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Lessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
- jwr 8mo agoCongratulations, you did very well! And I mean it, as someone who has experience building hardware (also in China), you came out pretty much unscathed and did extremely well for a first timer. Good job!
- sberens 8mo agoAuthor here, happy to answer any questions about the journey!
- Neywiny 8mo agoSo just to confirm, the actual cause for the controls not working is still unknown to the reader but the reason the measurements didn't make sense was swapped labels?
- sberens 8mo agoThe controls weren't working because we had wired them up according to the labels which were wrong (which is also why the measurements didn't make sense to us).
- Neywiny 8mo agoAh. 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.
- abdullahkhalids 8mo agoI built a lot of Ikea last month. And I was just marveling how cleverly designed everything was so that it was quite difficult to put two wrong pieces together. Mostly, the only warnings in the manuals were to rotate a piece correctly.
- sowbug 8mo agoThis is good advice for robust design, but I swear, 9 times out of 10, you will be the one who keys it the wrong way during CAD layout.
- tuetuopay 8mo agoI've seen datacenter techs successfully force an SFP optic in an RJ45 port. So yeah, the shape needs to be very different.
- fxtentacle 8mo agoDo you have any recommendations for FCC/CE testing providers?
- rxt_ian 8mo agoI'm really curious how they handled certification of a design that was changing apaprently up to the minute it was delivered...
- XRG 8mo agoMy first guess was that they used an external brick for the power supply with a relatively low output voltage--that would eliminate a lot of the CE test load. However, a cursory glance at the product photos suggests the power supply sits within the base of the lamp. Maybe the product developer can shed some more light on this. ;-)
- rxt_ian 8mo agoThat would certainly make certification easier, but as I suspect you understand, wouldnt achieve it alone. Even if every component was CE qualified, the combination would have to pass its own testing, plus there are a lot more to the standards than just not electrocuting you immediately upon contact. I can't see any of the energy efficiency labelling that would be required in the UK or EU for example...
- fxtentacle 8mo ago1. there's no official mention of any CE / FCC certification 2. I asked shortly after the author offered to answer questions, but there was no response I'm starting to wonder if this project maybe just shipped without CE / FCC certification because they didn't know it would be required.
- rxt_ian 8mo agoIn the absence of any evidence to the contrary it certainly seems likely. Pretty concerning for such a high power device.
- ishyfishyy 8mo agoWhat was your marketing strategy once you had the $10 deposit landing page setup?
- technothrasher 8mo agoI 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.
- dickfickling 8mo agoGot 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.
- srtw 8mo agoJust curious about the frequency of the diodes and do they pulse simultaneously? Quite often I can perceive flicker in moving objects indoors.
- sberens 8mo agoWe use constant current reduction dimming so there's zero flicker!
- srtw 8mo agoThat’s great to hear and a big plus, but I’m actually curious about the undimmed full brightness refresh rate of the LEDs.
- shadowpho 8mo agoIsn’t that less efficient in power and can have different color?
- SPICLK2 7mo agoIt has to be an SMPSU in constant current mode, not a linear power supply. I'm sure it does still affect the colour, though.
- SPICLK2 7mo agoHave you measured the ripple on the SMPSU output when dimming?
- niobe 8mo agoHello, nice write up. I'm curious about your deal with the factory and downstream suppliers.. did all these iterations and fixes cost more every time? Or it was a fixed contract? How does that all work
- necovek 8mo agoBeing 6'5" myself, I am worried I'd be blinded by the lamp when I stand up: to avoid adding a base under (an already bulky) base, is there a way to separate the lamp itself and have it wall/ceiling mounted (still pointing upwards)?
- sberens 8mo agoBecause the lamp is 6'3" it's only below eye level for people who are 6'7-8. We had another 6'5" customer who was worried about the height but they said it was totally fine even with shoes on.
- necovek 8mo agoThanks for confirmation, but anatomies of people, especially at the p5/p95 extremes, can be widely different: maybe I've got a very small head with a short forehead :) So in a sense, I'd still like an option to mount it differently and more out of the way before splurging €1.2k + ~30% customs/VAT on something like this. This even prompted me to check out comparable video fill lights on Aliexpress, and they also run around $1k (some at $500 with possibly a few gotchas about actual light output) for comparable luminosity/wattage, so your price is actually not too shabby.
- stbtrax 8mo agoHow did you figure out how to price your product?
- mkeeter 8mo agoWhich NRTL did you end up using for certifications? Can you say more about that process?
- scld 8mo agoDid you find your CM through your own network? Tradeshows? Cold calling?
- mircerlancerous 8mo agoWell-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 :)
- sberens 8mo agoThanks :) It turns out "hardware is hard" isn't an exaggeration!
