Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
(simonberens.com)262 points by sberens 2 days ago
262 points by sberens 2 days ago
In Athens, an "idiotes" was a citizen who focused only on private matters rather than participating in the polis (city-state). Because civic participation was considered a duty, this term carried a negative connotation of being socially irresponsible or uninvolved.
This term evolved into the modern "idiot" which we are familiar with.
Well wasnt that a good thing?
After the extermination of Melos they could credibly say they were less responsible for the actions of the polis.
And had a higher chance of deflecting the inevitable revenge on to the non idiotes Athenians.
Funny seeing people pushing for other people becoming more active in politics with the assumption that “being more involved” means with their political fights, then get worried when the other side grows or intensifies.
If one civilization is taking revenge on another I don’t think they would show that much nuance.
For one thing, wouldn’t everyone claim they were against their old polis? How would the invaders have any idea who was an idiote?
I just don’t believe it’s at all easy to avoid the fate of your nation , and I especially doubt that the politically ignorant have a better chance of avoiding that fate than the well informed.
I did say higher chance, not guaranteed to avoid it.
The counter extermination was only 5% of Athens total population, or so historians say, so it seems like a lot of nuance was shown.
I find the "no one could have seen it coming" crowd extremely tiring, they usually always say that about something anyone who paid a tiny bit of attention could see coming.
It's genuinely baffling to me why business owners pay so little attention to the politics that will directly impact their business.
The entire tariffs thing was incredible obvious to me (I am Australian) and I only check in on US politics for 10 min a couple of times a month, any less and it would be zero.
Trump in 1987 in a full page ad in the New York Times: "It's time for us to end our vast deficits by making Japan, and others who can afford it, pay. Our world protection is worth hundreds of billions of dollars to these countries, and their stake in their protection is far greater than ours. ... Tax these wealthy nations, not America. End our huge deficits, reduce our taxes, and let America's economy grow unencumbered by the cost of defending those who can easily afford to pay us for the defense of their freedom. Let's not let our great country be laughed at anymore."
Trump in 1989 talking to Diane Sawyer: "he would impose a 15% to 20% tariff on Japanese imports".
Trump in 2011 in his book "Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again": "I want foreign countries to finally start forking over cash in order to have access to our markets. So here’s the deal: any foreign country shipping goods into the United States pays a 20 percent tax. If they want a piece of the American market, they’re going to pay for it. No more free admission into the biggest show in town — and that especially includes China."
Trump at a rally in Vegas in 2011, referring to China: "Listen, you motherfuckers, we’re going to tax you 25%!"
Trump in 2018: If the Europeans are "not going to treat us fairly... then we're going to tax all those beautiful Mercedes-Benzes that are coming in."
Anyone who didn't think tariffs were coming is a fucking moron.
Nobody saw this coming. Trump's first term might have been crazy inside US, but outside... it's the least interfering US govt we've had in a while for the world. So as far as geopolitics is concerned, he is right.
> Everything is downstream of politics whether people want to recognize that or not
I'd argue it's the other way around. Politics is downstream of everything else. In other words, it's easier to predict the politics of tomorrow based on the culture today than it is to predict the culture of tomorrow based on the politics of today. I'd go as far as to argue that political details are almost irrelevant except in the most extreme cases where political figures change culture (Constantine or Hitler for example). The current political climate is the result of the cultural climate, and if it wasn't, the people in office would have never been elected in the first place.
National politics doesn't teach you any more about how the world works than the politics of your workplace or your school.
You could also say politics is downstream of other forces that are less global and more local. Some people choose to stay aware of their more local forces rather than the grand ones.
Classic hindsight bias. In fact, you could be paying a lot of attention to politics and still think tariffs were not going to go so high. Here's [1] a betting market that regularly was below 5% chance of tariffs above 40% on Chinese imports in first 100 days of Trump's second term.
https://polymarket.com/event/trump-imposes-40-blanket-tariff...
Polymarket isn’t a source for this, lol. Maybe google trends, since there’s no reason to manipulate it. There were also reasons to anticipate the amount of the tariffs, and the absolute stupidity of the tariffs (still reeling from the Heard and McDonald islands tariffs lmao).
This is a strange position to take. Sure, Polymarket has warts, but that doesn't mean it's not a very good source for consensus opinions about the future from the past. Do you think this market was manipulated?
Search “Polymarket manipulated” or similar and examples are legion. You can even do that on hacker news. There’s a lot of incentive to do so.
I had a university friend who spent hundreds of hours on his YouTube channel whilst the rest of spent hundreds of hours arguing about politics.
He’s now unimaginably successful at YouTube but at least I’m better at predicting the content of tomorrow’s newspapers.
