
Ask HN: I want to build an electronic wearable, where do I start? - daviddumon
I&#x27;m a software developer, and I barely know nothing about electronics. Where do I start to bootstrap this project ? My current plan is to learn and try to build a prototype, then setup a kickstarter. Any advices welcome! Thanks
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aoi84
"I'm a software developer, and I barely know nothing about electronics."

That sounds like a familiar recipe for disaster. Most hardware based
Kickstarters fail. Even successful ones deliver very late and over budget. I
work in electronics and wouldn't do it.

You really need to find someone with experience in bringing products to
market. Hardware mass production is extremely difficult and expensive (from
prototyping to final layout to component sourcing to quality control) and
that's before you get to stocking and delivery. That all requires a lot of
investment, time and understanding of the underlying systems.

~~~
pjc50
Second this: there are a thousand things that can go wrong and irrevokably
cost money. You need to get that production expertise in somehow, either by
hiring or consultancy.

It's possible to learn a lot from people like Bunnie Huang, such as his
"Chumby" product which he blogged the development of.

~~~
daviddumon
Thanks, I'll check on this guy and his project

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leoedin
I'm sure it's doable, just be aware that it will take a lot longer and cost a
lot more money than you expect.

When your hardware project is "done" \- that is, it works as you'd like, maybe
you've made a handful of them - you're only really 30% of the way. First you
need to test it - EMC testing can be painful and unless you really designed it
carefully you'll probably need to redesign parts of it.

One you've got past that, you need to manufacture it. To get a project to
volume manufacture means you need to work out all the little details - how
will you program it, how will you test it, how much stock do you hold, who
builds it. You'll probably find there's things you overlooked, or a part you
can't buy any more, and you have to do a board respin.

When you see polished products on Kickstarter that manage to ship in the
schedule they initially proposed, that's because they've already done all of
this. They've probably spent 6 or 7 figures to get to that point.

I'm not saying you shouldn't do it (and there are paths you could take which
aren't so onerous, like maybe making just a circuit board which you sell
mainly to the hacker community) - I find the whole process really enjoyable.
It's just that it's a lot of work and can be very, very capital intensive.
Plan things carefully and be realistic, not optimistic about costs and
schedule.

~~~
daviddumon
Thanks for your reply, very insightful. I will try to wrap my head around the
first steps (like prototyping, and trying to find the right components), and
see where it goes from there.

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chrismatheson
I’m an ex hardware design engineer turned software dev. My advise. Pick the
chip that suits your requirements, get a development board and get the
software running. Then when you have a non wearable prototype that dies all
the things you can hand it off to a design engineer with the “now make it
tiny” remit

~~~
daviddumon
That's what I see as the simple first step, indeed :) Thanks for the input

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knolan
This reminds me of the management at my old company. They wasted a fortune
trying to develop wearables by tasking people with little or no product
development background with the bulk of the work and then spending another
fortune on consultants to make it pretty. What they ended up with looked like
a Knick off pipboy from fallout.

That executive is on ‘special projects’ now.

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kalleboo
Find someone on aliexpress who's already making the product you want to make,
contact them and ask them to OEM a version with your software.

~~~
rct42
Coming from someone who is a hardware/firmware engineer, that's also what I'd
do.

Developing hardware is hard and costly. If you are looking to create a
consumer-based product, this would be especially true. There's no way you'd be
able to manufacture your product as cheap as getting a manufacturer to supply
you with a OEM version of their product, let alone having to amortise the R&D
cost spent in developing it! And generally speaking, the cost is the bottom
line in a consumer-based product.

This is what the Wyze Cam does. They've created a really nice product, but
there's no way they'd be able to sell it for $25 had they also developed and
manufactured the hardware themselves.

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At1C
I would start looking at haptics with wearable hardware devices, eg.
[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2017.0004...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2017.00042/full)
[https://lofelt.com/](https://lofelt.com/)
[https://www.ultrahaptics.com/](https://www.ultrahaptics.com/) You get the
idea and down the rabbit hole you go. please let us all know how it turns out
thxs. Myself always wondered about remote touch possibilities.

