

Important Safety Notice from WakeMate - tptacek

<i>From my email just now.</i><p>Imporant Safety Notice<p>Hello WakeMate Customer,<p>We have just been alerted to a safety issue with our product. The black USB charger bricks that have been included with the product are defective. Do not use them.<p>The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident with the black USB chargers. Therefore, effective immediately we are recalling ALL USB charger bricks and informing our customers that it is not safe to use these USB chargers to charge your WakeMate.<p>We will continue to look into the situation but needed to email you immediately to ensure that you stop using and unplug the included Black USB Power Bricks.<p>We are extremely sorry that we sent a product containing defective components. However, we also want to stress that this issue is with the chargers only, and not with the WakeMate itself. It is still safe to use the included USB cable to charge the WakeMate, and it is safe to wear the WakeMate while sleeping.<p>I sincerely apologize for this mishap on our part. We are doing everything we can to prevent any further incidents with the USB charger bricks.
======
bilbo0s
"...The USB chargers were sourced through a Chinese vendor. We paid to have
the proper certification and safety tests performed here in the U.S. for the
chargers. However, tonight we were informed by a customer of a safety incident
with the black USB chargers..."

You think it is appropriate to say this in a recall notice...

and this is why you fail.

Sony has problems with their products, so does Apple. Neither of them blame
their sourcing in communication to customers. Why? Because your problem is not
Chinese manufacturers, or Stateside testing companies, your problem is YOU and
YOUR PROCESSES. Take ownership and move forward.

I am reminded of how you handled getting a bad review, here ->
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2029052>

I think there is an attitude at your company that is incompatible with the
relentless pursuit of perfection that is required to pull off a successful
hardware startup. What you guys need is a 'Come To Jesus' talk, not more
clumsy attempts at deflecting culpability.

~~~
avner
I tried to start a hardware startup last year and actually made it to the
interview with PG & co. At the end of the meeting, while the idea was good, it
came down to the obvious question of assembling and sourcing the hardware. At
that stage, after a lot of research and thinking, I decided to cut my losses
and shelf the idea for the time being.

Why? Because hardware is hard. I may be an engineer, but scaling production of
a hardware unit from a prototype to shippable products en masse is an
extremely hard challenge if you're trying to source your hardware from
somewhere like China. Its harder if you're not Apple or HP..or Sony for that
matter. I think its unfair to judge wakemate to Sony or Apple standards.

Coincidentally, I met the Wakemate guys when I crashed at the SF hacker house
during that time. While they're brilliant and dextrous folks, I certainly felt
the vibe that they were finding it _extremely_ challenging to design, produce
and ship this thing. The idea of wakemate sounded great, but I wasn't
convinced that being non-tech founders, they were entirely aware of the
technical and logistical challenges of producing and scaling a hardware unit
from scratch to the production line.

I wish them luck though. While they could learn a lesson or two about PR,
they've been at it for over an year and have persisted. Customer patience may
be running thin after these series of setbacks, but I still believe that they
will eventually pull it off.

~~~
cmos
I started a hardware company at the age of 23 and it was insanely difficult.
Everything that could go wrong did.

The challenges of designing production capable hardware and software,
manufacturing, testing, packaging, shipping, supporting, handling failures
(hardware or software problem? let the fighting commence!), managing inventory
and cash flow are immense. So much so that I never want to ship hardware
again.

The problem here is they are probably not making any money in the low volumes
they are producing this at. Any cash they do have is probably tied up in
inventory, and in a startup it's really hard to predict what sales will be 3
months from now. Guess too high and all your cash is tied up in inventory and
now your empty for payroll. Guess too low and you might have a 3 month
backlog. (sure, that's a 'good' problem to have, but it's not all good in the
hardware world because now you need cash to buy the parts to build the
hardware. Banks won't talk to you without years of operating experience under
your belt, and you had better hope your investors are willing to help finance
inventory growth)

My advice: Find a niche market who will appreciate this device and quadruple
your price. Perhaps this more expensive version comes with 3 months of a
'sleep expert' (who is an actual person) who analyzes my sleeping patterns and
'customizes' a wakeup/sleep plan just for me (i.e. allow 3rd party experts to
improve the experience and thus add value). Or maybe there is margin built in
for 'sleep doctors' to sell to their patients/customers.

