When hardware Kickstarters ship

http://engineering.koalasafe.com/when-kickstarters-ship/

by steven_pack • 11 years ago

169 87 11 years ago

engineering.koalasafe.com

Congrats on shipping! I would be very interested to know more details about what you learned from your experience with selecting a manufacturing partner. A former client of mine had his business destroyed when his manufacturing partner in China basically stole his prototype and cut him out of the picture. What steps did you take to vet the company you partnered with?

steven_pack8• 11 years ago

Thanks! The vetting was a process of of evaluation really. From initially being responsive, to shipping us demo units promptly, providing assistance when we had problems etc. When it came down to actually placing the order, we felt they'd already put in enough effort that it was genuine business relationship.

Wrt getting ripped off, we were advised very early on: "If you make anything in China, it will be copied". It's for that reason our software on the box is a very thin layer. The smarts are in the cloud and on the smartphone apps.

stephen_g2• 11 years ago

It may not be practical for everyone, but we make sure not to use turnkey manufacturers. For example, one factory might populate and reflow boards and then assemble it into a case, but they don't have the board or case designs - we have them manufactured by other suppliers and supply them and all the components. That way no one factory can just start manufacturing our products because they don't have enough information.

Yes, they can reverse-engineer but it's harder with four or more layer circuit boards and they don't have the full BOM information.

This is also a good strategy for not getting counterfeit parts (that may not work) on your boards - you can use the suppliers and brokers you trust instead of whoever your factory decides to buy from.

zrgiu_4• 11 years ago

As a hardware maker on Kickstarter who is about to ship [1], I can sort-of agree with what the article is saying. Yes, one of the most important things is to find THE right partner in China, as that can easily make or break your product.

However, if you're afraid to build your own hardware (or at least drastically modify something pre-existent), you're severely limiting your flexibility and the areas where you can innovate. Maybe it worked well for Koalasafe, which sounds like could have very well be built as just a modified version of OpenWRT with a simple installer. But it certainly wouldn't work for more than half of the other hardware projects out there. Look at the most succesful projects - Pebble, Coolest Cooler, The Micro, Dash - none of these could have gotten where they are without custom firmware.

Going back to KoalaSafe - the $100k they raised may sound like a lot of money, but it's certainly not enough to develop the kind of hardware they are using. It's enough maybe for the software part and some prototypes. You have to set your expectations straight too, and I do believe they did the best anyone could do with that money. Congrats on delivering!

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1635386542/anymote-home...

steven_pack8• 11 years ago

Agree zrgiu - we were able to avoid the hardware design aspect, but the projects you mentioned certainly couldn't - that is their whole point of existing.

boundlessdreamz3• 11 years ago

I have used your app on HTC One. Liked it but unlocking the phone to use a remote app was more cumbersome than just grabbing the remote.

I like the approach Peel is taking. Show what's currently on TV and click on what you want to watch and it automatically switches the channel to that show. That's a real good use of the smartphone app, since flicking through channels on TV is really inefficient

zrgiu_4• 11 years ago

That's maybe a discussion for another medium, but we're actually updating the app right now with a customizable notification - so you have access to your commands from anywhere (including lockscreen) without any kind of intrusion. Also, we already have a floating remote (facebook chathead-style) that shows on top of the lockscreen. Best of all - you can configure it to show only while you're on the home wifi.

Since they make money only with advertising, Peel is only focused on TV-watching. While we're going to have the same feature soon (tv guide with auto-switching), AnyMote is meant to do let you do much more than just control a TV and Set Top Box. It has all kinds of wifi lights support, receivers, media centers, etc.

joshgachnang• 11 years ago

I'd buy like 4 of these or any other IR bluetooth/Wifi adapters if they had an API so I could hook them up to my Echo. "Alexa, turn on South Park" (turns on TV, switches input, changes channel, etc etc).

Vendan3• 11 years ago

Personally, the approach Peel is taking irritates me. Forces me to select a tv antenna/cable profile thing, when that's useless to me. I have no antenna, I have no cable, I just use a roku with netflix. Why does it have to be so complicated when all I need is a power button and volume control?

listic2• 11 years ago

I remember reading a postmortem about a failed hardware Kickstarter campaign (some photographic accessory: a flash remote?) and they said they contacted a professional manager from the industry who told them he wouldn't even try developing new hardware without a few million in funding, tens of millions being more common. So there, turns out making new hardware is really expensive.

starky• 11 years ago

Yup, it is amazing how quickly a few $10k tools, $3k tooling modifications, and sample shipping costs quickly adds up.

I laugh at most hardware Kickstarters because what they are trying to do is impossible with the funding levels you are going to get, so if it is going to be successful they should already have investors in which case they Kickstarter is just a cheap marketing campaign.

ild2• 11 years ago

Hardware involves certifications (unless you are small-time EBay vendor).

stephen_g2• 11 years ago

Wow, pretty bad advice they got... The little company I work for does high end microwave equipment (satellite terminals, RF conversion equipment, 5Gbps ultra-low-latency terrestrial links used for high frequency trading, etc.) and only turns over a few million dollars per year...

