
Looking to Prototype Without Wire? Introducing the Meta Board - ysteiner
http://www.metaboard.space/
======
droithomme
\- Images are broken.

\- No idea what product actually is useful for.

\- Video only shows a corner of the board and doesn't make clear its use case.

\- No contact info except an email address that appears to be a generic
placeholder for the template, because 'freesearch' isn't obviously the name of
your company, though I see upon deep inspection it's the name of your youtube
channel which has no published content (only the one unlisted video).

\- email host is free service but not well known one.

\- very new hacker news account.

\- very new reddit group dedicated to project hosted by 4 day old reddit
account.

\- business web domain with unusual tld that appears unrelated to company and
product concept.

\- web domain first created only a few days ago.

\- web domain is registered to anonymizing agent in Panama.

\- No record of business contact email address anywhere on internet.

\- No company info.

\- No payment options other than paypal.

Honestly it looks like you are trying to hide and the whole thing is some kind
of scam.

To fix this, improve demos, describe better what board is and what it does and
why it's worth the price, completely de-anonymize yourself by presenting
verifiable business credentials including business addresses that are not mail
drops or such, and name and photos of team members on your site, change to a
site domain that makes more sense, and use a different email address, your
normal one.

~~~
kutkloon7
I wanted to write an answer but this covers almost everything that I wanted to
say and more.

Just a few more things: the claims you make sound 'too good to be true' and
the video you show is not clear. What are you showcasing? Where is your
product in the video?

It's also not clear who the target audience is. You give an example, but I
have never encountered a broken harddrive. The situation doesn't appeal to a
lot of people. You might want to sketch more scenario's where your product
would be helpful. You can even just aim the text directly to your target
audience: "Are you an electronics hobbyist or engineer often struggling with
X? Look no further!". You get the picture.

Also, you might want to consider contacting some techbloggers and sending them
free prototypes (this can actually backfire if they don't like it).

------
whiskers
I'm heavily into this space as a co-founder of Pimoroni (a hobbyist
electronics company based in the UK).

I've read your page and watched your video and I still don't really understand
what the metaboard is meant to be - I think you have a communication issue
here. :-)

The pitch primarily seems to be around simplifying the process of building
circuits on a breadboard but it doesn't explain in detail how it does that.

I was also really hunting for a picture of the product itself, but that isn't
visible anywhere (perhaps it's one of the broken image links?).

Since this page is a pre-order (for delivery in March 2017!) I think you'll
struggle to get good conversion rate unless you already have an audience who
trust you. I agree with guico that presenting the price in AUD will limit your
market as well.

Feel free to contact me (e-mail in profile) if you want some help to highlight
your key features and identify your market.

------
ThrowawayR2
Well, let's see:

1) Looking at the description:

" _The Meta Board is a physical programmable circuit board that allows you to
build physical circuits on a breadboard without wire or specific value
resistors and capacitors using a host microcontroller, such as the Arduino
Nano._ "

This is rather uninformative to say the least. In what way does it replace
resistors / capacitors? How many does it replace? How is it programmed?

2) On watching the video, it seems as if this device lets a person turn on or
off some pins under the control of a computer. That would make this device a
digital I/O board, minus the I part, or a relay board, perhaps? (Both of which
are readily available online already.) However, the description suggests that
it does more than this?

3) The "Why use the Meta Board?" reasons are either not very compelling or
have common solutions. For example, re: #2, resistors and capacitors costs a
negligible amount and re: #7, it's not particularly clear what that means.

3) There is no description of the electrical characteristics of the
inputs/output pins or anything else.

4) The image links on the metaboard.space page are broken, at least when
viewed from North America. Manually opening the links returns an access denied
message from the CDN.

~~~
senectus1
images are broken in Australia too.

What is your target audience.. I'm not entirely sure if I even _could_ be
interested in this.. the scenario displayed is clinical with no context around
why i might want to buy one and say stick it into my Rpi...

------
mcpherrinm
I watched half the video -- it wasn't clear what was happening. It needs
narration explaining what's going on.

Others have already mentioned the images are broken.

You've got a product priced in a currency that isn't my native one.

Your product isn't shipping for months. At least if this was on Kickstarter
I'd know what I'm getting myself into.

And ultimately, I came away not understanding what the product is. So I'm not
remotely interested in buying it, even though I generally throw money at funny
dev kits and things possibly related in this space.

------
Robin_Message
This looks really cool, but I don't think it's presented in the best light.

Many have pointed out all the problems with the page as it is. I'd like to
make some concrete suggestions that might help.

Firstly, you have invented this thing. You know more about it than anyone on
the planet. So dumb it down more. Your video doesn't really show what the
product is. How about wiring up a 555 timer with your board with no passives
to an LED, and then demonstrate varying flash rate by changes in code that are
changing resistor values (bonus points for writing a function to set resistors
and cap for you based on frequency desired and duty cycle). That would seem
like a real demo of what the board does.