Realistically, everyone always seems to think everything was predictable but I have maybe a handful of friends who sold the Russell 2000 futures short and then rebounded long who made millions off the various tariff trades. Ironically, Ukrainian and Russian. Ex-HFT but just doing very normal click trading. So I don't get it. Why isn't everyone who can predict the future so accurately a (deca-)millionaire?
There are two different kind of “prediction” mixed up here.
The thing which was easy to predict is that Trump is going to continue his trade war against China. It is also easy to predict that in a trade war companies who manufacture some product in China and sell it in the USA will suffer.
That prediction is enough for one to stay out of that kind of business. But it is not enough to do trades and profit from it.
If you could predict that Trump is going to announce x tarrifs on y tomorrow at z time that is much more likely to lead to succesfull trades. That is hard to predict.
It would have been very hard to find a counterparty that didn’t think Donald Trump was going to raise tariffs prior to his inauguration. He was very transparent about this (though the exact amount has fluctuated pretty wildly). Hard to make money when nobody else is taking the other side of the bet.
Plenty of things are predictable in the sense that one can bucket them. Tariffs were very predictable because we know the pedo has that unilateral lever and talks about wielding it. But who would have predicted that out of all the stupid tariff things that might happen, it would be things like tariffing allies, tariffing uninhabited islands, TACO tariffs, or a giant board with “reciprocal tariffs”? It requires not only predicting specific stupidity, but taking an aggressive position.
Whoever was holding aggressive poly market positions on “POTUS poops pants at presser” is a millionaire now. We all know he wears diapers and has massive flatulence, but who would have predicted that specific thing?
I did wonder how many less issues would have popped up if the lamp wasn’t manufactured in China. Was a little surprised it wasn’t addressed.
I'm doubtful that knowing how much politics matters, but only in a vague way, would have been enough to help them. Could someone who was obsessed with following the Trump administration's every move have predicted the tariffs in advance? I don't think financial markets priced them in?
This isn't about timing the market by being clairvoyant about the timing of a madman's tariffs.
This is about taking reasonable risk calculations as a small business with extremely high tariff exposure, when a president who did a bunch of high tariffs last time wins and election and says he'll do it again.
Sure multi-trillion-dollar financial institutions didn't run for the hills because they get paid when it goes up and paid when it goes down.
He literally said he was gonna:
"Trump vows massive new tariffs if elected, risking global economic war"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/22/trump-tra...
(https://archive.is/20231125045858/https://www.washingtonpost...)
EDIT - Found this after my post, a MUCH better "he said it":
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-president-tru...
And he did it last time too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_first_Trump_adm...
“Living under a rock” is the technical term, I believe.
This is the second article about hardware supply from China I've read and it reads very much the same, albiet in a different niche (the other one was about SBC construction) -Anything you don't specify will be done least cost, and there is no amount of "least" which cannot be chased in manufacture.
The other one noted if you don't specify the density of plastic for bags, or paper for bags and packing, you get clingfilm thinner than you thought existed, and paper which is almost tissue in its weakness. You don't even get boxes to put the boxes in, if you don't specify boxes to be delivered in boxes. So now wrapping a pallet becomes a nightmare if they don't stack. And if you don't specify how many to stack, and how to pad the stack, they won't do unit height stacking if it costs labour time. Your risk.
Some of this like the casting mistake, or the knob thing, could happen anywhere and you have to be close to final manufacture spec to find out e.g. the metal coating impinges on the knob at the free space you specified, because your test rig didn't have powder coating. Or, that a design feature you need like the light entry holes, is used by the casting engineer as pour points because it looked like you'd specified mould pour points not functional holes.
But other things like "yea, you didn't spec how long to make the tails so we cut the tails as close as we could" is just the cheapening above: if you don't SAY its a 10cm tail for the connector, it will be 2cm, if saving 8cm of cable saves money for them.
I've read some stuff which says the cost of 5 SBC boards with pre-applied SMD is now so low, you might as well order 5 so you get at least 1 which works. That means they will wind up working out your tolerance for failure, and produce goods to meet that: if 1 in 5 is viable, thats what they'll target.
As a MechE turned SWE, always a fun read when SWE try hardware.
> Blink and you’ll get a different measurement.
This means your environment is not controlled enough. Also quality control is usually done in terms of statistics. You might want to read something called gauge R&R. That being said, you should be proud of being able to ship a physical product!
As for quality checks, software quality teams pales in comparison to hardware quality teams. Mainly as you said, there’s a lot checks you can do in software. For hardware, bigger companies have to have their vendors qualified. The vendors have to follow their customer guidelines and do outgoing inspection. Then the company has a division to do incoming inspection. There’s a traveler that follows the kit (of parts) and there’s usually subassembly quality checks. Then final full build checks before it leaves the door.