- kingforaday 8mo agoCongrats 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. https://blog.iotdef.com/celebrating-10-years/ https://blog.iotdef.com/celebrating-10-years/
- pseudohadamard 8mo agoWhen 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.
- sberens 8mo ago
- dmwood 8mo agoJust a few slots down in my YC feed: the benefits of bright light https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00373-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00373-9
- atif089 8mo agoFor 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+ ?
- atif089 8mo agoJust to add context those are just dumb lamps and I acknowledge that the product here has a lot more features including IoT support and the ability to change Hue. Is it the ability to change Hue that makes this expensive?
- sberens 8mo agoThe main cost driver is the sheer size/weight/power. Dimmability, adjustable CCT, and smart home controls do add a decent chunk though.
- fxtentacle 8mo agoFor 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.
- sberens 8mo agoYep 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).
- mint5 8mo ago
- MagicMoonlight 8mo agoSelling a product you haven’t tested or built yet to members of the public, classic.
- AlotOfReading 8mo agoThat's a pretty ungenerous take. Pushing timelines back doesn't solve the fundamental issue that you don't know what you're going to get when you submit that first large order. I've seen many situations where the samples and the manufacturing are completely different, even produced in different factories. They didn't do everything perfectly, but this looks like a normal learning curve for product manufacturing. Textile manufacturing would be even steeper.
- BrenBarn 8mo agoIt's way more than just pushing timelines back. The person took $400k from people without knowing anything about how to provide what those people had already paid for.
- MaxikCZ 8mo agoI especially liked the "we tested the lamp we sold as 50k lumens to find out it only did 39k". Like, how do you even go setting up a product page for a product whose main selling point you didnt even test before?
- 8mo ago
- stack_framer 8mo agoWhat 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).
- nicoburns 8mo agoOh boy, I want one of these. This would absolutely perfect for winter depression (I suspect much better than the "SAD lamps" marketed for this purpose which are bright not even close to this bright). But £889 is a lot of money for a lamp!
- egypturnash 8mo agoFind 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.
- riotnrrd 8mo agoIf 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 https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens
- MrBuddyCasino 8mo agoNot even DIY, the 600W 92000 lm "UFO lamp" is just 170€: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DD4J7GMC/?tag=meaningness-20&th=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DD4J7GMC/?tag=meaningness-20&th=... Basically a hanging version of the "Brighter" lamp.
- fnordian_slip 8mo agoI have the Amaran 200d S, which is about 250 pounds I think. It's not as stylish, but has not only a CRI of 96+, but more importantly an SSI (D56) of 87+, which is hard to beat imho. I rather like the way it releases concentrated light towards you, as the sun does through a window, but not everyone wants harsh shadows. At the same time, the reflector makes the 20.000 lumens feel like a lot more, as the light doesn't have to illuminate the whole room, just where you're sitting.
- xandrius 8mo agoRecipe for winter depression (works almost anywhere except for Antarctica): - Go for a daily walk outdoors after lunch - Get some vitamin D supplements
- atentaten 8mo agoVery interesting. I would like something like this, but not with LEDs.
- conormccarter 8mo agoHydrargyrum medium-src iodide lamps are an alternative (artificial sun lights for movie sets), but you'll want a good AC unit in your office
- kens 8mo agoI thought hydragyrum was a made-up word, but it's the Latin word for mercury, which explains the Hg chemical symbol. (Just in case anyone finds this interesting.)
- MostlyStable 8mo agoVery curious why you want to avoid LEDs
- piskov 8mo agoNo infrared spectrum https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-35389-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-35389-6
- carsoon 8mo agoYou can buy IR and UV leds. All high end grow lights have these for plants. Low quality cheap led products won't include them but that is nothing to do with LEDs themselves that is just consumer preference and price conformance.
- piskov 8mo agoI just use a few incandescent lights in every room to fill the “blancs” of LEDs spectrum
- fix4fun 8mo ago50k lm is quite high. What electric power consumption does it have ? I estimate around 500 Watt, am I right ?
- ceroxylon 8mo agoGood estimate, the official website for the lamp says 580W
- thomascountz 8mo ago580W https://getbrighter.com/ https://getbrighter.com/
- sberens 8mo agoIt's 60k lumens now, and it draws 580W off the wall
- OsrsNeedsf2P 8mo agoSuper 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!
- sberens 8mo agoThanks! The ups and downs of startups are very real (maybe doubly so for hardware)
- waerhert 8mo agoGreat 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!
- Joel_Mckay 8mo agoOnce 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
- Animats 8mo agoThe lack of UL approval is a concern. This thing draws over 500 watts and runs hot.
- dvt 8mo agoMiss 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-hardware/ https://www.pcgamer.com/introducing-gameref-the-anti-cheat-h...