I'd also cut the 8 stream of consciousness "why use metaboard" sentences into
3 concrete use cases of increasing but understandable complexity.

Then, and here I am making this up, if this thing is genuinely useful, make
some prototypes and send them to electronics bloggers with a note like "I like
your stuff. I made this cool thing and I think it could have helped you with
$PROJECT_X. Try it out and see what you think. If you think others might find
it useful, I'm starting a kickstarter on 15th November (or whenever)."

Use something like kickstarter because it helps create credibility – if I send
you 20 AUD, and then just wait 6 months, I don't know what I'm going to get,
but if I know 100 people have sent 20 AUD you at least have a chance of
producing something.

Ship _something_ that is minimal but works to your early backers, and build
from there. Not shipping, or delaying shipping to overcomplicate your product
is a bad plan.

Good luck!

~~~
wolfgke
> You know more about it than anyone on the planet. So dumb it down more.

I personally don't like it when such information is dumbed down, in particular
if the audience of the product is "smart people" (as hackers or makers like to
be).

Just my 2 cents

~~~
throwanem
"Dumb it down" here means you start with a transparently simple and very
obvious example of USP, and then work up to more complicated stuff once you
have the reader's attention.

~~~
wolfgke
> and then work up to more complicated stuff once you have the reader's
> attention

The best way to get _my_ attention is to write some rather intelligent
information. I often switch off when I feel that I get "dumbed down". That's
how I am.

------
pasta
I don't know if you already did this, but you might ask this question on
[http://hackaday.com/](http://hackaday.com/) instead of Hacker News.

Hacker News might answer some questions about marketing, but your customers
are on Hackaday. Why not ask your customers directly?

Edit: And as others already mentions: your images are missing. Fix that first.

Edit2: If I understand what this board is about, you might have a killer
product here by the way! Am I right that this board is directly communicating
with software so you can 'see' what is going on?

------
riffraff
you have two broken images in the homepage
[https://d28w3xgz5vkvvm.cloudfront.net/images/000/157/652/ori...](https://d28w3xgz5vkvvm.cloudfront.net/images/000/157/652/original/6097bc9eb4a1f881cba1f1d138a88327ee032089.png)

and

[https://d28w3xgz5vkvvm.cloudfront.net/images/000/157/695/ori...](https://d28w3xgz5vkvvm.cloudfront.net/images/000/157/695/original/6097bc9eb4a1f881cba1f1d138a88327ee032089.jpg)

also a bad pointer to
[http://www.metaboard.space/%22https://d28w3xgz5vkvvm.cloudfr...](http://www.metaboard.space/%22https://d28w3xgz5vkvvm.cloudfront.net/images/…0/157/168/large/6097bc9eb4a1f881cba1f1d138a88327ee032089.png?1476759208%22)
Failed to load resource: the server responded with a

I guess that might kill confidence in buyers a bit.

Also, depending on where traffic comes from 300 visitors might have close to 0
interest in buying this.

------
watt
Does your page answer the question "why do I needed? why do I want it?" \- it
seems to describe to product, but nothing about the "why".

This also means you have not defined your audience. Who should I be so that I
would be interested in your product? An Arduino hacker? Building... what?

------
Animats
I can't figure it out either.

There are devices which let you wire up digital and analog circuits under
software control. Field Programmable Gate Arrays do this for logic, of course.
There are also Field Programmable Analog Arrays. Those are not widely
available, but might be fun to play with. Is this a board with an FPAA on it?

Or is the whole thing a hoax? What's with the line "Diagnose a hard drive
issue by copying code from Stack Overflow"?

------
magnat
"Oops, your Javascript is not enabled." _after_ page (consisting of static
text and a few images) loads and renders correctly. Why?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
The site appears to be created via this service[1]. Whether it enforces
javascript, I'm not sure — couldn't find evidence either way on their website
— but it's obviously a poor show if they do.

[1] [https://gospaces.co.uk/](https://gospaces.co.uk/)

------
feelix
This is a good product and could be useful for a lot of people. A lot of the
comments here are saying they don't understand what the product is for, but I
think it should be obvious to people (like myself) who have used breadboards
before in the past.

But you can't just make a good site and expect for the "if you build it they
will come" theory to play out. You need press. Post it in some forums to get
started. Reach out to some sites that post electronics news and reviews and
ask them if you can send them a free sample. Get on Twitter. Most of your
overall job may be ahead of you.