Dang 560 watt draw. About the same ratio as other LED options at 90 limens per watt though.
This is super interesting, and I'd actually be quite interested in buying a 60K-Lumen lamp... but not at $1200.
Years ago, there was an HN article "You Need More Lumens"[1], which in turn led me down a rabbit hole.
I ended up purchasing:
4 standard table lamps from Target,
28 2000-lumen Cree LEDs bulbs[2] and,
4 7-way splitters[3].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957614
I did something similar, but a slightly different approach. I installed grow lights in my ceiling conches: amazon.com/dp/B07BRKT56T?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1
In my office I have 6 of these, for a total of around 13,000 lumens. It effectively 6x'd my light output for around $150. Worked wonders, especially in the PNW winter.
Just a fun random fact from me: We do need more lumens. Not for normal (non-production) indoor lighting in most situations, however, I always want a bright light for my outside lights, and I find that most 100w-equivalent (1500 lumens) are just not quite enough. 2,000 lumens is almost there, however, 2,500 lumens would be beneficial. Both 2,000 and 2,500 lumen bulbs either don't last in temperature extremes, or are super expensive. The power on time (think hours per day of use) and color of the light matters as well. In my use case, I need a bulb that can withstand long periods of time being run from dusk till dawn. I am willing to pay a decent amount for a guaranteed warranty for X years, however most bulbs of ANY amount of lumens only guarantee 1-3 hours a day for 1-5 years. When you need 7-10 hours a day, well...
Why do you need bright lights on outside all night?
Try looking into videography COBs. I would recommend something like the Zhiyun Molus G300, SmallRig RC 220B or similar.
The absolute cheapest lumens per dollar COB would be the GVM SD300D, although I highly question the reliability and light quality.
Have you seen the Philips TrueForce Core 40W LED bulbs? Not sure if they're sold in the US, but they're 4000 lumens, "last up to 15,000 hours" (whatever you make of that phrasing). They're quite huge but fit into a normal light socket. Not very expensive either.
I have a pair of PAR38 LED bulbs from Cree Lighting (2100 lumens) that are rated for 25,000 hours. They're in a flood-light mounted under the eaves of my house.
I never got around to putting them on a dusk-to-dawn timer, so they've been burning 24/7 since I purchased them at the end of 2020 (except for the occasional power outage, of course). I paid $20/each for them.
Sample size of 1 (technically 2), but there are definitely products on the market that meet your criteria.
Don't know enough about your neighborhood, and I might have misread your comment (the "under the eaves" makes me think these are outdoor)
but as someone who appreciates darkness I'd be really upset to live near someone who did this.
Unless you can keep your light on your property (as in, you are extremely rural).
why are you lighting up outside unless you are outside in the light?
The lights are indeed outdoor, and cover most of my backyard. It's a neighborhood within a major metropolitan area, but the light doesn't bleed beyond my property lines.
As for the "why", the answer is security. If someone attempts to hide in my yard, they'll find it quite difficult to remain unseen.
Most of my neighbors have floodlights of their own (though mine are easily the brightest), and I've gotten no complaints in the years I've had them. If any of my neighbors voiced concerns about them, I would try to work with them to find a solution. I have to live next to them, so it only makes sense to stay on good terms.
Relinking what I've already linked in a sibling comment, but I've just started having these die after 4 years of continuous use ~12hrs/day: amazon.com/dp/B07BRKT56T
Interestingly, 4 of the 6 that I had running all died in the same ~3mo period, but still I was pretty happy for 4 years of use for $25/ea.
I throw 200w led onto my garden. Enough to see where you are but a long way from daylight.
I've found that a 250w incandescent bulb (can be had for ~$10) paired with a 4000 lumen LED produced decent results on a budget. Search for "reptile" or "chicken" lamps, they are usually red. You can feel the HEAT from a 250w light bulb.
The only thing to watch out for is that the lamp base you're using can support the high wattage.
> Due to a miscommunication with the factory, the injection pins were moved inside the heatsink fins, causing the cylindrical extrusions below.
What happened after this? the factory have to replace the casting mold at their own expense or you have to pay for it?
Fascinating read. I didn't know $1,200 for a lamp was a thing but clearly there's a market for it and you priced it better than Coolest Cooler or I would have.
Oh hey, I have one of these! I really like it. It's quite a unique design. People (especially where it snows and gets gloomy) should have more lumens, and I'd recommend this lamp for others.