Could the microphone detect and track severe snoring? Sleep apnea affects 6%
of our population.. that's a big number.

The problem here is people's lives are only being marginally improved, and for
$60, too low for any profit after you factor in warranty, support and
failures, they are expecting something more. These are not good customers for
you.

------
noonespecial
It's likely that the chargers that were tested and the chargers that actually
ended up shipping are quite different inside.

This seems to be a constant battle when going the Chinese route. You have to
cut open a few from _every_ shipment and check to see if inferior components
have been subbed in since last time.

~~~
bugsy
At a place I worked a few years ago we had to individually retest every single
unit of our products. This involved opening up packaging and repacking and
reshrinkwrapping afterwards. In between unpacking and repacking there was
testing and finding about 1/3 of them always had problems. Some boards could
be fixed by diagnosing to the component level, replacing components and even
resoldering incorrectly wired interboard connects. This work was done by asian
immigrants of uncertain immigration status. This rework quadrupled the cost of
the products but somehow it was still cheaper than just manufacturing locally
to begin with, something like the exact same product was costing $20 per unit
from asia, but $200 per unit to build in the US. Apparently the big cost
difference was due to the effect of environmental laws regarding not being
able to dump toxic waste in a river in the US.

~~~
davidk0101
So you were basically saving $180 in exchange for a more polluted planet.
Great exchange if I ever saw one.

~~~
bugsy
Yes, that is basically correct, although the difference in cost wasn't all
environmental obviously, there was also the advantage of using a labor pool
with few rights compared to the US, poor health care, and other factors.

On top of unit costs there is cost to stock in store, cost of the store's
profit, etc. Let me ask you this, would you be willing to pay $10,000 for a
computer Made in USA? Is the computer you are working on right now Made in
USA, or are some components from China?

That's the answer right there. We can pay $1000 for a Chinese made laptop or
$10,000 for an entirely USA made one top to bottom. What market is there for
the eco and labor friendly USA one, and what is the chance that a company
selling these would stay in business for even 6 months? Is the chance greater
than 0%?

~~~
prodigal_erik
I don't think a vendor could convince me they didn't merely mark up a $1000
slave labor computer. In _Collapse_ , Diamond wrote about sham "sustainable
forestry" certifications from that self-regulated industry; I can't believe
that wouldn't happen here as well. Even with orders of magnitude more money
involved, Wall St. couldn't find honest appraisers, so what chance do we have?

~~~
bmastenbrook
It wouldn't be self-regulated; there are already laws about declaration of
origin on products. The "Made in China" stickers on devices aren't there
because the manufacturer is giving the vendor a discount for advertising the
Chinese origin. They're there because customs can seize and destroy mislabeled
products.

------
callmevlad
I stopped using mine the day I got it because it emitted a annoying loud whiny
noise the second I plugged it in. I immediately thought "cheap Chinese
manufacturing" and started using my white iPhone charger instead. Glad I did.

What makes this more serious is that the WakeMate seems to be really power
hungry and needs almost constant charging - I've noticed that it usually can't
go 2 straight nights without a recharge. Since that's the case, I imagine most
people just plug it into the defective charger each morning, so it's plugged
in for about 16 hours per day. But maybe my battery is also defective ...

Not sure how these two are different technically (both probably have similar
accelerometers), but I also have a FitBit that I wear all day long - yet I
only need to charge that guy maybe once a week.

Hoping the WakeMate guys get through this, though ...