- nebezb 8mo agoThis is a great idea. What was your biggest blocker?
- 0xbadcafebee 8mo ago> 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.
- ArcaneMoose 8mo agoGreat write-up! Thanks for sharing your journey
- lastdong 8mo agoCongratulations on the successful launch and excellent write-up. Hardware is fun but also much more challenging.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- johng 8mo agoWhat a great article. It's amazing to see how many simple things can go wrong, and I'm sure there could have been more. Great work keeping your tenacity up and sticking through it.
- cwal37 8mo ago> 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.
- skybrian 8mo agoI'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?
- mmh0000 8mo agoHe 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-trade-tariffs/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/22/trump-tra... (https://archive.is/20231125045858/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/08/22/trump-trade-tariffs/ 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-trumps-new-trade-plan-to-protect-american-workers https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-president-tru...
- throwup238 8mo agoAnd he did it last time too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_first_Trump_administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_the_first_Trump_adm... “Living under a rock” is the technical term, I believe.
- huydotnet 8mo ago> 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?
- sberens 8mo agoWe had to remake half the mold, and I split it 50/50 with the factory.
- mmh0000 8mo agoThis 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]. The end result is somewhere around 56,000 lumens. And I LOVE it. Makes me much happier in my home office, especially in the winter months. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957614 [2] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08H4RJQTT https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08H4RJQTT [3] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FKIE6M4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FKIE6M4
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoCurious if LEDs can really match the black-body that is our sun (and therefore incandescents). I would get/build such a thing for my mental health, but I worry the LED illumination will be counter-productive.
- jedbrooke 8mo agoI'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.
- syncsynchalt 8mo agoLook for the CRI rating of bulbs that you buy. It's a measurement of how close to a blackbody spectrum the bulb is putting out, the highest fidelity being 100. Note that this is not the temperature measurement, and you can have e.g. 2700K or 5000K bulbs with high CRI. Newer LED phosphors are typically 90+ CRI, and I commonly find 93 CRI bulbs available off the shelf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index
- hollerith 8mo ago
- JoshTriplett 8mo agoI'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?
- mhb 8mo agoThe manual version could be done with a plastic frame and some filters: https://us.rosco.com/en/products/catalog/roscolux https://us.rosco.com/en/products/catalog/roscolux
- robertvc 8mo agoGreat post, I really want to see more stuff like this on HN. And congrats on shipping!
- Soerensen 8mo agoThe $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.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- arjie 8mo agoAppreciate 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.
- mandeepj 8mo agoYou designed and sold a lamp for $1500! You’ve won a lottery!!
- lofaszvanitt 8mo ago580 watts..... :D. Why not work on cheap solutions to bring in natural light into darker parts of the house?
- repiret 8mo agoAs someone who recently replaced a few windows in my house, I can say in no uncertain terms that spending $1200 for a lamp and paying to feed it 0.58kW is cheaper than hiring a contractor to add another window. And it works all day.
- libpcap 8mo agoThat's a lot of wattage.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo agoWhat is a cheap solution to bring natural light into the house when it's dark outside?
- hahahahhaah 8mo agoLove the intersection of geopolitics and hardware design lead times. Trade wars can be waited out why getting the design right.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo agoWhile true, who knows how long said trade war will last for? And in that time you're paying for storage / other expenses, your investors are waiting (although Kickstarter backers are often pretty patient), etc. And they got the design right, insofar as they could see at that point, hence having 500 units built. In a lot of cases you can't have a single unit built as a one-off.
- mrbluecoat 8mo agoFascinating 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.
- numbers 8mo agoI want a bright lamp like this but not for $1200...any suggestions?
- lazyeye 8mo agoI 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.
- wferrell 8mo agoGreat post. Thank you. How/where did you find your suppliers/factories?
- syntaxing 8mo agoAs 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.
- dcreater 8mo ago> terms of statistics. You might want to read something called gauge R&R I think the first thing to focus on is the stats portion - do you have appropriate FAI/SPC/OQC with Cpk requirements defined? Gauge R&R plays a much smaller role, especially in something that is relative
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- bigwheels 8mo agoI'm curious about the final financial outcome: after all the rework, mistakes, and learning costs, did the project end up net positive, or was it ultimately a loss?
- BitsAndObjects 8mo agoAnd 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!
- Scene_Cast2 8mo agoOh 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.
- sberens 8mo agoGlad you like it - we're working on improving the airflow right now actually! Thanks for the feedback on the paint.
- phasetransition 8mo agoWhat is your TIM? Do you have a facing secondary on the interface surface? What finishing process, thickness, overspray, masking requirements does your drawing package specify?
- ggm 8mo agoThis 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.