One downside is that the active fan cooling design is questionable - the air goes over the top of the LEDs, and there aren't any dedicated exit holes so the air is just squeezing through the very small gap between the glass and the heatsink. There are also blotches of paint that worsen the TIM contact between the PCB and the heatsink. I used a rotary tool to remove those blotches.
Selling a product you haven’t tested or built yet to members of the public, classic.
Well-written and valuable for insight whether you have similar personal experience or not. As someone who does hardware and software as well, I relate to the challenges of making something you can hold; it's very easy to underestimate the challenge difference between the two. Your Murphy's law references are spot on; I feel comforted reading I'm not the only one this happens to! Misery does love company, and it's important to hang on that I think, so that you don't lose hope :)
Congrats on the first batch shipment! What an accomplishment. As someone who just crossed 10 years as a first time foray into HW, I'd like to tell you it gets easier. It doesn't but keep going anyway! Good luck.
When I read the "I had no prior experience in hardware; I was counting on being able to pick it up quickly with the help of a couple of mechanical/electrical/firmware engineers" I was ready to curl up into a foetal position... the fact that the author actually got something like this manufactured and shipped is nothing short of miraculous, it's not just a board off JLPCB and a plastic case, this involves custom manufacturing of metal parts and whatnot, and I take my hat off to him for managing it.
This is also why so many crowdfunded projects fail, people go into it with no idea of how hard it is to get something to market and waaaay underestimate the time and cost. Years ago for the first project we did we took an absolute worst-case estimate, then doubled the time and cost on that. We came in on time and under budget, but only just.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why SaaS investors don’t understand how to invest in deeptech/hardtech, despite current trends. Like this guy, they have no clue about the differences in business model, except they’re not founders so they don’t go through the pain and they mostly don’t learn.
Hats off to the author for making it through! What a start to the journey!
Great read, thanks for sharing this. I'm also coming from software and have recently started making some hardware for personal use in my free time. The idea of selling it as an actual product has occurred to me, but the thought of dealing with all the logistics quickly makes me reconsider. Congrats on your launch!
Once you get your design polished, than consider partnering with a good Contract Manufacturer to do a trial run. Some will handle the ISO, CE, IC, UL and FCC paperwork for you. Make sure your Patents and Trademarks are locked down in both the manufacturing and marketed countries, or some ambitious folks will try to rip you off later. If your projected volumes attract profit sharing offers, than expect 10% to 14% of wholesale cost as a normal ask.
Tooling up a production line for even a toothbrush is well over $1.5m to get the first unit off the line. Building these factories is a different skill set, and everybody is bad at it at first.
Note hardware has a 1:6 success rate compared with service companies.
Best of luck, =3
Author here, happy to answer any questions about the journey!
Got a discount code for the HN family? ;-)
Congrats on shipping. I'm living in the EU working California hours (4pm-1am) and will definitely be buying one.
Just made one - use HN100: https://getbrighter.com/discount/HN100 :)
Do you have any recommendations for FCC/CE testing providers?
What was your marketing strategy once you had the $10 deposit landing page setup?
I definitely feel your pain. I own a company that makes custom process controls for industrial and commercial clients, and while we work from a large library of hardware and software designs from past jobs, every job has a lot of the same "start from the beginning" feel as what you went through. Especially, the one thing you didn't check is always the thing that is somehow screwed up, and the sleepless nights wondering halfway into the project if you're in deep trouble.
Ah. A lesson from somebody who's built hardware that I'm sure you've now learned: make sure connectors can't plug into eachother unless they're supposed to. Even if they're different connectors, different keying, whatever, sometimes they can still be forced together.
I'm curious, what would be the engineering challenges (either hardware or software) in making it dimmable substantially below 2500 lumens, so that it could continue to work as a primary light source when winding down after the sun goes down, rather than switching to other light sources capable of getting dimmer?
The manual version could be done with a plastic frame and some filters: https://us.rosco.com/en/products/catalog/roscolux
Miss posts like this on HN, thanks for the great write-up! I tried to launch a hardware thing like 10 years ago[1], but couldn't raise enough money. Fun experience nonetheless.
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/introducing-gameref-the-anti-cheat-h...
> It was at this point I truly began to appreciate Murphy’s law. In my case, anything not precisely specified and tested would without fail go wrong
After 20 years of system engineering, I just expected this to always be the case. Until my most recent job with a bunch of startups, where people fly by the seat of their pants, there's no communication, documentation, protection or testing, for anything. I am pissed off daily that things don't go wrong, because people now think this is normal, and it goes against everything I've learned from experience. It seems I stumbled onto the corollary of Murphy's Law: when you expect everything to go wrong, nothing does.