~~~
catch23
The fitbit tech is pretty primitive -- it looks like it only has a pedometer
inside the device. It's probably why it isn't very accurate at tracking sleep.
I've been using my fitbit for a few weeks, but it doesn't seem very accurate
at all in general.

~~~
callmevlad
According to <https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fitbit> uses a 3D
accelerometer, so it seems to be more complex than just a pedometer. I've
found it to be quite accurate for daytime activity, especially tracking when
I'm being really active. But I'm just now starting to use it to measure sleep
(and to compare the results to the WakeMate while I'm at it), so can't speak
much to its effectiveness yet.

------
tlrobinson
Man these guys can't catch a break. I really want to love WakeMate but they're
making it hard.

~~~
cookiecaper
This is the first issue I've read about. What else happened?

~~~
rdl
The 14 month shipping delay, delivered in 1-2 week bites: "we'll be ready next
week, for real this time!". So, lots of little things which added up to one
big thing.

~~~
jrockway
Are you bitter that a technology project was delayed, or that they had your
money the whole time?

This is why I don't preorder. Even though I thought the WakeMate was
interesting, I didn't have anything personally invested, and could just enjoy
the story instead. My advice is to not give random people your money in
exchange for promises unless you want to grow to hate them.

~~~
jhferris3
I was under the impression that they refunded most (all?) pre-order money?

~~~
jackowayed
They did. And even before they did, it was just $1 or $5 depending on when you
preordered.

~~~
jrockway
Interesting. The bitterness makes no sense to me. Hardware hacking is hard.
Hackers are overly optimistic with deadlines. So WakeMate "is late"? So what?

Personally, I'm pretty happy with the Zeo, but I really respect the difficulty
of task that the Wakemate folks took on. There is a little more intrinsic
difficulty than making a website.

~~~
jackowayed
I was a little disappointed about how they strung us along. First the ship
date was "Q1 2010". Then in January they said that that wasn't going to
happen. A few months later they said that they shipped to super-early
preorderers and:

"The next batch of units will ship no later July 30th, 2010. Based on your
pre-order date (01/19/2010), you should expect your WakeMate no later than
07/30/2010, but probably significantly sooner."

Coincidentally, that was April 1st.

Then in August they said we'd be getting them in September.

In the end, it took overnight shipping to get them to some people by
Christmas.

I understand and accepted that it would be ready when it was ready, but I can
definitely see how hearing "Soon" for a year would disappoint people.

------
eitally
For everyone bashing Chinese manufacturers, it's really unfair unless you
qualify the statement. All of the big EMS companies have a significant
presence in China (Celestica, Jabil, Flextronics, Sanmina-SCI) and Foxconn is
part of a Taiwanese holding company. They, and many smaller EMS providers,
will build _exactly_ to spec and many of them are happy to do ODM/JDM work,
too (ref: Quanta & Compal, the two biggest laptop ODMs and manufacturers in
the world).

Where people get burned is when these don't perform a risk analysis while
deciding on a hardware partner and end up going with some back room company
that probably builds their stuff using components sourced from Shenzhen
electronics malls. This isn't necessarily bad, but you get out what you put
in, and if you're minimizing the time & money parts of the equation, the
quality is likely to suffer.

~~~
delackner
I know this reply is late, but before I threw away the affected chargers I
looked at the incredibly tiny text written on it and noticed a few odd things.

They have the UL logo certification logo. They also say they are manufactured
by one of the big vendors you name, I _think_ it was Flextronics. The text is
nearly illegible and smudged, leading me to think it is fake.

------
jrockway
Dear electronics companies. I am willing to pay more money if you build your
products in the US / Europe / Japan and actually do QA.

(Actually, I have nothing against making stuff in China. But it seems that
people outsource to China only to save money, and you get what you pay for. In
this case, your house nearly burning down because someone wanted to save a
fraction of a penny on capacitors, or something.)

Example: I have a Soekris router instead of a random Netgear or Linksys. It
cost $300 instead of $25 that a WRT-54G would cost, and it doesn't even have
wireless. But, it actually works. The VPN works. The firewall works. It
doesn't drop packets. It doesn't overheat. It doesn't burn down my house. Is
this worth a 12x price premium? Yes.