- paul_n 8mo agoDo you happen to remember where you read that article about SBC construction? I’d be interested in reading it
- ggm 8mo agoIt was a HN post several years ago. I will try and find it. I think it was one of the many threads off "Bunnie Huang's Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen" because the specific incident I can't find. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=guide+shenzhen https://hn.algolia.com/?q=guide+shenzhen
- eutropia 8mo agoIt's a damn fine lamp. Really makes a huge difference for feeling energetic and productive! I experienced exactly what the author mentioned with the white lamp, but the support was top notch. Glad to see the details!
- dmitrygr 8mo agoI bought one of these for my sister. They are well build and precisely as bright as promised. If you desire a very bright light source, this is it.
- relaxing 8mo agoThere are hundreds of articles in this genre from years of failed Kickstarters and Maker-types selling DIY hardware kits. How you get funding for a hardware startup without cursory research into this is staggering.
- Cthulhu_ 8mo ago"cursory" implies fairly shallow / quick looking into it - given they have delivered, I'd say they met that benchmark. And the funding is obvious, through Kickstarter. There's demand for high intensity lamps (and other hardware projects), a lot fail but some succeed, and lessons are learned. And not just by the people starting these projects, a big part of why these projects start in the first place is because the manufacturers make it accessible too.
- camel_gopher 8mo agoDang 560 watt draw. About the same ratio as other LED options at 90 limens per watt though.
- killbot5000 8mo agoThat lamp is a nightmare to someone with migraines.
- andershaig 8mo agoI have one of these - it's awesome, I love it and I think it's an incredible success for a first hardware product. My takeaway from reading this is that caring about building a great product made a huge difference in how your first 500 units landed. Now the next batch gets to come with all those learnings. I'm sure there will be more challenges as well but as long as you keep focusing on the experience you're delivering, I'm sure you'll continue to get past them
- marai2 8mo agoSince you’re already done creating your hardware product instead of thinking of a new product to follow up with, I would suggest a new business model: there are probably a non-zero number of people on HN that have a vision about making a hardware product. You can offer your services so the don’t have to learn all these lessons the hard way!
- winrid 8mo agoHardware startups are such a pain in the ass One recent run fun issue I had was a pneumatic timer that worked fine in testing in the shop and outside my house But once in the field the sun heated up the tube enough to trigger the sensor and get stuck in an on state requiring a plug on one end with a hole big enough to let the pressure out but small enough to let pressure trigger the sensor
- manmtstream 8mo agoThis is really cool, and I saw the claim that it can "replicate the sun's spectrum". Do you have any measurements to share of the spectrum?
- acyou 8mo agoWhat was the tooling cost for the 2 ton mold?
- absynth 8mo agoI'd like other war stories like this on HN. Considering this is a YC website I'd expect more.
- jkestner 8mo agoYou might like the updates from my current project. It’s got it all—-tariff surprises, flaky suppliers, switching manufacturing processes midstream, and most of all, the slog: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/pickup-is-a-sensor-power-tool/posts https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/pickup-... Pixels dice have also been going on a “fun” journey with the weight of a huge crowdfunding raise. I’ve been following their updates with sympathy: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixels-dice/pixels-the-electronic-dice/posts https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixels-dice/pixels-the-...
- joeyguerra 8mo agoHow did you get people to visit that 1st landing page where they could pay a $10 deposit?
- phasetransition 8mo agoFun read, especially for someone who used to lead engineering for an industrial luminaire manufacturer. PPAP were developed to help tackle this sort of thing in a somewhat uniform way, but vendor diligence can take many other forms, too.
- dbacar 8mo ago580w. So long for the low-power leds then :)
- pinkmuffinere 8mo agoI would not advise jumping to mass production for your first deliveries, i think your story would have had less stress and more lower risk of failure of the first n (maybe 10?) units was bespoke, made lovingly by hand in a machine shop somewhere. I don’t think this is unusual advice, it matches the ethos of the lean startup, and pg’s “do things that don’t scale”. We made our first hardware by hand, i believe we did 15 units. I remember my cofounder broke down because he couldn’t take the pressure of receiving fifteen orders and now we had to make FIFTEEN by hand, lol. But we were able to figure out SO MANY issues before mass production. And of course even then many slipped through
- lylejantzi3rd 8mo agoThe product in question has a cast part. How do you do that in low quantity by yourself? Sand casting?
- bartlettD 8mo agoI'd CNC machine that part, which is much more expensive in-quantity than the casting option but for a handful of prototypes gets you there quickly.
- phasetransition 8mo agoThere are a number of pressureless casting techniques available. Investment casting is widely used, for instance. https://www.harmonycastings.com/ https://www.harmonycastings.com/ is a fancier example. For this specific application, the manufacturing method determines the porosity of the material, and therefore the heat transfer. CNC prototype parts will have better heat transfer than pressure die cast, and the pressure die cast will perform better than pressureless cast parts.
