Amidst the sea of software startups, I'm keen to learn who in our community is braving the often-quoted "hardware is hard" mantra. Whether you're working on IoT, robotics, consumer electronics, or something completely off the wall, please feel free to share below.
Remember, no venture is too small or niche! It's the passion and innovation that counts.
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 contact@airthium.com or to invest in our crowdfunding! https://wefunder.com/airthium
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?
You are correct. In our case, we can go from ambient air to the desired process temperature, but the coefficient of performance will be much better if we have access to a waste heat source (the higher temperature the better).
> 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.
And that's the absolute theoretical maximum, you would be happy to breakeven in practice. Unless you have access to waste turbine exhaust, geothermal water, solar collectors or something along those lines, I don't see any practical application where the marginal energy savings would recover the capital costs of the pump at 1000F.
But hey, they have software modeling and venture financiers, so I'm sure they are not overselling it and it's all excellent and double plus innovative.
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.
The idea is summarized on this picture https://imgur.com/a/f5T1NYi and is as follow: - solar/wind energy would be converted to heat using our engine and stored into a thermal storage unit (molten salts or sand). This would provide up to 30-40 hours of energy for day-to-day storage. - all year long, the unused energy is converted on-site to green ammonia (with H2 electrolyzers and a small haber-bosch plant) and stored in liquid form at -30C. The ammonia is then burned via a low NOx external burner, something other ammonia engines/turbines can't do well yet without expensive filters, and the combustion heat is turned to electricity with our engine.
This form of storage is much cheaper than storing hydrogen above ground. It competes with H2 storage in under-ground salt caverns without the geographical limitation. The efficiency is far from exceptional, but it is CO2 free and is only used as a "joker" a few days per year.
The whole system is a functional replacement for a natural gas fired power plant.
A company like Form Energy started in 2017, raised hundreds of millions and I think their first pilot is coming next year. Cash is key but not always the issue, I am glad they are helping storage companies with initiatives like the Long Duration Energy Storage group and all their lobbying efforts
- 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 :)
I am very sceptical of crowd funding however, I think these are largely terrible investments for consumers while explicitly targeting people who are not accredited investors.
what made you go that route instead of pursuing VC funding?
- our team was in full lockdown in France for a while and we could not prototype as easily
- in 2021 we were still focused on seasonal energy storage, a very capital intensive endeavour, a market not ready and a very risky project.
- the rules for crowdfunding changed in 2021 and the use of SPV (special purpose vehicles) made it possible to raise big + have one line on the cap table.
We had to derisk the project further to be able to attract VC funding (patent, prototype, LOIs, financial model, etc.) and we ultimately followed the advice from another YC founder and friend who went the crowdfunding route with success. A lot of crowdfunding projects look like outright scams and probably are... but I feel that the SEC did a good job protecting the public. You cannot invest more than a certain amount if you are not accredited for example. Things are certainly not perfect, and getting better year after year.
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Sad to see how few other hard healthtech people there are here, they seem to be few and far between.
I'm just curious. I run an xDrip set up and I've played around with a couple of the "DIY" closed loop setups.
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.
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..)
Their latest AID (automated insulin delivery) system is killer, btw, some of the best results I've ever seen for ambulatory!
I hear a lot—relatively speaking—about insulin regulation, but in my case the issues are enzymatic. Susceptible to pancreatitis (hopefully all it is).
Any word on the street?
At any rate, keep it up!
Controlling glucose is far easier, by comparison; just one input, and two outputs.
Sorry to hear about your pancreatitis, hope you can find a treatment plan that works for you!
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.
Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to justify.
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.
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!
But I get so frustrated with garbage on the market, and the struggle to find decent quality goods. I've created my own where they don't exist (eg. current limiter for plugging in laptop power brick on a plane, untrasonic eyeglass cleaner and dryer, tongue-activated mouse button) which is hugely labour intensive. If I need your thing, your thing is as good as you say, and you can sell it to me for less than that costs me in time, materials and lost opportunity, then for me the math is simple.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One way would be for you to buy or license the tech and give it away. Is that something you're considering?
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Weight > The total weight is probably similar at 10 pounds even. The company you mentioned likes to quote partial system weight and doesn't include the weight of their canopies and inserts. We've already made the lightest car seat in the world (2017, carbon fiber) at 5 pounds all in, and one of the lessons we learned was that adding weight can be a good performance trade if done well.
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
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.
It looks good , the materials seem fine , but have nobody heard about ISOFix? At least in europe is standard in new cars.
The last baby seat that I used , manufactured by MassiCossi , had a better base than yours, with an adjustable aluminium leg and ISOFix links that kept it sturdly attached to the seat frame.
It was not cheap too, around 500 euro I think.
