consistently doubled our revenues every year since inception, but it’s been a wild ride. While our US counterparts were raising tens of millions with similar traction and a fraction of tech collateral, we never got much love from VCs. Raising is still a bitch.

Last five years were blood, sweat, and tears, but I’d do it all over again, cause building physical stuff is the best job in the world.

I am making and selling an eink smart screen.

It can display a google calendar.

You can also point it to any url that serves an image.

Is it okay to post a link?

https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...

I am planning to release more applications for it and I am opening the platform for 3rd party applications.

This display looks great, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous that you acted on the idea first (; Best of luck, I think the future of e-ink, edge computing, battery efficiency, etc. will only make these types of products even better down the line!

Give it Home Assistant integration, or at least MQTT control, and I'd buy at least one

> You can configure this beautiful the e-paper display to poll any HTTP endpoint for an image. Just paste the URL into the iOS or Android app. The image will then be displayed on the screen. And when it changes, the screen updates.

Looks pretty simple to do.

I think the idea would be to be support a way to set that HTTP URL via an API, not requiring use of an iOS/Android app?

I imagine this might be a case of documentation and support as supposedly the app is already using the API endpoints we'd like to have.

Do you have docs on the API / integration mentioned here and on the website? Would be good to know in broad strokes before buying one. Sample apps and whatnot

Here is the API description:

https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-gallery/blob/ma...

And here is the sample app:

https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-gallery

Admittedly, I am not the greatest technical writer, but I compensate by being pretty responsive. So if you have a question, just message me :)

I'm guessing since it's plugged in, there was no way to make it last long enough on a battery?

Love the idea, will bookmark it for the future office!

Battery is harder to make safe and harder to certify as safe.

Plus, I like the idea of plugging it in and never having to worry about it.

Still, I am thinking about adding a battery about twice per week, so it's definitely on my mind.

Consider a "bring your own battery" option where you have an interface that's moderately standard.

Any chance you'll do a larger one? I've wanted exactly this but closer to ~13-inch to replace the "family wall calendar".

It looks great, though! Any good place to follow/subscribe for updates?

So far I only have an instagram: https://www.instagram.com/invisiblecomputers/

Larger displays are not excluded as a possibility, but I like the current size for placing it on the desk. Also, larger displays are disproportionately expensive, and the display is already the main cost driver.

Totally fair. I hadn't checked the cost of larger e-ink, and you're right, I probably wouldn't pay $500 for the same thing you're making but 13".

Still going to keep an eye on it, though. I may end up talking myself (more accurately, my wife) into a smaller display.

Oh, a fellow hacker from my little home town :-) Greetings from the other side of the fjord and best of luck with your business!

I'd love to get this but for iCal display. Any chance that's in the cards in the future?

It’s in the cards, pretty high in the stack, but I never make promises.

If you can write code and you don’t want to wait for me to add it to the default calendar app, you can build it and release it as a 3rd party app:

https://github.com/Invisible-Computers/image-gallery/blob/ma...

Got it. I'm not the right person to build this functionality so I'll just wait to see if it comes and buy later if so!

Love this idea, been waiting for you to ship to Canada and now finally purchased :)

Currently your Android app isn't available in Canada yet though

You're right, thanks for the hint! I have now submitted it to Google to be released in Canada as well. Usually that is approved pretty quickly.

I'll purchase once Outlook calendar is supported natively.

If you can document how to make this show a calendar from Office 365 that would get you so many sales.

That gets you a sale, bro. :)

Now my family can see my calendar easily.

Just ordered. Looking forward to getting it!

I see that shipping to Europe is not yet supported. Do you have plans soon?

CE certification is extremely expensive for a bootstrapped startup.

Plus there is Elektroschrottverordnung and Verpackungsrichtlinie and all that stuff.

You can send me an email at [email protected]

Wait, you are situated in Flensburg but not shipping to EU? That seems rather interesting... Do you also manufacture in germany or have you sourced that out?

The wood is CNC'd in Germany, the metal back cover is from Spain. :)

PCB and screens are from China. The final assembly happens in my home.