- NooneAtAll3 8mo agoI wander what's the cost of (renting) metal 3D printers nowadays
- Joel_Mckay 7mo ago
- aabajian 8mo agoI don't know enough about lighting, but if I bought five of these, would I reach 50,000 lumens? Is it just additive? This would cost $250. https://www.harborfreight.com/10000-lumen-4-ft-linkable-diamond-plate-led-hanging-shop-light-56780.html https://www.harborfreight.com/10000-lumen-4-ft-linkable-diam... Also, if you've ever been in a Walmart or Forever 21 at night, you'll know that constant LED white light is probably not the best thing for your eyes.
- resonantjacket5 8mo agogenerally it's the opposite. people need a lot more light. an overcast window is like 50k+ lumens while a light bulb is like 500 lumens. https://myopiainstitute.org/imi-whitepaper/imi-the-role-of-light-in-refractive-error-development-and-myopia/ https://myopiainstitute.org/imi-whitepaper/imi-the-role-of-l... lack of light is generally the leading hypothesis for why there is a myopia epidemic actually. from people being indoors most of the time for school or work. though unfortunately scientists are still researching if it is a specific frequency of light etc... people are missing
- mrheosuper 8mo agoYes. But it would look ugly, and does not have "smart" features. whether or not it's worth it depends on user.
- bytesandbits 8mo agoI will never understand why when you expect to sell a few hundred units of a product at most, you would decide to go and build something in china. There are instances where building in china might make sense. this is not one of them! you can easily hand assemble everything yourself in America, since this was a 1-year long time-frame. There is phenomenal CNC shops in the east coast (and also some in the mid-west) if you don't mind the lead times. You don't have to deal with tariffs, imports, and more importantly THEY SPEAK YOUR LANGUAGE. Yes this sounds dumb. Like, with Google Translate you shouldn't have a problem no? Think again! From my experience with Chinese metallurgic, they are clumsy and often mess up even straight forward designs. Yes, they are fast, but at what cost! They will redo it as many times as you need. But the headache, man the headache of dealing with it is not worth it. On the other hand some of the issues here are expected and fun! well maybe not fun, but part of the process, like the swapped components in the board. it happens to the best of us and that's okay! but it would always be easier to debug when you can drive yourself to the CNC factory, or at least have a video call with the tech in your own language. Also, regulations in china is whole different world and not at all straightforward to navigate for westerners, at all. I really don't like that people turn directly to china cause "that's what everyone does anyway". nu-uh. also, China is not the only option! Eastern Europe, such as Poland, can get you there too for reasonable prices, and have tons of phenomenal electronics and manufacturing engineers. Tons.
- KolmogorovComp 8mo agoI assume they plan/hope to sell much more than 500 units, and/or the profit margin is much higher with China manufacturing.
- numpad0 8mo ago> Due to a miscommunication with the factory, the injection pins were moved inside the heatsink fins, causing the cylindrical extrusions below. Never done casting let alone worked with Chinese factory to ship hundreds of units but: this sounds potentially intentional at factory's end. It's plausible that these fins didn't pass factory guy's manufacturability gut DRC who would made changes thinking the customer would just give in. IIUC molding people in general don't like corners and narrow channels with no sprues and/or gas escapes. Especially the outer ring of pins appear to be exactly where they like to place sprues. I wonder how this problem was eventually solved. The final product seem to retain the number, height, draft angles of the fins, but fillet radii appear to have increased(2mm -> 5mm?) and the entire body shows more material shrinkage at the outer edge of the body as well. Was it just no pins and higher defect rate, or something else entirely?
- b1temy 8mo agoThis article reminds me of some of the stories in the "The Hardware Hacker" book by Andrew Huang [0], which went a bit about the author's experience in Shenzhen manufacturing some hardware. There are a bit over similarities with the article, like miscommunications occurring or needing to specify in exact terms what is required. But I think it is slightly different now, the stories in the book was from a while ago and in shenzhen instead of zhongsan, so I am sure things have changed, and this article is more up to date. [0] Despite the title, it is not entirely solely about hacking in the security sense. But also the traditional use of the word "hacker".
- BrenBarn 8mo agoThe article starts by saying that the person took $400k of orders without knowing how to make the product he had just sold, nor any experience that would help him do so. What?
- ApolloFortyNine 8mo agoHow did you find factories, and trustworthy ones at that, at all? I know you mentioned just being happy that the factory existed at all, but I'm doubting you just found someones email and then wired them cash? Previous experience? Or you know someone? To me that always seems like 90% of the battle with manufacturing.