~~~
daviddumon
Bookmarked! Will explore this asap :) Thanks

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savrajsingh
You have a lot to learn. Go to adafruit, buy an arduino and play around with
it. Then, see how you feel. Think about how annoying it is to handle returns
from angry consumers or if a kid eats your product. :)

~~~
daviddumon
Thanks for the link, I didn't know adafruit :) Will explore it asap

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mchannon
Focus on your safety and health first.

Any wearable needs a power source, and any prototype is going to involve wires
and breadboards that are not by default hermetically sealed. In the event your
moist skin provides a lower-resistance path for the voltages involved, you
might find your project (and self) dead.

Lithium batteries are extremely unforgiving, as well. Try to stick to a single
cell, and if you need to put in multiple cells, put safety circuits on them.

It wasn't long ago (January 29th) where a man was killed when his e-cigarette
exploded and part of it shredded his carotid artery.

Edward Thorp's 1961 wearable roulette cheating device started arcing when the
young women wearing it started to glisten a bit too much in the sultry Vegas
casinos.

I'm sure your prototype will be way cooler if it doesn't cost you an eye
(safety glasses), your skin (from burns or explosions), or body parts of your
intrepid friends and loved ones.

~~~
daviddumon
I did not think about that :( That's sound advice!

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ohyes
Depends on how complex your idea is. You could do something like arduino for
the POC and then hire a real hardware engineer for the post prototype. You
will need some basic soldering skills and electronics knowledge for the POC.

There are a lot of dev kits available for more advanced processors, if you
need something more powerful than an arduino. Using them is pretty much the
same as an arduino, a lot of the time.

You’ll likely have trouble with fabrication of whatever it is you are making.
Hardware is very difficult and you’ll probably end up with low yields on the
first things that you make, even with an experienced HW engineer. So make sure
you account for that extra cost.

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hkon
I suggest you reach out to some local makerspace/meetup or tinkerers who have
some experience doing this. I did something similar and a local provided me
with conductive thread and fabric and I even got to borrow an arduino set from
him.

~~~
daviddumon
That's actually a very good idea! There some fablabs in my local area, I will
dig this way, thanks

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dom96
I'm currently going through something similar: trying to create a hardware
prototype for a tablet-like device. Even getting a board that supports eDP is
a pain, and there is very little information out there that explains whether
the panels are compatible with anything. I decided to just buy a RockPro64 +
some generic LCD panel with an eDP hoping it will just work, but my confidence
isn't high and I'm not sure where I'll go if it doesn't work.

I also couldn't find a place with people who know this stuff that could help
me. It seems that getting software help is so much easier. Does anyone have
any suggestions?

~~~
detaro
Just in case this fits what you are looking for as a starting point:
[https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/02/06/new-product-kano-
comput...](https://blog.adafruit.com/2019/02/06/new-product-kano-computer-kit-
with-touch-screen/)

~~~
dom96
Thanks, but one of my specific goals is to get a screen that is at least 15"
in size. Funnily enough I just realised that the LCD panel I bought didn't
come with an eDP cable... so now I need to find that as well :(

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Beefin
Depends what you're trying to measure. You really only need an
Arduino/Raspberry Pi and some input device (sensor). For example, if you want
a "brain wave wearable", simply connect an EEG to the Pi via RS-232 and
process the data. It's really just a 4 step process:

1\. Acquire MCU (Pi, Arduino, etc.) 2\. Acquire sensor (Heartrate, EEG, etc.)
3\. Program processor/UI (Python/C++) 4\. 3D print enclosure

Make a dope marketing video and $$. Send me a PM if you want help, I've
launched a wearable (it failed but there were lessons learned).

~~~
daviddumon
Thanks for the feedback. My product will be even simplier, in that I don't
need sensors, but it has to programmable somehow

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JofArnold
My experience: I had some fun off and on with Arduinos but they tended to have
excessive power consumption for the kinds of wearables I wanted to build and
maybe productionise. So I switched to ultra low energy ARM Cortex SOCs like
the STM32 from ST Micro. It was way harder than I was expecting (re-learning C
was the easy bit!), but still good fun controlling clocks, DMA and other
features in order to boost battery life from hours on an Arduino to days and
weeks. I was toying with putting it into production but as I started to learn
more it quickly became clear with only weekends and occasional weekdat it'd
take me a lifetime to achieve that dream unless I had a bucket load of money
with which to outsource. Your mileage may vary but maybe do it anyway just for
the interest factor; if nothing else I feel I've lifted the curtain on how all
these magical devices around us function :)

PS: STM's private (but free) Udemy courses were a great help getting me
started. The written documentation online is aimed largely at professional
electronic engineers and not so much at newbie hobbyists!