I would be surprised if a flash remote cost more than two or three hundred thousand to develop and productise, tool up and do a small production run, but that's assuming you have a team with the right skills. If you're paying contract design houses then I guess it would be a lot more expensive.

jkestner7• 11 years ago

The project is the Triggertrap Ada. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/triggertrap/triggertrap...

The product could've easily been made on their budget. Their problem was outsourcing much of the development work, so they paid consultants too much money to make something that was overdesigned and way too expensive to make. When you're starting in hardware, you need to immerse yourself in the whole chain to be able to make good decisions. Shame, I liked the guys.

More practical discussion of their missteps: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/kickstart...

mgraczyk• 11 years ago

Congratulations, the final product looks sleek.

I have a comment about the blog post itself though. Your page took 90 seconds to load on my gigabit internet connection. The two culprits are your high resolution images of the product DSC_0031.jpg and DSC_0014.jpg. Each image is around 3MB. I would strongly recommend recompressing these down to something like 200KB or less.

AdamMills• 11 years ago

Thanks, we assumed our blog engine compressed them for us.

steven_pack8• 11 years ago

Bad ghost blog! Very bad! Thanks for heads up mgraczyk, now a smoother 40kb of viewing pleasure.

yoodenvranx• 11 years ago

Hacker News should automatically add the size in MB for each submission. This would a) act as a warning for mobile users (the BBC article about dark matter on the front page at the moment killed chrome on my phone because it has too many images) and b) acts as a wall of shame.

polar85• 11 years ago

I've shipped one hardware product on Kickstarter [1] and I'm in the process of fulfilling the second [2]. Lessons I've learned are:

1. Design with your factory. Finding a good supplier is important but the real work starts once you've shaken hands. Your factory is your greatest resource as a presumably inexperienced hardware designer. It's like having an expert-level consultant work on your project for free, so take advantage of it.

2. Keep it extremely simple. MVP applies here. Your project will probably fail if it does not have the absolute minimum viable number of hardware features. The majority of your effort should be spent thinking about how to simplify your designs. Avoid moving parts if possible, and design parts that can be produced with simple tooling.

3. Your margins should be higher than you think. Think long and hard about your pricing before you launch your Kickstarter. Chances are, your MSRP is optimistically low. Bringing a hardware product to market involves lots of expensive rabbit holes. High margins will save you from death.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rideye/rideye-the-black...

[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/voltus/voltus-mobile-po...

codezero2• 11 years ago

Out of curiosity, did you end up shipping to the rest of your Kickstarter pledgers for [1]?

polar85• 11 years ago

Yes, all pledges were fulfilled and the product is now shipping through our website and retail channels.

noonespecial2• 11 years ago

The Lexan inlays are laser cut to a precise, water resistant fit (from Rideye campaign page)

A little off topic but the Epilog guy told us never cut Lexan or any polycarbonate plastic because it makes a chloride gas thats dangerous to humans and destructive to the laser. But lexan rocks as a building material... So FUD? or does it require special considerations?

JoshTriplett2• 11 years ago

Sounds like you might be mixing two bits of advice. There are many materials you never cut with a laser cutter, such as PVC or vinyl (makes chlorine gas) or ABS plastic (makes cyanide and melts). Thick Lexan shouldn't be cut with an infrared laser, not necessarily because it produces harmful materials but because it will scorch and burn rather than cut. You might be able to cut it with a different type of laser cutter. And some other forms of polycarbonate may cut better (materials informally called "Lexan" sometimes aren't). You would need some detailed knowledge of the exact material and laser cutter, and thus some expertise.

See http://atxhackerspace.org/wiki/Laser_Cutter_Materials for some details.

violentvinyl• 11 years ago

The London Hackspace Wiki has a little write up on how to test plastics for Chlorine: https://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Laser_Cutter/Instr...

ild2• 11 years ago

Chlorine, not chloride.

hkmurakami• 11 years ago

1. Design with your factory. Finding a good supplier is important but the real work starts once you've shaken hands. Your factory is your greatest resource as a presumably inexperienced hardware designer. It's like having an expert-level consultant work on your project for free, so take advantage of it.

Your first lesson applies not only to small teams launching on Kickstarter, but also to the best and biggest manufacturing companies in the world. The feedback loop between the production team and the design team was the most important step in the design process at Denso.

qq662• 11 years ago

The Rideye looks great. Is that based off the keychain cams widely used in R/C video? Like the 808 #16 or the Möbius?

polar85• 11 years ago

That was the original design intent, since the 808 camera provided all the video recording functions I needed. I thought I would just buy a bunch of cameras and make some carrier boards for them. I was just out of college at the time, and my coworkers recognized my naivety. They suggested I contact the 808 manufacturer for a custom board spin, and that opened my eyes to the world of mass manufacturing in China. To make a long story short, I completely redesigned the product for scale [1] and that's the version I shipped to my backers.