- jd3 8mo agoI stopped reading when I realized it wasn't a deep dive into the most interesting question I had, which is the technical hardware design process and finding a factory to actually take your design and manufacture it.
- tuananh 8mo agoi'm curious what are use cases for a lamp this bright?
- jacquesm 8mo agoPlaces where the sun doesn't always shine.
- gloosx 8mo agoI would be quite scared to have such a monster lamp near me indoors. I mean, 60k lumens can cause temporary blindness, disorientation, and potentially retinal damage. It's near the welding arc territory at this point.
- crazygringo 8mo agoIt bounces off the ceiling and so is massively diffused. You definitely don't look at it directly.
- gloosx 7mo agoBut there is a non-zero chance it will not stand straight 100% of the time? Pets, earthquakes, human shoulders, you name it, something can throw this thing off balance. Plus, there are people higher than 6'3", people on the ladders, children on the shoulders, and they all can pretty much look at it directly from above.
- tokyobreakfast 8mo agoFor all the complaining about tariffs and all the woes of manufacturing in China, much of this could have been avoided by manufacturing in the US. Or even Canada or Mexico. There is literally nothing here that requires Chinese supply chain magic, it's just penny shaving. This isn't Apple where you need 80 million bespoke screws manufactured for your device overnight, which can only be done by slave labor supply chain in any reasonable time and quantity. This is really basic mechanical and electrical engineering and could be built anywhere. Cost is not an issue because anyone willing to pay $1200 for a god damn floor lamp would surely pay $1500 (and have the satisfaction of keeping your fellow neighbors employed). Anyone that has ever manufactured anything in China—or India for that matter—knows unless you spec every little detail and dimension and tolerance it WILL be ignored and violated. Whereas in the US & Canada there is a different level of workmanship and culture where you might get a phone call instead of a box of weldments bent 30° in the wrong direction because the drawing didn't say it couldn't. And you probably could have visited the factories a half dozen times before starting production (did you really not plan on building prototypes?)
- mrheosuper 8mo ago>anyone willing to pay $1200 for a god damn floor lamp would surely pay $1500 Not 100% true. With $1200 it has wider market reach than $1500. There are still people spend $1500 for a floor lamp, but 100% it will be fewer if it was priced at $1200. Also pricing it too high means higher chance a clone will exist, because they can copy literally 1:1 and price it a little lower. Another thing in China is they move fast. As long as you have enough money, the time to market is insanely short.
- tokyobreakfast 8mo agoMaybe the sarcasm was lost in translation but a $1200 lamp is out of reach (or out of the question) for most people. A Juicero of lamps. I feel sorry for the guy because in a way you're right, clones of this will be going for $60 on AliExpress, probably built in the same factory with the same tooling.
- simgt 8mo ago
- ryanm101 8mo agoI worked for a manufacturing firm years ago and a director once told me 30 was the magic number. Order 30 units and the error rate will scale from there if for example you get 3 in 30 broken you'll have about 10% broken no matter how many you order.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- 4gotunameagain 8mo agoI am amazed that someone dared to list a lamp for $1200, that it sold that many units, and then proceeded to ship sub 1 dollar shitty screwdrivers with it. Had I ordered a $1200 lamp and received a $0.1 screwdriver with it, I would be livid. I guess it goes to show in what kind of an inflationary environment we live in.
- zkmon 8mo agoThis is simply amazing. The pricing per lamp (1200 or 1500?) - how did you arrive at that? And which segment of the population are buying this powerful corner lamp?
- rxt_ian 8mo agoI'm curious that this story seems to be missing a big part of hardware design - certification. It seems like the design was being changed up to the minute these were shipped to customers, so it doesn't seem possible that any testing was carried out on the final design?
- nickvec 8mo agoYeah, I was confused on that front as well. Unclear why a prototype wasn’t initially made by the factory to be vetted and approved before producing hundreds of lamps.
- faeyanpiraat 8mo agoThere was a different lamp startup article kind of recently, where they talked about this, and if I remember correctly they needed to run the lamp for like 1000 hours straight for it to receive some kind of certification. I could search for it if you want to read about that.
- phasetransition 8mo agoGiven that these went straight to backers, and would have required the final die cast parts to test in the thermal chamber, they probably had not gone to an NRTL at the point the article had been written. This product is about at the point of DVT in development flow, and therefore would be sent to testing about now. But, instead, being sent to backers. PS, not a hypothetical circumstance for me. I've previously certified a number of luminaires under UL and CB Scheme. I was the technical chair of ANSI C136.37 for several years, and on the working groups of several other standards.
- rxt_ian 8mo agoTotally agree, I've also done electronic design work in the lighting industry, though not enough to end up on any standards body. I was trying to ask in as charitable way as possible...