For someone who has no idea about light engineering or electronics if I stack two 25k Lm lamps next to each other does it make 50k Lm light?
I recently changed my car's headlamps to Chinese LED which claims to be about 37kLm and I don't know how much it is probably less than that.
Two of those lamps costee me around $24 on Amazon US (pretty sure under $10 in China).
What makes this $800+ ?
It is also illegal to use non-DOT approved lighting in the US. Was behind a jackass today with a receiver mounted accessory red light that was excessively bright and made it look like the brakes were applied.
For colours to look natural you need your white light to contain lots of different wave lengths. It’s usually measured as Ra. Artificially looking LEDs are easily 10x cheaper than photography grade LEDs. Also, this guy is probably paying taxes and handling stuff the proper legal way. If you order from Alibaba, chances are you’ll not be paying taxes. Plus if they offer a 5 year warranty, they probably need to keep some money around for repairs.
In addition to the all the other stuff, including light spectrum differences, you can't just trust that a "37000 lumen" light (cheap from China ...) is such a thing. Some examples of "100,000 lumen" flashlights that ended providing more like 2000 to 3000 lumens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_0wxzClkg
It's possible, they exist, many such LEDs are probably manufactured in China ... but the legit ones are probably more expensive, and you may need a more recognizable brand to do some QA, and keep pressure on the factory to not slip quality or inputs.
Consider the cheap screwdriver included with the lamp in this story: unexpectedly, many were more faulty than the cheapest $4 screwdriver you'd find in any hardware store. The more stories you read about manufacturing stuff in China, the more you'll see very strange things. It's not about nationality or anything, it's an extreme kind of optimization. If you didn't catch it already, maybe you didn't really need what you thought you asked for ... they're just checking/optimizing
> claims
That's all there is to it. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CJqAJ2LXw8&t=852.
Yep lumens are additive (though your eyes perceive them logarithmically).
I don't know much about car headlights, but chatgpt says high beams are typically 25-45 watts, and assuming a generous 200lm/w that gives you 5000-9000 lm.
Roughly speaking, it's expensive because it's 50 lbs & tons of electrical components (that are much higher quality than $24 headlights).
Super glad you found (and made!) a product that everyone wants. Hopefully you have brighter nights than this ..
> That was the worst period of my life; I would go to bed literally shaking with stress. In my opinion, Not Cool!
What a great idea; good luck! Also, it's nice to read a hardware story on HN (we need more breaks from AI this and AI that).
Appreciate the war stories. Is the product still available? I'd love to get one, though fortunately the first false spring of San Francisco will hopefully be followed soon by a true one.
The store is still online so I assume it must be. Let me run this by my wife haha.
If you're not afraid of DIY and it looking (much) uglier than these lamps, you can buy extremely bright "cob lights" and make something yourself: https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens
Find a garden shop, a 2' square full-spectrum light from "The Indoor Sun Shop" was very important to my mental health when I lived in Seattle and cost a lot less than this. Especially after I added a mechanical timer so I could never be too depressed to turn it on in the morning.
The $10 deposit validation approach before committing to manufacturing is underrated. So many hardware projects fail because founders fall in love with the build before confirming anyone will pay.
What stood out to me: the factory miscommunications and quality issues compound because you can't iterate as fast as software. Each mistake costs weeks and thousands of dollars.
For anyone considering hardware: if you're not getting deposits or strong signals of purchase intent before tooling up, you're basically gambling. The author's approach of getting commitments first is the right playbook.
Just a few slots down in my YC feed: the benefits of bright light
I applaud his initiative for getting this through to production but as soon the market reaches sufficient size he will find multiple Chinese competitors selling an identical product at a fraction of the price. And could well be manufactured in the same factory.
Love the intersection of geopolitics and hardware design lead times. Trade wars can be waited out why getting the design right.
580 watts..... :D. Why not work on cheap solutions to bring in natural light into darker parts of the house?
Hydrargyrum medium-src iodide lamps are an alternative (artificial sun lights for movie sets), but you'll want a good AC unit in your office
No infrared spectrum
> As someone who generally stays out of politics, I didn’t know much about the incoming administration’s stance towards tariffs, though I don’t think anyone could have predicted such drastic hikes.
I have an appreciation for very bright lamps, and the project is neat, but that stuck out to me.
I'm always fascinated by people who both feel comfortable ignoring maybe the single most impactful society-determining apparatus but will also say "no one could have seen that coming", where that is whatever they were unaware of because they chose to check out. I find the stance so fascinating because for myself, it would be impossible to not try and understand why the world is the way it is.
Everything is downstream of politics whether people want to recognize that or not, and choosing to ignore it is, in fact, a political choice.