It was also removable with the press of a button , from the base and from the trolley
Edit: I missed a comment referencing it, then it seems strange to me that a seat sold as somewhat of a luxury item doesn'support that
Kioma does provide an Isofix detachable base, but in the U.S. it is called Latch. Same thing, different name. All U.S. infant child restraint systems (CRS) must either have Latch attachments permanently to the CRS or must provide a separate detachable Latch base.
So we do provide a Latch base. We don't do a base load-leg though, because there are some cool things done with rotation to dissipate energy :) This is one case where the EU regs specified an implementation rather than a result. Otherwise the EU (r129) regs are very well written.
I see two main issues.
1. That clearly requires the installer to apply non-trivial force to lock it into place. Beyond it being awkward, a Graco Keyfit is a drop in, no force install. Amazing.
2. In most vehicles, fire-aft distance is a huge, limiting factor. It seems difficult, if not impossible to tell if the seat has latched into the correct position, without additional tilt. The Keyfit base makes this obvious since it will not latch into place at incorrect angles.
Force > To use the base, yes some force is required. In our opinion, you want force to prevent false-positives on latching. False positives are a big problem with bases, as people perceive latching to have occurred when it actually has not. Visual latching indictors are not sufficient, in my opinion. Our experience and design encourages audio, visual, and tactile feedback to minimize misunderstandings and false positives.
Please note that while a base is convenient (people like the quick click-in, click-out of bases) it is not needed. You can just use the seat belt. Roll with whatever you prefer. Personally, I just use the seat belt.
Fire-aft> I have no idea what you mean by "fire-aft distance". But it sounds like you are worried about angles. We designed the seat to encourage good angles at rest, whether with the lap belt alone or with the companion base. Most automotive seats have a 5-10 degree upward angle. A rear-facing infant car seat should be resting in place at no lower than a 30 degree angle, and no higher than a 45 degree angle. If you go too high it increases choking risk but conversely improves the crash test scores. If you go lower it is better for a baby at rest and has less choking risk, but worsens the crash test score as more force is distributed into a smaller area and less rotation of the seat is possible. All this to say, there is a lot of variability across vehicles and seats in a vehicle, and to the best of my knowledge no car seat base accounts for all the permutations well. Regardless, angles are important because babies (especially younger ones) are still developing the muscles that hold up their head and have less head control than it might appear. For the parents out there, the final back angle should be approximately between 30 and 45 degrees as measured from a level plane, but please refer to your seat's user manual for its instructions. In most scenarios and vehicles the Kioma car seat should rest at an approximate 40 degree angle.
Competitor Comparison > We try to avoid direct comparisons with other companies, because it makes the lawyers wince. However, while I'm biased, from my personal experience I can say I'd take the Kioma any day over the competitors. There are many reasons we built this product, and none of them included "existing [insert company name] does a great job at this!"
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.
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 :)
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.
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!
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?
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 wonder. Are you aware that keeping your living space exquisitely clean compromises the development of a childs immune system?
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/
I definitely think "Made by Humans" will become an increasingly-popular product highlight.
Beautiful effort. Wish I still served alcohol =D
I particularly like it with the glassware because machines literally can't make this glass at its current quality; it HAS to be done by hand to have this level of refinement.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
> HACKER discount code isn’t valid for the items in your cart
The new tumblers are 33% off (automatically) though since they're on a pre-order special right now!
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.
Looks pretty simple to do.
Love the idea, will bookmark it for the future office!
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.
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 :)
It looks great, though! Any good place to follow/subscribe for updates?
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.
As a non-techy nerd it’s a perfect niche with built in usage and no need to hack. Thank you for posting.
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...
Nice product, btw.
Plus there is Elektroschrottverordnung and Verpackungsrichtlinie and all that stuff.
You can send me an email at info@invisible-computers.com
Currently your Android app isn't available in Canada yet though
Here is a guide on how to do it:
https://shop.invisible-computers.com/pages/outlook-calendar-...
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.
If you are on this side of the fence, you might want to get in touch with Ukraine. They invest in drone startups.
https://sifted.eu/articles/small-dronemakers-ukraine-tech
> video headset for drone pilots ("FPV goggles", for those in the know)
Orqa FPV.one
> Based in Europe, where we do all our R&D and MFG.
This is a pretty clear indicator that it's Orqa - few other folks in the FPV space are Europe-centric
> We do FCs, ESCs
Commercial gear
> control links
ImmersionRC Ghost
> analog video links
ImmersionRC Tramp
> data links (WiFi, 5G/LTE, SDR) flight computers, as well as drones, drone controllers, etc
Commercial gear
> We have a drone sim with 500k total downloads.
Orqa FPV.Skydive
Was I right, TooSmugToFail? :D
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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 shariq@audiofocus.io
[1] www.audiofocus.io
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orU5Wx6_RfA&t=24s
I wonder if you all can use another layer in your ML stack to "fill out" the voices once you've isolated them. Your example leaves voices sounding very thin/hollow and even a bit garbled.
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.
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).