- logotype 8mo agoI never ever buy any crowdfunded product, because the moron that makes it always offshores production to China. I support local businesses, with a local supply chain. Please do that too, it’s how we get a better future!
- Cthulhu_ 8mo agoInsults / name calling aside, can products like this even be manufactured domestically? Is there a US based LED manufacturer, for starters? Cables / connectors? Final assembly? And do the ones that make the bespoke parts and final assembly even take orders for 500 units like this one? I want to support local manufacturing too, but in many cases the choice isn't there. The Trump dictatorship's tariffs are an attempt to "encourage" this manufacturing back to the US, but redeveloping the factories and supply chains will take years - if there's even people willing to commit to it, because despite high import tariffs, it's still cheaper to import things. And even if it wasn't, it'd still be cheaper and easier to go through a 3rd party and back channels, or to a country not affected as much by the import tariffs. Whole manufacturing lines are / have been moved to e.g. Vietnam or India to avoid the tariffs, and that's still cheaper than moving to the US.
- monegator 8mo ago>In March, after $400k in sales through our crowdfunding campaign, I had to figure out how to manufacture 500 units for our first batch. >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. And i wish this kind of people to fail miserably. Too many times they tried to make me the scapegoat for their bullshit project, already sold on paper but with nothing more than a render to show, now looking for an hardware guy to point the finger at to blame
- urbandw311er 8mo agoThis feels a bit harsh! I get the impression that the author considered their project far more carefully than this, especially given the Ben Kuhn blog posts they say that they were inspired by.
- brador 8mo agoLeave behind 1 prototype fully assembled and 1 prototype disassembled. Day 1 of product manufacturing class.
- sbt567 8mo agoAfter watching the dubai lamp videos on YouTube, I wonder how many hours this lamp will last
- morbusfonticuli 8mo agoThis reminded of the YouTube guy of "Smarter Every Day" who tried to manufacture a a grill brush completely in USA and still be competitive in the marketplace (i.e. China) [0]. It turned out that USA / "the west" lost the engineering knowledge to manufacture "stuff" (in this case injection molding and other procedures): Nowadays, we simply create the plans and schematics (e.g. CAD files) and let the Chinese do the building. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
- TheJoeMan 8mo agoSlightly more nuanced, I think we no longer have domestic industries making the components for the machines that make stuff. Many machine shops have Haas mills, but lots of Haas's suppliers are overseas. Regarding injection molding, we actually have better suppliers for the prototyping phases such as https://www.protolabs.com/ https://www.protolabs.com/ .
- RataNova 8mo agoWhat China really has is not just cheap labor but dense, living industrial ecosystems
- aemerson_ 8mo agoWell done on shipping. Reading this gave me PTSD of shipping our first hardware product at a similar scale. It was a tough experience but you'll have learned a huge amount and be much better equipped for the second time (if you choose to keep going). I found the biggest takeaway is planning for things to go wrong in advance and building enough slack into the process so that you can accommodate some setbacks.
- MORPHOICES 8mo ago[dead]
- codyZ 8mo agoI have no productive words to share other than positive feelings and kind empathy to you @sberens. I've gone through this manufacturing route in China before about 10 years ago and...it has largely been the same. Even with near native fluency in Mandarin and Cantonese did not spare me from this experience. Good luck and I looking forward to purchasing one on your next run - its been on my radar for a very long time!
- septune 8mo agoYou’re missing one important point: radiated power scales with the fourth power of temperature. Could it be that xAI has a chip capable of operating at very high temperatures?
- mtlynch 8mo agoCongrats on launching your first 500 units! I had a similar experience. I quit my job as a SWE at Google and built a hardware product on top of the Raspberry Pi.[0] I don't really have anything helpful to add, but I relate a lot to all of the gotchas you encountered. Shipping a hardware product made me appreciate software so much more, especially SaaS products where you can ship a fix immediately. With hardware, it's painfully easy to make a mistake and not realize it for 3-6 months. And by that point, you have this whole manufacturing pipeline you have to halt and unwind. And with overseas manufacturing, tariffs, and shipping costs, you can't even unwind some of this stuff, and you just end up with useless material that you paid 5-6 figures for. We're definitely spoiled in the software world with the relative ease of fixing bugs. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23927380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23927380
- stale-labs 8mo ago[flagged]
- RataNova 8mo agoEven with all the pain, getting real units into real people's homes is still kind of magical
- graybeardhacker 8mo ago"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." Except those with ears and/or eyes.
- vjvjvjvjghv 8mo ago[flagged]
- wredcoll 8mo agoYou mean the president famous for illogical and incoherent tantrums and a complete lack of understanding of policy? You're right, completely out of the blue.
