
Show HN: UrbanDesk - Combination Full Size Bed and Desk - gphakos
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grahamphakos/urbandesk-combination-full-size-bed-and-full-size
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michaelbuckbee
This design looks remarkably like Resource Furniture's bed+desk combo:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=d...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dAa6bOWB8qY#t=58s)

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rabidsnail
"Request a quote"!?

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dsr_
Means it's more than three times what you were thinking would be affordable.
Also, they don't want your business. They want a design consultant's
businesss, so the price can be a small part of a huge contract.

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verisimilidude
I do have one very important question about your design. How does the
UrbanDesk currently hold up to nasty, aggressive sex? On the bed? On the desk?

This might sound like a joke, and it is, but I'm also totally serious here.
Sex is the critical secondary use of beds. Engineering a "smooth ride" seems
like an important thing to consider. Google "West Elm bed frame" for some
anecdotal evidence of what can go wrong.

Great work, either way. I can always appreciate some clever woodworking.

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reustle
West Elm Bed Frame: <http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/west-elm-bummer-1316>

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bobsy
I think its a terrible idea.

So you wake up:

1\. Make bed and tuck in sheets so when bed is folded all the bedding doesn't
fall off. 2\. Fold up bed - desk appears. 3\. Unbox everything to put on desk
4\. Plug in any electrical equipment. (obviously a desktop computer would be
very impractical. 5\. Pull up a chair and do some work.

When your done reverse the steps. You cannot leave any work out or organized
on your desk ready for the next day as you need your bed. Your desk chair I
guess needs to be left in the corner at night as there is no table to tuck it
under.

It just seems like the guy is combining 2 pieces of furniture which should not
be combined.

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acous
It's pretty obvious from the video that you can leave stuff on the desk when
you pull down the bed.

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ssebro
It looks cool, but the marketing doesn't address the fact that most people
have laptops and desktop monitors on their desks. Nobody will want to take
their desktop+laptop off the desk everytime they go into their bed - 7 inches
of height (collapsed) isn't going to cut it.

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warfangle
If your monitor has a VESA mount, you could mount it to the bottom of the bed,
perhaps?

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gphakos
This is definitely a possible solution, but I found this put the monitor too
far away for my liking. I am working on a folding mount for the monitor which
I hope to finish in the next week or two.

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FootballMuse
If it is articulating, then it would simply be pulled out toward the user. One
would just need to retract it before pulling down the bed.

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codequickly
For small room, there's always the Ikea's Tromso loft bed and desk is only
$220 (<http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S59872897/>). It' is not as
elegant as the kickstarter bed but it is cheap and easy to assemble. The
downside of ikea bed/desk is that when you invite your date/GF over for the
first time, it is definitely not going to make any positive impression.

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taskstrike
Or...it will invoke memories of college years for her and brings a aura of
youthful vitality to you.

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willyt
Some super quick comments.

What is the mechanical engineering behind this? Did you do all the calcs?
Simulate it in CAD or something? Gas struts need to be tuned to the weight you
are counter balancing; are you selling or recommending a particular mattress
with this? How much resistance do the gas struts provide at the top of the
stroke, what happens if you drop it at 3/4 raised? Do you need to fix this
back to the wall or floor; i.e. could the whole thing topple over on top of
you if it jammed while you were lowering it? Can you see all the parts where
childrens fingers might get caught from the raising lowering position? The
desk pantograph mechanism has quite slender struts, they look like they could
be quite easily damaged.

Most double beds have a central beam under the slats and a lot more slats than
this. Why is yours different?

In general, it's one thing to use your own prototype where you have an
intuitive understanding of its weaknesses, but when other people use it they
will break things you wouldn't expect. Will it fail safe?

It looks terrible, some bits of structure look too big and some too small.
There are parts of the design where the same problem has been solved with a
different solution, why isn't it symmetrical?

$650 Including all labour? Seems too cheap. Are you expecting people to build
this out of construction grade timber like the prototype?

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shortlived
I expected to see something regarding design/production issues under the
_Risks_and_challenges_ section, not worries distraction and miscommunication.
I assume that a wooden prototype may have different properties than one made
of steel.

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warfangle
I'd like to see a medium pricepoint of, say, $50 or $75 that would include
schematics for the bed (so you can build one for yourself if you desire).

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camiller
...and maybe a $150'ish for plans and hardware kit. Seems like the harder part
of this would be the mechanical hardware. Shipping something the size of a bed
assembled from 2x4s is going to be expensive, sourcing the lumber locally
should make it pretty easy.

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jawns
A question that has come up more and more lately with similar Kickstarter
projects:

Is crowd funding a good way to go about this project? And specifically, is
crowd funding through Kickstarter a good way to go about this project?

Basically, the project creator has an idea for a product for which he thinks
there is a market, but he lacks the capital to get the business off the
ground.

By using Kickstarter, he's able to acquire the capital, and the backers -- the
vast majority of whom, I'm assuming, are either friends who just want to help
him out or strangers who just want a bed-desk -- know that they'll get their
money back if the goal isn't reached.