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thewsc
> Any advices welcome!

It isn't realistic that you are going to develop a product from nothing in
your spare time. If you don't know anything about hardware, chances are your
idea isn't even any good. You didn't even ask a proper question, presumably
because that would ruin the fantasy. Are you telling me you can't google how
to make a prototype?

Yes, that sounds pessimistic. So I will give you the real advice. If you
actually want to bootstrap a hardware project in you spare time, do something
that is realistic. Do an add-on board for an arduino or a raspberry pi, or
something with an esp8266 that you design yourself and sell in small quantity
on e.g. tindie.

How long is that going to take you? Depending on your software experience,
maybe a hundred active hours. How many hours would be realistic on average
every week your spare time, maybe five? So around six months if you include
holidays. Now you can imagine how long your original idea would take.

------
johnnycab
Some more resources for you to consider.

[https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub](https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub)

[https://www.hackster.io/projects](https://www.hackster.io/projects)

~~~
daviddumon
Thank you, will explore that asap :)

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ykevinator
Ignore the people who are not answering your question and putting you down.
You can absolutely do this. Find an EE guy on guru or some other place in the
u.s. and get on a phone call ( not email). That's how you get started.

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bigmit37
I’m also very interested in mixing hardware and software and my friend
currently ordered an arduino starter kit that we will work on together. I
don’t really have a product in mind, just exploring what is possible with
hardware.

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yc-kraln
For anyone (like OP) that's looking for help with a hardware project, I'm
happy to advise. I have lots of experience bringing projects to market, both
from an EE side and from the manufacturing side.

~~~
daviddumon
Thanks for that, will sure get in touch once I figured out first steps to
advance on this project!

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screye
Do an MBA -> Join a big hardware company -> Pitch your wearable to them ->
become product lead.

Realize, that a software developer's role in this kind of product, is
literally the least critical aspect of it.

~~~
daviddumon
Well, I'll try to keep up with my software career and explore the hardware
side as a toy project for now :)

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kasbah
Check out the Contextual Electronics courses.

[https://contextualelectronics.com/course-
types/](https://contextualelectronics.com/course-types/)

~~~
daviddumon
Thanks, will check this out asap!

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mr_puzzled
I am in a somewhat similar position : I want to build a linux distro powered
phone (postmarketos and/or ubports should be able to boot), and I have no idea
where to start. Maybe I'll start by booting up the OS on a raspberry pi and
get all the components working on a brick sized prototype and then see if it's
possible to use the pi compute module to use as a base for the phone. Any
ideas/suggestions are welcome.

~~~
thebozertron
Your tool chain is important out of the gates. I'd suggest picking a general
ecosystem/SoC provider, engage with their sales, and acquire a development
platform.

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unlikelymordant
what sort of wearable? a watch? google glass like? fitbit like? what do you
envision it doing?

perhaps look at some of the open source wearables for inspiration [1] [2] etc.

[1] [https://openhomeautomation.net/open-source-wearable-
platform...](https://openhomeautomation.net/open-source-wearable-platforms-
review)

[2] [https://www.hexiwear.com/](https://www.hexiwear.com/)

~~~
daviddumon
Thanks for the resources, I didn't event know there was open source wearables!
Will check asap

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ezconnect
Since you're a software developer why not just start by buying 9usd wearables
and reprogram it, bluetooth with colored or black and white screen, heart rate
sensor and accelerometer built in.

Lots of people have been doing that and adding new features. Hardware is hard
if you don't have the experience.

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jacknews
I have no idea if this guy is any good (I believe the "hardware product" he
brought to market was a simple stick-on LED front light for tv remote controls
or something like that), but he now consults on exactly this, and his
blog/email posts are certainly extremely interesting and plausible:

[https://predictabledesigns.com/](https://predictabledesigns.com/)

tldr: it's a huge jump (like 90%++ of the effort) from even a polished
prototype, to a ship-able box, let alone one sitting on a shelf in Walmart etc

disclosure: I merely subscribe to his email newsletter, but I too have some
h/w ideas I'd love to make into products.

~~~
daviddumon
Will check this out! Thanks for the link