- delecti 8mo agoThings are maybe worse (more chaotic and incompetent) than I expected, but I think his first term showed him to be extremely capricious. I'm not going to say that I predicted it, but it was definitely predictable.
- albedoa 8mo agoBecoming the "nobody could have predicted this" meme is definitely a choice.
- fleroviumna 8mo ago[dead]
- sandworm101 8mo agoA really bright lamp? I want one. I have to get up at 3am for work many mornings. This would be great for helping me to wake up. Checking store ... 1300 ... um ... no. I can buy a professional LED lighting rig, the stuff used to film movies, for cheaper.
- jacquesm 8mo agoThat's a neat product. You can expect it to be copied within a day or two of this announcement. How much power does one of these consume?
- ortusdux 8mo agoQ: How much power does the lamp use? A: 580 Watts from the wall
- SPICLK2 8mo agoHave you taken surface temperature measurements of the heat sink? A ~600W hot plate suspended at eye level is no joke, and certainly dangerous if it fell over or someone tripped onto it. For that matter, have you taken any temperature measurements with the unit on its side, to see what would happen if it was knocked over?
- akerl_ 8mo agoThis reminds me of the Keyboard.io blog, where they documented their experience with the same kind of issues: https://shop.keyboard.io/blogs/news/day-743 https://shop.keyboard.io/blogs/news/day-743 Notably: > When we got back, we watched as the laser engraving technician printed out a copy of our alignment template, deleted all of the guide lines from the file, imported the legends into the laser engraving software, and proceeded to try to eyeball the correct label placement. > Going in, we were annoyed at how far off the legends were. In retrospect, it’s astonishing how good his manual placement was.
- diebillionaires 8mo ago580 watts is more than my entire server rack. By a good amount too. I run a UPS, firewall appliance, two switches, two APs (over POe), and a NAS with a 36 HHD disk shelf. All of that clocks in at 380 watts steady. Just some food for thought.
- rxt_ian 8mo agoYup this is a very inefficient way of reaching a target illuminance. Multiple sources spread over an area would be more efficient, as each LED could run at lower current and temperature, which increases their efficacy. The light would also not have to bounce off ceilings/walls multiple times, while some are nice for diffusion, every reflection is lossy. I suspect you’d also get better reliability.
- GoodluckH 8mo agoI’m also a software engineer running a hardware e-commerce business on the side. The hardest lesson for me was unlearning 'logic' in favor of psychology. I recently ran an experiment where I increased prices by 50%, and sales volume actually went up. It’s wild how much copy and creative assets can alter perceived value, allowing you to justify a higher price point for the exact same physical product
- RataNova 8mo agoHow many of the failures weren't engineering problems, but interface problems between humans: missing labels on drawings, ambiguous cable lengths, assumptions about powder coating thickness, etc
- dwa3592 8mo agoholy crap, this lamp costs $1200??? i couldn't focus on the article after reading price tag and instead went in a 'why this lamp has to be this expensive' search mode.
- btbuildem 8mo ago> As someone who generally stays out of politics Such a wildly privileged take. Unrelated: why offshore this? Why not end-to-end local development and production?
- Taek 8mo agoI'm late to this thread but I've manufactured about a dozen SKUs and I think you could have saved an enormous amount of grief with one simple step: If you are American, and you are manufacturing 500 units, do it in America. Yes, it's more expensive per-unit, but at 500 units you don't need a tiny per-unit cost. American manufacturing is more flexible, higher agency, and people tend to adapt to underspecified instructions better. The communication loops are stronger. That said, America has enormous tradeoffs. If you need 10,000 of a part in 4 hours because something weird happened, China can make it happen. America... might take months. But if your batch size is 500, it's better for an American living in America to cut their teeth on American manufacturing and go to China when you need 10,000+ units per run.
- lima 8mo ago500 was just their first batch.
- ingend88 8mo agoHow have the overall reviews been ? I love the idea and the product!
- justanotherunit 7mo agoI am not affiliated with them at all, but https://getencube.com https://getencube.com tries to remove a lot of friction for just these cases and reduce costs. I met their founder a couple of months back, great engineer and a really cool product
- lynguist 7mo agoI’m so jealous of you. You can just go and make a product as if it was software, with no “respect” to boundaries and restrictions, even though you’re not even in the lamp business. And then you have a China contact, and China can just manufacture anything as if it was software, but it’s a real life physical object. And the commitment, the fearlessness, the rudeness of just making it work. I believe people like you will become very rich (because you’re so compatible with money making), but I have a prejudice that you lack depth in your understanding and intentions. I almost never feel jealous but while reading your blog I could feel this feeling of freedom of creating that I seek and I couldn’t help but. Congratulations.
- XCSme 7mo agoWow, $1,200 for an LED lamp