But once the goal _is_ reached ... that investment becomes a risky investment.
The obligation to actually deliver a product to those investors to whom it was
promised is, at best, a moral obligation, rather than a legal one. Kickstarter
has been very insistent on this point lately: If you donate to a project,
consider it a donation, not a purchase
(<http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store>).

With more artistic projects -- say, a musician raising money to record an
album -- I think it's a little bit easier to see those pledges as donations
rather than purchases, even if a copy of the album is promised to donors. Why?
For one, donors are likely to already be fans of the artist and feel a sort of
kinship with them. But probably more importantly, the final cost of the album
is likely to be in the $10-$20 range, which is a lot easier to write off, if
the artist doesn't deliver, than an expensive piece of furniture.

In contrast, with a project like this, I'm assuming that if you're going to
"donate" $650 or more, you're going to want a bed-desk at the end of it.

And at least on Kickstarter's current terms, the arrangement is not favorable
to somebody who just wants a bed-desk at the end of it.

There may be other crowd-funding options out there that are more favorable to
the would-be owners of a bed-desk (for instance, if the project creator were
contractually obligated to deliver the product). Or perhaps the project
creator could simply raise $65,000 with micro-loans, then sell the completed
product to interested buyers, then use the proceeds to pay back the micro-
loans. At least in that case, it's the aspiring businessman who's on the hook
if something goes wrong, not the aspiring bed owners -- which is as it should
be, because when an aspiring businessman is willing to take on financial
risks, that demonstrates his commitment to the business. Or, if the project
creator is not willing to take on all of that financial risk, perhaps he might
be willing to offer equity in the business to potential crowd funders. That
way, you're distributing the risk, but you're also distributing the potential
upside, which is only fair, right?

As things stand, I just don't see a Kickstarter project for this type of
product as being a good deal for anyone but the guy building the bed-desks ...
unless you are willing to consider the $650 (or more) you donate to be just
that: a donation.

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gphakos
Yes $650 is a large amount to be donating to a project like mine, and I agree
that it is not the way to go for everyone or every project. I thought that I
would try it out for this project to see what the response would be like, and
it seemed like the best way to build both financial support and interest for
the project so I went for it.

I know producing these will be a big job and I liked that Kickstarter allows
me to set my funding goal at a level where I will be most likely to succeed. I
could have certainly set up a pre-order page with a Stripe button and started
building as the orders came in, but being woefully underfunded is not a great
way to start an enterprise like this in my opinion. And I thought that
Kickstarter would be the lowest risk option for everyone involved.

~~~
diN0bot
if you have successful kickstarts in the past, you become more reliable for
the future. one could make a couple smaller projects to prove oneself, slowly
getting bigger and earning more support than would otherwise be possible.

that said, i'm not sure how more support helps one make more deskbeds. the
more deskbeds to make the more deskbeds to make. unless one is manufacturing,
constructing and distributing components automatically.

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nsfmc
when i saw this i really was hoping that the project would have some ~$50
option where you could buy the plans to assemble the desk out of 2x4s and
support general development of some fancier option. (hi din0bot!)

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anthonyb
Indeed. With some sort of open source plan, you could get improvements very
quickly.

Two obvious ones that spring to mind:

\- make the top legs loose so that they swing down when the bed goes up

\- cover the base of the bed with something (fabric, a wooden panel or a
whiteboard), so that it looks more like furniture when it's up, and not the
bottom of a mattress.

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51Cards
Another company had these for sale at our local home show 3 weeks ago,
functionality and movement is identical.

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jaseemabid
Here is what I think about it.

Why are you flipping the bed to the wall? 1\. The cot will slip down, will be
a mess and I will have to fix it everyday. BAD 2\. Unstable structure - Why is
the heavy/big part on top ?

It would have been better if this was like a standard desktop table. You could
pull the whole table from underneath of the bed and put it above the bed like
pulling a keyboard dock. The table would stay on top of the bed when in use
and can be pushed underneath. Much better. This whole thing looks stupid to
me.

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FootballMuse
How much (or free/open source?) for simply the instructions? Maybe I'd like a
different size, material, standing option, or other modification.

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gphakos
How much would you be willing to pay for the instructions?

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FootballMuse
Not much, since I can deduce most of the design from the video. Hopefully you
can offer some additional advice, pitfalls, and potential variations to those
people that you learn throughout the process, because it would be almost
entirely a donation at that price point.

I imagine the more people see this, the more people will simply attempt this
themselves and post their version on make/instructables/hackaday. Others who
want to simply purchase one outright, can certainly get one from you. However,
waiting until May to potentially get one will not jive with many people.

Not to demean your work/project, I just think you are going to have to offer
some polish and niceties that iterative building this product multiple times
allows rather than offering what someone could duplicate with a trip to Home
Depot and a Saturday to be successful.

Regardless, good luck.

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mattbot5000
Are you going to implement any safety features such as a locking mechanism to
prevent the bed from falling on someone sitting at the desk?

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mw63214
One thing I could foresee happening with the increased use of
furniture/concepts like this (the UrbanDesk, as well as some of the other
products from other companies) is that a user may get disoriented from using
the same space for multiple purposes. I like having a room for different
functions. A room for sleeping has a different feel than a room for working. A
room for eating breakfast has a different feel than a room for eating dinner
with family. A room for relaxing and watching TV casually, has a different
feel than a room for entertaining guests. You get the picture. This helps
create mental and emotional "spaces", but also leads to a lot of wasted space.
With more people wanting to move back to the cities, I imagine this
distinction between mental and emotional "spaces" will become more blurred.
Does anyone know of any good products or services that would compliment these
products? I'm thinking along the lines of programmable/wireless ambient
lighting.