I try to run a short supply chain to limit my inventory risk.

Very cool! Are you able to make a full-time living off this product yet?

Not yet. I’m hoping to, so I can fully focus on it.

For the same price one can buy a 10.5" Galaxy Tab A8. But still, very cool. I wish e-paper wasn't expensive as hell and so dreadfully slow to update, it would cut down on energy usage in so many applications.

But the Galaxy Tab doesn't have a paper-like screen ;)

True, but it can also do almost anything instead of just being a calendar and a picture ;)

Any chance of having mini HDMI input to use it as something like an Onyx Boox Mira?

Probably not, I'd like to keep the device as simple as possible. The Onyx Boox already exists and it's great ;)

I don't run the show and it's not my company, but I work on simulation devices for developing surgical skills. We have these MEMS and laser sensors for tracking surgical tool movements that the founder came up with.

My impression after 3 years in a product role is that it is amazing what a ~5 engineer team is capable of achieving over a couple of years. However, we're located in Poland so employees are cheap, we're heavily subsidized by huge grants and funding. Our offices/facility is in the middle of nowhere.

The engineers are quite stressed out because their work depends on many external factors that they don't have much control over (shipping, ordering components, manual assembly etc.). They literally run a workshop - they argue about who's using the tools, what the 3D printer schedule is like.

It's so many things at the same time - it's super slow, production and QA is a comedy, design changes are challenging to implement. Product certification and patenting is an enormous challenge. Business is super slow (our customers take years to make up their mind and they buy with public tenders).

But on the other hand... they do also seem happy and proud. I mean I love the product, and I love showing it off, UX testing, etc. And there are few competitors on the market, so it's also quite stable.

I think hardware is more accessible and doable than it used to be - 'hardware is hard' is something my industrial designer dad would repeat in the 90's.

> we're heavily subsidized by huge grants and funding

this is how it is in Canada too! My city has a huge manufacturing sector so a lot of these little startups with super niche products that take lots of R&D are found there. But no one talks about us because engineers aren't paid doctor money here (the grants aren't THAT good, which I think in the US defense sector they are).

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 intensive but can we done on budget if you are wise about it.

We had to build a full web app and rich backend to report the results, a device team to write the sensor software and of course hardware design.

About 50% of our funding went into supply chain costs just to get the first units out the door. The rest into staffing. Without the hook into the large hardware manufacturers/China we had a pretty heavy BOM cost.

It was rough but the Saas portion once it was up allowed us breathing room.

It’s critical to design for compliance in your target markets and critical to manage your spend on components. A minor design mistake in your hardware will destroy your brand - where with software it’s a patch away.

Shipping and tax costs are another killer which add so much cost overhead and are often over looked.

It was stressful I’m glad we found a corporate home as it allowed us some breathing room to focus and redesign things with a budget safety net.

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.

Does it actually connect or just measure the signal? If the former, have you had to deal with all the various auth schemes that companies use? I know that Cisco in particular loves to create their own schemes.

A brother needs a link.

Are you able to roam/hand off between APs and measure the reassociation time? That would address a monitoring need I have right now.

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 [email protected]

[1] www.audiofocus.io

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

We make a camera system for construction sites. Using computer vision, we can identify when and for how long subcontractors show up as well as notify our customers of unwanted behavior on site.

https://bedrockwireless.com/

Fun fact, we probably have the best port-o-potty detector in the world.

If this were a camera that identified when and for how long a software engineer showed up to the office and notified their employer of "unwanted behavior", how long would it take for that story to end up on the front page of this site and torn apart as invasive and infantilizing?

Software engineers have full-time managers (which are a lot more overhead to pay for but kinda serve that purpose from the client perspective) and are paid well enough and consistently enough to usually only work one job on a given day. Subcontractors sometimes do decide not to show up to your job site because another employer offered them a bonus to do theirs that day instead. The point isn't (only) to humiliate or do a show of power to the workers, it's to counter an economic incentive they have.

That said, for a lot of subcontractor trades, it's so hard to find anyone that I'd worry about the reverse: you get known as "the freaks with the cameras" and no one good bids on your stuff anymore, and then the delivery is even more delayed.

