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Ask HN: Would you read lessons walking through every step of a hardware startup?

19 points by acgourley ↗ HN
I keep hearing talk about an upcoming "internet of things" and yet I see very few startups building physical products. It's no surprise though! Commercial scale production of hardware is a dark art; a unpredictable and archaic process passed down to new apprentices via direct contact.

So I want to create a site to publish (and link to) content that would teach: soldering, rework, pcb cad, assembly, plastics, textiles, packaging, production in asia, contract manufacturers, QA, import laws, selling B&M, IP concerns, etc. Furthermore I would like more technical articles giving accessible landscape views of microprocessors, wireless solutions, sensors, LCDs, etc.

Everything you would need to build and sell hardware on a commercial scale, really.

Would you read this? What topics would be most interesting?

Would you contribute?

10 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 26.2 ms ] thread
replicatorblog
I would definitely read it, but not sure about contributing. Is the goal to be like wikipedia, open sourced and vehemently anti-commerce, or to be "TechCrunch for the internet of things" where you have a daily blog with news and a more permanent "Crunchbase" database?
acgourley
I feel that the most useful information in this area isn't undisputed fact - but the opinion of experienced people. Opinions are the crystallization of experience.

Wikis don't do opinion well.

So I think the right solution is a series of lessons owned entirely by each contributor, and then a wiki-like index that organizes and contextualizes the lessons. And of course you can just RSS to all lessons, or to a specific contributor.

I think I can hack that up in drupal.

sbisker
If you're socially outgoing, I think there's a role for something as simple as "Mixergy for Makers."

I'd tune in to an interviewer with some domain expertise and the ability to tease out of people the how-did-this-really-turn-into-a-product answers that no one is really trying to find right now.

asharp
I would definitely read it. I'd be interested in anything you have to write, and probably a bit more ;)
curt
Created a guide about six months ago on this exact subject (search for manufacturing on HN people have posted the link dozens of times). Still get asked questions a few times a months on here and via email on the subject. So there is definitely interest.

Other than myself I haven't met anyone that can take a product from concept through production so you are going to need a huge contributor pool. Also it's not having the information but understanding the process and cultures your dealing with. As an example a couple months ago someone on here contacted me for an idea: the main components were an LCD and the processor. So I told him to find a manufacturer already using those parts and then design his product using their base system. That way he could get scale pricing without having to purchase huge quantities. With my experience I knew what the key components were for his concept, where to look, and who to call. I don't think you can replicate that information in a guide.

Sadly right now I'm too busy to help much. But if you hit a hurdle on a subject feel free to email me with the question.

EDITED: Added stuff

acgourley
This is the link you are talking about, I think: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840896

Edit: responding to your edit.

I think you're right that the guide would miss a piece of wisdom like that if it tried to teach in a normal top down way. Some kind of Q&A subsection may need to exist, and it may be a good source of inspiration for new lessons or case-studies that should be published.

curt
Think the Techcrunch/Crunchbase idea below is great. You might even be able to turn it into a business. If you do something along those lines I'd be glad to write an article on a subject every couple weeks.
acgourley
I'll be in touch, thanks! I personally have my own hardware startup that is my focus, so I'm not looking to monetize this. But I see how it could easily be monetized while offering readers even better information - and am open to handing it off to people who can give it the right attention it needs.
asdf_acnt
I would definitely be interested in something like this. Currently an engineering student who's messed around with FPGAs, microprocessors, assembly, circuits and the like. I find that getting good, clear and concise info for these more hardware-related pursuits is very difficult. Oftentimes I'm trying to get through an incredibly dense manual or just googling through forums of people with similar problems.

Not sure how much I could contribute but I could always share my experiences thus far. I would be an interested consumer for whatever you're doing with respect to hardware startup info though.

Mz
I read the book "Fab" a few years back and really liked it. I imagine I would drop by occasionally if I knew of such a site. Would be happy to get hooked and make it more than occasional, if it turned out that way.