

Any hardware hackers here at YC? - lyime

Well here at YC I see a lot of startup talk surrounding software and the web, which I am totally down with. I do have a huge passion about hardware and electronic design. Any of you out there with passion in hardware? Perhaps a startup around hardware? 
Personally I want to be involved with a software and hardware startup some-point in my life. I think we have many software/web startups and not enough startups in hardware. I might be wrong. Thoughts?
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VinzO
The problem is that for a startup in hardware the initial investment will be
much more important. If you look only at the development tools (for example :
simulation tools) it is already very expensive. And if you don't want to be
only a R&D startup, you will have to invest in very expensive production
hardware. Maybe the easiest way to start alone is to be a hardware consultant.

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anupamkapoor
umm, maybe sorta true only. currently with the price/performance of fpga's
fast approaching custom asic's, i think fpga's are not a bad bet to start
hacking stuff on.

also, you can buy fpga h/w approx 100k gates etc. for < 1000$ (cheaper if you
are student, and can get it via some univ. program). design, and simulation
tools are also available for free (with periodic registrations etc.) the only
(slight) pain point being that the s/w is generally windows only.

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VinzO
FPGA allows you to do digital hardware. My point of view is that a startup
will have troubles competing on digital hardware development. Digital hardware
is kinda "easy" developpment that can be done much cheaper in eastern europe
or asia. For a startup to have a chance to succeed, I guess it would be better
to focus in a niche market which required tricky analog design that can not be
outsourced or done much faster by big companies.

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comatose_kid
Digital vs. analog probably isn't the issue - how well your device solves the
user's problem is what people care about. Start with the problem your device
should solve first.

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mnemonicsloth
This is a good thought process for software, where the marginal cost per user
is near zero.

Unit costs matter in hardware though, so first thoughts should tend more
toward markets and demographics -- "what problem should I solve... for how
much?"

A new Ferrari (or a new Prius) would solve my getting-places problem better
than the POS I drive now. I could buy a new Tesla Roadster, which would be
better than either one, but that's even less affordable.

Of course, since a hardware startup requires some hefty NRI that you'll
probably have to borrow from someone else, you might want to start by
polishing up your resume.

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npk
A lot of comments here have focused on implementation details. Let's ignore
FPGAs, startup costs, etc... One huge advantage of hardware, is that you
actually have something you can sell. As an interesting hardware startup
archetype, consider Body Bugg:

<http://www.bodybugg.com/>

Long story short, they built a device to monitor health, but realized, only
after being harassed by clients, that the real market was weight loss. Like
ebay, they literally had clients begging them for a product.

Personally, I'd love to work at a hardware startup :)

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tlrobinson
For sure. I love both the hardware and software sides of things, though
unfortunately I don't have much time to dabble with electronics any more.

My last project was a computer-controlled kegerator (while I was in college,
of course), called the kegbot:

<http://tlrobinson.net/projects/kegbot/>

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PStamatiou
wow, that's you? my friends freshman year were all about kegbot! _bows down_

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tlrobinson
Don't give me too much credit, I wasn't the _original_ creator of kegbot, I
merely implemented my own version of the idea.

Mike Wakerly deserves that credit: <http://hoho.com/mike/>

<http://kegbot.org/wiki/Main_Page>

<http://kegbot.org/project/index.php.html>

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ejs
My formal education and majority of background is hardware (EE undergrad and
grad). I also work full time doing hardware design and firmware mostly. The
problem with a lot of hardware is the initial investment and that things take
longer. If you are just hacking some simple hareware together like a
microcontroller and nothing special its easy to proto, but if you get into
things that need to be prototyped on PCBs the cost and time goes up,
especially the time factor. I tend to enjoy software more these days simply
because I can compile things and test them right away. It can get onerous when
you spend days laying out circuit boards, a week or two to spin them, then 2
weeks to get them built, while you just spent about 10k for 50 prototypes.

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mixmax
I've considered doing a startup that develops and sells integrated
instrumentation for yachts and sailboats (lighting, wind measurements, depth,
speed, motor sensors, etc. ) I have a pretty good knowledge of yachting (I
live on a boat) and see a market. The stuff that's already there is expensive,
a few years behind technologically, and it seems that no great hackers have
discovered this niche. I have some thoughts on how to improve this, and would
love to hear from hardware hackers. My mail is in my profile if you're
interested.

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rugoso
i have recently been interested in microcontrollers, chips you can program, to
control things like motors and leds, and to recive data from sliders / knobs
(potentiometers)

i got some PIC programmer and some pic chips and started doing some
experiments ... but it seems like for me, a mac os x user, the AVR is a better
option

im looking to buy some AVR "kits" from smileymicros.com very soon, as soon as
i get some money ;) (i live in mexico so i have to pay more to get fedex)

im into programming music apps to make my own music, and i see a lot of
potential to make hardware to control music/sound

hey, if you try the smilemicros kits, let me know ;)

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jgrahamc
Look at Arduino. The entire design and software is open source. You can buy or
make.