> it's to counter an economic incentive they have.

I think economists would call that a feature and not a bug. It is essentially an auction (something economists LOVE). You could instead take that money that you're spending on surveillance and instead spend it on giving the contractors a bonus to show up to your place instead.

I really don't buy that this would "shame" them into coming to your place first. Everyone already is aware that they don't always show up because you got out bid. You're "solving" the problem the wrong way because you're not addressing the actual problem.

I would imagine shaming doesn't work because I think residential GCs have higher demand for workers than there is supply, but the cameras still solve the problems of making it easier for the GC to react when it happens (and the reaction could be offer to pay that sub more if the project is late or all the other subs have been showing up, realizing the work from the earlier stage wasn't done, and going home, or it could be lengthening their project schedule).

I guess I would say that subcontractors are more like hourly workers (who are time tracked meticulously in almost all industries) - not salaried like software engineers, who would deserve the respect and absence of tracking.

I would argue salary employees deserve more tracking since they are given more freedoms. An hourly worker is paid hourly, and given tasks at a much smaller interval.. often by day and sometimes every few hours. If you have quarterly goals for salary employees, they probably need more 'tracking' to make sure they are doing what you expect as time goes on.

Not really, in the housing industry, it is generally job bid instead. The contractor taking longer just means they get paid later and don't get as many jobs done.

Also, Unions hate this right?

It's less about tracking how long they're there and more about when they showed up. We do the former because we can, but the GC really wants to know if and when their subs are showing up without having to be on site 24/7 waiting for them.

For example, they can look back through yesterdays events to see that their plumber showed up - and then they'll know they need to go check on the work. The alternative is trying to get the plumber on the phone to figure out if the work had been completed or not - which is difficult in 2023.

There's not a lot of unioned workers in most states for residential construction. But autoworkers, and anything else in manufacturing would be used to the constant monitoring. Commercial construction also typically has fulltime site superintendents, who would do this anyway.

That's an interesting angle. My Father actually, by chance, owns a residential drywall and finishing business. The 'did the plumber show up' factor is key. Though I'm not sure why this couldn't be solved by having the subs of a builder agree to give basic job updates. How do residential customers feel about someone's camera watching their house?

If you've worked with these people you know that there's nothing "basic" about getting job updates.

Anything that makes the GC more efficient is going to be a win for the future homeowner. This might get more problematic for remodels, but we primarily work with new home builds.

The GC can often bill it down to the homeowner as antitheft, which reduces time/money to complete the build. The biggest being time. An example, if custom windows are stolen, it could delay a project by months right now.

Thanks to both the parent for raising the ethical issues in this product and to OP for responding/addressing them. Our industry gets a lot better when we don't shy away from both asking and answering these kinds of questions!

I think if these got to the point of "worker stared at floor for 7 minutes" it would be invasive. If it tracks when a vehicle shows up to site and leaves.

That being said, as someone with digestion issues, tracking bathroom habits is offensive.

In short, yes this is invasive. But much like AI, this type of thing isn't going away, there is just going to be more lawsuits about it in the future.

We don't track port-o-potty use, just if they move. Vandalism is at an all time high on construction sites, tipping port-o-johns is a common teenage prank and the GC needs to know if and when this is happening on sites (and hopefully catch the perpetrators).

Hmmm… going to start a company that makes portapotty anchors!

Maybe a gentle reminder that automated surveillance happened to us first, by our own kind nonetheless. It's now a norm in the industry.

This is great! I built a house and DIY'ed this because our site was 2 hours away from where we were living at the time.

It was clear (our) GC was not used to this because they were constantly telling us that things were happening when they very clearly weren't (thanks to the live video we had from to the site).

We occasionally get the homeowner to buy our product to monitor their GC - the GC always hates this. This in-turn leads us to recommending that the GC (if they're the buyer [most common]) to never share it with the future homeowner as that usually causes the GC to be overburdened by the homeowner.

I applaud you creating your own solution, many GCs can do this, but most can't or don't want to deal with it.