~~~
dotBen
_I am willing to pay more money if you build your products in the US / Europe
/ Japan and actually do QA._

Most people won't. I'm not sure I would. I don't inherently see anything wrong
with buying goods made in China or Taiwan - there are plenty of companies (eg
Apple) who manufacture high quality goods there.

US labor has massive issues too - I wouldn't want to own a car made in the US.

As for your router, my Chinese-made Buffalo does everything yours does (plus
wifi and runs dd-WRT) and cost me $30. Your argument would only stand up if
_everything_ made in China was poorer quality to US made, and that isn't the
case.

~~~
jackowayed
> _I wouldn't want to own a car made in the US._

You might. A lot of Asian carmakers now have plants in the US.

Looks like Honda has 4, for example:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Honda_assembly_plants>

~~~
jackolas
Only because its cheaper to assemble cars in the US than it is to ship them
from China. I don't know how Mexico compares though...

------
dwynings
Video: <http://www.twitvid.com/UBBWC>

~~~
tlrobinson
That looks like the wristband itself caught fire, not the charger? Perhaps the
charger put out too much power, causing the wristband to catch fire?

~~~
clewiston
see my comment above about noisy electrical signal form the USB charger brick.

------
koichi
I'd worry about this more if my WakeMate would actually arrive... :(

This is pretty sad, though... I've been cheering for WakeMate since the
beginning, but it's getting harder and harder... Are they at least sending new
charger bricks at some point, perhaps a year or so from now (har har har)?

~~~
clewiston
yes, but we will have to source new bricks first. We went with these black
bricks because a) they looked cool, b) we could afford them, and c) samples of
the bricks passed electrical surge and signal quality tests we had performed
here in Mountain View. Maybe there's a reason Apple charges $29 for theirs...

~~~
covercash
Are the Apple bricks an acceptable replacement until you guys ship new ones?

~~~
jackowayed
USB power is standardized, so anything that plugs into the wall and has a USB
port on the back should work fine.

I regularly charge my phone with my Kindle charger and vice versa (and they
even both use microUSB, so I can use the same wire too).

~~~
PStamatiou
Though some USB chargers output more than the standard 5V @ 500mA, up to
1500mA in my experience.

~~~
StudyAnimal
Amps is more like a maximum that they can supply kind of thing, not a how much
they force out type of thing.

------
mmaunder
Way to handle this WakeMate. While this may cost a lot in the short term,
history has shown that companies can bounce back from costly recalls like this
and dominate the market down the road with the increase in credibility and
trust they gain:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tylenol_murders>

~~~
ssclafani
WakeMate's missing out on a golden marketing opportunity here...

<http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2005/20050218h.jpg>

------
delackner
So the logical next question is are the battery paks in the band safe? What
sort of safety cert was done on them?

~~~
clewiston
yes the batteries are safe. we believe that the chargers are spitting out a
noisy electrical signal, which is causing the battery charger IC on the
WakeMate to overheat, thus causing the problem. We have only seen any
incidence when the unit is plugged into the black USB charger bricks we
shipped with. To date we have logged over 20000 hours of sleep on our system,
so we're certain that sleeping with the Wakemate is safe, and that the
batteries on the WakeMates are safe as well. This is in addition to the
testing and certification we had done on the unit as well before we began
shipping units.

~~~
Caligula
I am curious, does your certification and testing involve anything with the
FDA?