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rugoso
thanks jgc

ive heard a lot about the arduino, i think im gonna get one or build one

but i also want to be able to build my own circuits, to learn to program the
microcontrollers, so i can get closer to the idea of designing the hardware
for my software

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jgrahamc
I dabble a little in hardware hacking. I just had fun interfacing a simple
temperature sensor to my little one's OLPC. Will blog that shortly. Now I'm
playing around with Arduino and want to hook it up using an XPort.

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thingsilearned
I worked for a short while in gaming hardware design at IBM before starting
8aweek. From what I've seen and heard hardware startups take a LOT more money
and have some major risk.

I would really be weary of trying to start a hardware startup. You have to be
a known expert, well connected, and have a good business team on your side.

Web startups have an insanely smaller barrier of entry. So if you want to
start your own, I would definitely do a web startup. If you're just going to
join one then I guess I would go with whichever idea I was more passionate
about.

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davidw
I always think of hardware as "the part you can kick" :-) I suspect people are
more interested in software because it seems so much less expensive to get
started with, especially web based stuff.

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lyime
This is an interesting point. I think you are right in some ways. People seem
to admire software more then hardware. I personally have a thing for beautiful
hardware and industrial design. Apple fits that bill but there are lots of
other companies that have done some brilliant hardware design that stand out.
My inspiration came from being part of the FIRST robotics competition in high
school.

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pius
If anyone is interested in doing interesting hardware/firmware work, get in
touch. Our startup is doing some exciting work in the digital cinema space.
We're using the Analog Devices Blackfin processor, which is a pretty sweet
piece of kit.

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corentin
Tell us more!

I'm not doing embedded gigs right now, but as I'm once again leaving my 9 to 5
job, I may be forced to sell myself soon :)

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pius
I just added my contact info to my profile, so e-mail me and I'll tell you
more. :)

Be forewarned, though, that the person who takes this role will be working for
equity/deferred compensation like everyone else, so it may not be the right
gig for you if you need to replace a 9-to-5.

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a-priori
I dabble a bit. I'm a ham radio operator, so I've built and tinkered with
radios before. Also, when I have some free time and money (mostly time), I'm
going to get an FPGA and explore an idea I had for a massively-parallel
processor design.

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corentin
I'm interested in the software side of hardware :) (firmware)

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brlewis
I have a great firmware idea I'd like to see implemented.

We bought a digital photo frame last week. Normally it sits horizontally.
Horizontal photos fill the frame, but vertical photos are squeezed to fit. It
detects when you turn it on its side, so that vertical photos fill the frame
and horizontal photos are squeezed to fit.

Squeezed photos are too tiny, so I added horizontal-only and vertical-only
Media RSS feeds to ourdoings.com, the world's best photo-sharing site. When we
change the orientation of the frame we change the RSS feed.

This works great for my wife and me, but it takes some button pressing to
change RSS feeds. Too much button pressing for non-technical people, I think.

If you hacked the firmware so that it switched back and forth automatically
according to the orientation sensor, that would be really cool. People could
set up a frame, send it to relatives as a gift, and the relatives could just
plug it in and watch it go.

<http://ourdoings.com/2008-03-01>

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corentin
I had a quick look at the firmware (file "NK.bin" in the firmware .zip file I
found on Samsung's website).

From "strings NK.bin|less", I learned that your frame was designed around an
RMI (formerly AMD) Alchemy DB1200 reference board, running Windows CE 5.0 on
an Au1200 CPU (MIPS32 architecture). More info about this stuff here:
<http://www.razamicroelectronics.com/products_alchemy/>

IIRC, the Windows CE development kit contains tools to read filesystem dumps
such as this one.

edit: there's some open source stuff in it but it looks legit (libFLAC, which
is BSD-licensed and dual-license GPL stuff).

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DarrenStuart
I intend to do one someday. I have a design for a dishwasher and an
interesting take on electric motors.

Aren't hackers just frustrated inventors anyway?

~~~
pius
heh, some less frustrated than others

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powerflex
I've got some ideas around the eInk type displays. Every now and then I send
an email to the eInk guys trying to get some bulk rate pricing on their
displays - 3 months now and no response. I've got no idea if my ideas for the
displays are marketable as I don't know the display costs. These types of
problems usher me toward software time and time again...

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electric
>Any of you out there with passion in hardware? Perhaps a startup around
hardware?

Yes.

>I think we have many software/web startups and not enough startups in
hardware.

I think we have the right number. ;)

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izak30
Yes. I have some ideas for web facing hardware...