This is pretty neat. I'm wondering if something like this (on a smaller scale) could be used to catch the elusive illegal dumper in my neighborhood.

We're working on this solution. Most housing projects have a semi-permanent dumpster, but GC's often have problems with people dumping in their houses' dumpsters, causing them to pay for more refills on their dumpster, which can get expensive.

Since we record motion on site, we typically catch the illegal dumpers, but it's hard to pick out from the many motion events that may occur on a construction site.

How does knowing someone is on site lead to an increase in anything production wise? All they'd have to do is wander around and look busy. Some people are willing to do this over real work despite it being a task in itself.

Subcontractors are businesses, if they're paying people to wander around on site, they have big problems.

It's more about the fact that GCs struggle to get accurate schedules around when their subs will show up, the subs are in too high of a demand (think plumbers, electricians, framers). So they ask the subs to come out and complete a job and the sub responds with, "we'll be there sometime next week." Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don't. GCs need to know when and if they are showing up.

Many years ago I worked at a startup doing this - putting cameras on tower cranes. Fun times. Took a while to find PMF and the startup ended up going under. Good times, was super fun!

Looks neat, is your core product the AI for the construction site object detection?

We make the whole camera system because we couldn't find anything on the market that allowed us to do the AI we wanted. The value for the customer is all in the AI tracking and security detection as well as the ability to just login live and see what's happening on site. So, yes, our core product is our software, but we had to make the hardware to capture market share.

Your website shows OEM cameras and an off the shelf plastic enclosure, along with basic LED floodlights. What hardware are you making? Not saying your product isn't cool, just not clear what hardware you are "making" vs. assembling.

You're not wrong. We have custom boards inside to handle the AI compute and power, but we mostly do assembly.

If a software startup assembles a bunch of open source hardware together and packages it as a product, would you say they don't "make" software?

If a software startup assembles a bunch of open source hardware together and packages it as a product, would you say they don't "make" software?

No, I'd say they are more of a software company than a hardware company though. All software runs on some kind of hardware, but these days it is pretty rare for that hardware to be very unique or custom.

I was mostly just curious what custom hardware you had, since that was the topic at hand. My curiosity comes from working in the surveillance AI space for the last ~15 years, and having done a number of custom (as in we made the whole thing) cameras with AI, but now there is a trend more towards using a lightly OEM'd camera with custom firmware in many cases.

Considering the availability of cameras with advanced SoCs capable of doing edge inference, I wanted to ask more about your hardware and your design choices in this market, but I think I'll just bow out. Good luck with your startup!

Is assembly manufacture? Is glueing together FOSS libs coding? Probably not but I'm No True Hacker.

A few years ago I made a Kickstarter for an augmented reality helmet -

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/realjds/spartan-hud-nex...

Fun project, made some sales and a small profit, then hand-built and delivered the units from my apartment. Lots of learnings.

Applied to YC and got an interview but ultimately didn't get in - I agree with their feedback that the platform was too general and "lacked a killer app". But it's a cool research platform due to its generality: you get a full Linux computer in your heads-up display, and can connect arbitrary USB peripherals (we had a version with a depth-sensing camera).

Over the last year on weekends I've been working on a new light-weight version that allows one to drop in their smartphone or other ~5" screen, and actually orienting a specific version towards the sport of airsoft. Polycarbonate encasing around a modified helmet protects the electronics as well as the user's head.

Hope to try it out sometime later this year; lately I've been pre-occupied with my day job and learning all the new AI software and theory out there.

If anyone is interested in this project and wants to connect, ask questions, etc, feel free to reach out via email (in my profile). Cheers!

A full on helmet? That’s awesome.

I reject the claim that there is no killer app. Have you not seen Judge Dredd? ;)

But seriously, I like this. Honestly I think I’d rather this than a normal headset. There are so many design challenges and compromises made because of the notion that they should only cover the eyes. But that approach just leaves us looking gormless to any onlookers, so there’s not much aesthetic benefit.

Meanwhile your design looks, for lack of a better word, badass.

Thanks so much! Comments like this definitely are reassuring :)

I'll definitely make a post on HN in the future when the next version (airsoft focused) is up and running!