~~~
GrumpyYoungMan
> _A lot of the comments here are saying they don 't understand what the
> product is for, but I think it should be obvious to people (like myself) who
> have used breadboards before in the past._

Please enlighten us then. What does this board do?

~~~
feelix
With all of these questions and nobody understanding it, I'm starting to doubt
myself.

But my impression was that it's like a digital breadboard emulator, but in
hardware. So you essentially have a digitally programmable hardware
breadboard. So as one example, normally if you would need a resistor in a
circuit, instead of physically putting a resistor there of the correct
strength, you can do so digitally, and you dont have to physically mess around
with a resistor.

------
brak1
"Estimated Delivery: March 2017" might have something to do with it,
considering its only October 2016...

------
Aeolun
I just looked at the page, but I'm not interested in a circuit board at all.
Why would I buy it?

Where your visitors are coming from is extremely relevant to why you have or
haven't sold anything, I think.

------
guico
I see the prices in AUD which is a turn-off because I immediately assume it's
not available in Germany.

~~~
stephen_g
There are a lot of comments on this thread like this and I find them sort of
bizarre. If I see a price for a product like this on the internet in Euros, or
pounds, or US dollars, or New Zealand dollars, I always assume that they can
probably ship it to my country...

Not to say the thing can't be optimised (put 'Ships Internationally' under the
button perhaps) but the idea that availability of something on a web shop
would necessarily be tied to the currency its sold in is just really strange
to me.

The only things I don't expect to be able to buy from overseas are certain big
brand items (where they have a distribution agreement with a local company)
and media streaming services (which are often geoblocked)...

------
jacknews
I don't understand what it does, or how it does it. All I get is 'breadboard
without wires', and a demo, but no explanation of how it works, what it's
limits are, etc, etc.

~~~
mhandley
Yes, that was my feeling too. It looks like it might be very cool, but even
after watching the video, I still didn't get a good feeling for what it
actually can do. Also, the command-line driven interface shown in the video
didn't really seem very obvious. A GUI that let you wire up your circuit and
interact with it would probably appeal to more potential buyers.

------
firegrind
'Without Wire' has capitalisation which makes me think Wire is a programming
language, but the site's talking prototyping without wire, I think.

Presumably the AUD 20 pre-order woudl be paid up front but there's no way to
see who you are - the address in the copyright tag doesn't even tie to the
domain name - or what the roadmap is or how progress is going. Which makes me
wonder why this isn't using one of the established starter platforms.

The whole page looks disposable.

Which is a shame, as I spent a few hours recently rerouting wiring to get a
prototype out of a breadboard and feel like I should be in your target
audience.

~~~
evincarofautumn
There is Wireworld:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireworld)

And a really elegant esoteric language called Funciton:
[http://esolangs.org/wiki/Funciton](http://esolangs.org/wiki/Funciton)

------
mrmrcoleman
Apart from al the useful comments below, 366 just isn't that much. Expecting
someone to buy after 366 views implies a 0.273% conversion ratio.

Clearly yours is currently lower than that.

------
rwallace
The page is down right now, so I can't doublecheck, but did it say twenty
Australian dollars for an exotic hardware device? Pre-order, no less? If so,
it's as well for you that nobody has taken you up on that. The price needs to
be an order of magnitude higher. I strongly recommend adding an extra zero
before doing anything else, in case people do start biting.

------
jaclaz
And, like _any_ new, hip site, it wants me to enable Javascript: "Oops, your
Javascript is not enabled. To use Spaces, you need to enable Javascript in
your browser first." which would be fine to provide an "enhanced experience",
but a plain text explaining what you sell would have been nice.

------
thinkMOAR
Perhaps an idea to have somebody else, who doesn't have a clue about your
product to make the website explaining what the product is and why people
should consider buying it.

You know the product, and you will write differently about it then a person
that is unfamiliar with the product.

Other then that, all the items droithomme pointed out :)

------
KVFinn
So the general structure of your video seems okay: Show a long and annoying
way of doing something, then show a better way using your product.

But without narration I don't understand well enough what's going on here or
why your way is better.

Agree on the AU price thing. Immediately makes me think I can't order it
anyway.

------
Aardwolf
The block diagram image and one below it don't show up. Here is roughly what
trying to load an image shows:

<Error><Code>AccessDenied</Code><Message>Access
Denied</Message><RequestId>...</RequestId><HostId>...</HostId></Error>

------
nicky0
"Estimated Delivery: March 2017" won't be helping

------
dagw
I read your site, found it interesting, went to check the price, saw that it
wasn't shipping for another 5 months and decided to check back in March.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Which suggests a "let me know when they're available" email box would be
useful.

------
ysteiner
Thanks for all the feedback. I have a lot of work to do, obviously, but I
appreciate it.

------
milankragujevic
Seems sketchy given that you seem to have been taking money, now the website
404s...

------
cicloid
Did they take out the site? Points to a 404 page.

------
startling
366 unique views in three days is not that high.

------
VOYD
404