I worked at one of the big sleep companies before and we always had to adhere
to FDA regulations even though we were careful to be 'monitoring' and not
'diagnosis/treatment'. The FDA also occasionally randomly popped in as a part
of their standard monitoring process.

~~~
jrockway
I think they are careful to say "this is not a medical device", which exempts
them from regulation. They can market it as a fun toy or fashion accessory or
whatever, and then it has nothing to do with medicine.

------
rman666
I've been a lurker on WakeMate, thinking I'd like one, but not yet taking the
action to buy one.

However, because of their honesty and quick action on this issue, I will buy
one now as soon as the charger issue is resolved.

@WakeMate: You will recover fine from this issue ... in fact I think you will
end up in a better position because of how you are handling it. Good job!

------
donniefitz2
Man, this is big. What a bummer for Wakemate. I admire your honesty though.
Thanks for not keeping quiet.

~~~
tlrobinson
_Thanks for not keeping quiet._

If they kept quiet and someone were injured or killed due to a known defective
product wouldn't they be open to lawsuits?

~~~
clewiston
We sent this email tonight within an hour of hearing about the first issue.
One of our goals as a company is to increase people's quality of life --
starting with sleep. It was immediately apparent to us we had to tell our
customers, especially if their safety was at all at risk.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Isn't this a bit drastic, though? I absolutely commend you for the fast
reaction and concern about customer's safety, but do you know the extent of
the problem?

I mean, if the problem is limited to a certain batch of power supplies (or
just that single faulty one), you've just deprived a large number of customers
of the use of product. Certainly if you have no way to segment the people who
may be affected, then the safest thing is a total product recall, but that's
generally the last resort any business will take in this situation.

In any case, I hope this is just a speedbump for you guys and you continue on
successfully.

------
flip
Does anyone else feel like a complete fool for having thought these guys were
capable of pulling this off?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
You shouldn't. Although I'm in software now, I've done enough hardware design
to know that sometimes shit just happens no matter how well you jump through
all the hoops.

It's a pity that it happened so soon after the product was released, but
things like this are not at all unusual. In fact, they're lucky that they
found out about it right away. I've known of suppliers changing the component
they sell you without informing anyone or changing the part number, causing
problems that go undetected for years.

Like an earlier poster said: hardware is _hard_.

------
btipling
Honestly though, can you imagine recovering from a video of your product
smoldering and smoking, a product that people attach to their arms while
sleeping?

After having seen that video that's all I'm ever going to think about when
someone mentions the product. And can you imagine recommending it now to
anyone? How do you think WakeMate has spread? Probably word of mouth, which if
that channel hasn't closed forever will now come with a big bold asterisk.

I wish you guys the best. It's going to be hard work to not only improve your
product, deal with the financials but recover consumer trust. A good idea
might be some new awesome, but some what gimmicky feature, that will wow
everyone.

~~~
btipling
Right downvote me for speaking the cold hard truth.

------
Ein2015
I love my WakeMate and the Wakelytics web app. It's super cool.

My only complaint is that it seems the wristband can be a bit tight, but I
suppose this is necessary to provide accurate movement calculations.

Good job WakeMate team. I know it's been tough, but I'm proud of you! Thank
you for handling this situation in such an appropriate manner.

------
matthew-wegner
I could actually hear my charger audibly buzzing when I plugged it in for the
first time today. Glad to hear it will be replaced!

------
natch
What exactly is the safety issue?

------
lwat
Does this also explain the problems Engadget had with the battery life?

~~~
guywithabike
Doubtful. WakeMate is just incredibly buggy, in general. I've gotten it to
work exactly once since I got it (on the supposedly better supported iPhone).
Otherwise, it seems to need constant rebooting.

They've said that they're working on fixing battery life issues (at least as
reported by Engadget).

The defective charger is a separate issue entirely.

------
klbarry
Can we ask what the safety issue is? I don't have a wakemate, and I understand
if there is a legal reason not too, but I am curious. Is it bursting into
flames...?

~~~
ygd
clewiston answered it here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2054884>

~~~
natch
That was a big vague. He said "causing the problem" but didn't go into
specifics about what that problem might be. Seems a bit too much like PR speak
to me. Let's get it on the table: are these chargers a fire hazard?