~~~
alexchamberlain
That's a lot of rooms! I have bedroom, a bathroom and a lounge/kitchen.

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michaelt
Looks neat! I wonder how hard it is to lift, and whether my laptop cables and
things would end up jamming in all the moving parts.

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gphakos
It is pretty easy to lift, I am not a strong guy (bench press < 100lb) and I
don't have any trouble putting it up or down. The lifting action is assisted
by gas springs which you can kind of see in the video but I didn't really
mention them.

There is plenty of room for running cables off the back of the desk, I
currently have a half dozen cords for charging phone, laptop, etc... and I
haven't had any problems.

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wilfra
Looks really cool. If these were done and you were offering them for $650 I'd
buy one, but donating to a kickstarter and maybe getting one next May doesn't
sound like fun...

You can take down my email (in my profile) and feel free to hit me up in the
future if and when they actually get built and are ready to ship.

Good luck!

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bryanlarsen
Since it's already elevating, how hard would be to make it adjustable height
up to a standing position?

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dredmorbius
Some similar designs:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAa6bOWB8qY>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4yJGTPUR_0>

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=juW...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=juWaO5TJS00)

As others have noted, the inability to leave items (particularly monitors) on
the desk is a major downside.

I'm a fan of the collegiate solution: a loft bed. This is particularly
suitable where high ceilings are available, especially cathedral or A-frame
designs.

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smoyer
In the early '80s I had the same problem with my dorm room and solved it by
raising the bed above the desk. It looks like you have plenty of ceiling
height and eliminates the need to unmake and remake the bed (or desk). The
back of my desk also had a hutch for storage.

Now 30 years later, my daughter's dorm room came equipped with a bed that was
designed to be raised above either the desk or a bit of seating. I don't see a
reason to flip the bed if you're not looking for open floor-space.

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rabidsnail
<http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S59872897/>

~~~
randomchars
Lots of people don't like sleeping high above the ground.

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rangibaby
Pretty cool idea, I am looking forward to seeing the final steel version if
this gets funded. Until then I will stick with a futon.

~~~
gasull
I just use a Japanese futon and it works great. It's also the most comfortable
"bed" I've ever had, with the best back support: the floor.

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waynesutton
I like, even though there are some similar products he could still launch and
compete. Regardless if he's the first, if his product brings something "new to
the table" it will be good to see competition in the desk space especially if
he can come in at a lower price point.

Remember google wasn't the first search engine.

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kiba
Interesting, but it looks like it won't support anything that is higher than
the bed, such as a big monitor.

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samirahmed
I would like to a mattress on that bed frame, how does the mattress not fall
over all the time

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gphakos
There is a board in the back that supports the mattress when the bed is raised
up, and it is held down to frame / slats with some nylon cord which is under
the sheet so it is not really visible.

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adrian-inaustin
honey...honey, wake up...i need to write an email.

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centro
This problem has already been solved. I wish people would do a little more
searching before starting a kickstarter project.

<http://bredacomponents.com/shop/hiddenbed.html>

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pbreit
Yuck, yuck, yuck.

A _much_ better option: [http://www.resourcefurniture.com/space-savers/queen-
space-sa...](http://www.resourcefurniture.com/space-savers/queen-space-saving-
beds/ulisse-desk)

Who should be doing more searching?

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reustle
I'd buy the designs for $50+ because I will most definitely want to build it
myself.

~~~
pav3l
Same. As I was watching the video, I thought "this would be a great project to
do", rather than "I'd pay a lot of money for this".

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ew
Superior Wall Beds has something very similar, albeit much more expensive:
<http://calgarywallbeds.com/products/desk-bed.cfm>

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rabidsnail
[http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=murphy+bed...](http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=murphy+bed&IndexArea=product_en&fsb=y)

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smiler
You could imagine a few startups putting these into their offices :)

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Nimi
Really cool idea! Maybe add a monitor frame, rigged to the underside of the
bed, so the user can have a monitor "on" the desk?

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chaselee
I sleep on the floor and stand at my desk =(

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wtvanhest
A nice touch would be a flat screen mount on the bottom of the bed that is at
the correct height.

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s_v
Have you considered using cardboard instead of steel?

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countessa
my problem with this is, with space at a premium, i currently use the
underside of my bed to store linen, towels, clothes, etc etc etc.....

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ryanpers
so much room for activities!

