alt Hacker NewsLessons learned shipping 500 units of my first hardware product
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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.
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
> 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?
I wonder what the end financial scenario was - did the product produce any extra money after all the errors and redone work, or was it a net loss?
Selling a product you haven’t tested or built yet to members of the public, classic.
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.
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 :)
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!
Great post. Thank you.
How/where did you find your suppliers/factories?
Author here, happy to answer any questions about the journey!
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?
You designed and sold a lamp for $1500! You’ve won a lottery!!
I want a bright lamp like this but not for $1200...any suggestions?
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.
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.
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).
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!
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+ ?
Oh 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!
Great post, I really want to see more stuff like this on HN. And congrats on shipping!
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.
50k lm is quite high. What electric power consumption does it have ? I estimate around 500 Watt, am I right ?
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.
Great write-up! Thanks for sharing your journey
Congratulations on the successful launch and excellent write-up. Hardware is fun but also much more challenging.
Just a few slots down in my YC feed: the benefits of bright light
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?
What 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.
Very interesting. I would like something like this, but not with LEDs.
> 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.