In retrospect, the original version which I presented on Kickstarter would have been a miserable failure of a product. I was lucky to have backers who supported me and provided invaluable feedback through a few months of delays while I finished the redesign.

[1] http://www.rideye.com/

Taniwha3• 11 years ago

Yes, I've shipped a hardware project on kickstarter, and (just) on time - the original article is a tad unfair, as if they were the only ones to ever ship.

And I designed my own hardware ..... the trick is to design your hardware BEFORE you announce your kickstarter, not after ....

_pmf_3• 11 years ago

Mind giving a link to your project?

nootropicdesign• 11 years ago

Yeah, I thought the title was a little exaggerated, too. They aren't the only Kickstarter to ship hardware on time. I shipped my hardware Kickstarter on time, and I did all the hardware and software design, and made the product in the US. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/synthino/synthino-xm-po...

jkestner7• 11 years ago

I think it's a good idea for inexperienced creators to design before the Kickstarter launch, but I wouldn't want to exclude the genuinely riskier ideas that require funding for R&D. Kickstarter's a perfect venue for that, assuming everyone knows the risks.

lindseya• 11 years ago

What level of fidelity (e.g. self-made prototype, small batch of manufactured prototypes, etc.) would you recommend before going on kickstarter?

jkestner7• 11 years ago

Even before you commit to a factory, you can get useful information out of their production engineers, who will often tell you a thing to change to make your part manufacturable, or cheaper. But you will burn them out if you don't commit.

Harder to burn out is ProtoLabs' automated quoting/DFM site. Upload your 3D file and it'll tell you what you're doing wrong in a few hours.

pgrote• 11 years ago

How would someone begin the process of finding electronic manufacturers?

steven_pack8• 11 years ago

For us, it started on OpenWRT blogs, scouring Alibaba and seeing who got back to us. Later it was email lists and the network of our accelerator.

If I was going to custom design, i'd be going to maker meetups in your city, or applying to something like Hxlr8. There are also supplier/customer places that do matchmaking with additional services for a fee (HWTrek for example). I didn't use any.

Also, if you can find a Kickstarter of someone who did something at all related, ask who they used. Lots of creators are very happy to tell you!

_pmf_3• 11 years ago

Are there any facilitators (i.e. freelancers or consultants that have a proven track record of having brought projects to production) that are affordable? I assume most of these professionals end up at a larger company faster than you can look.

logicallee• 11 years ago

Hardware fulfillment has improved considerably since kickstarter became a preorder store for established companies[1] with lots of money[2], rather than a place to support individuals with project ideas at the prototype stage.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-time-a...

[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/technology?r...

steven_pack8• 11 years ago

I know what you mean. Around the time of our campaign these guys [1] were on every major news website in Australia (paid ads, not stories). Their marketing budget must have been huge. I've heard Sony launches stuff under different names too just to test the market.

It does have one positive side effect though - more people come to the platform.

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nonda/get-your-macbook-...

Too• 11 years ago

Nice clickbait title for advertising their own product concealed as a 3 sentence "retrospective", good thing HN allows submitters to change titles to something more descriptive and less clickbaity than the original...

On the postitive side, the product itself looks quite sleek. I could use some of the features myself to limit my own time on HN, or the time my wife spends on facebook.

dang• 11 years ago

We're always happy to change baity titles if someone suggests a better one.

The post is a bit lightweight, but that's made up for by the substantive discussion. The author clearly struck a nerve. It's ok for that to be rewarded with a top spot on HN, even if the post is promoting something.

rebootthesystem2• 11 years ago

As someone with over 30 years in hardware + software + mechanical product design and manufacturing one thing that always bothers me on Kickstarter is the dishonesty of funding goals.

Now, I do realize quite a few project owners come at it without the product manufacturing experience. I definitely get that part. Yet, I don't see it as an excuse. People need to do due diligence and get numbers closer to reality.

I remember one of the first (if not the first) RGB LED light bulb project (don't remember the name), perhaps two years ago. I think they went out with a raise target of $50K. If I remember correctly, they ended-up raising nearly $2MM.

The instant I saw that campaign I knew that if they raised anywhere south of somewhere between $1MM and $2MM there was no way in hell they'd be able to get the project done and delivered. The required iterations covering DFM (Design for Manufacturing), mechanical, electrical, firmware, tooling, environmental testing and regulatory testing would burn cash as if it were free. In hardware, each iteration cost real money --and potentially lots of it. $50K was not going to make a dent.

If they go into it knowing the funding goal will not be sufficient and are banking on exceeding it, they are simply not being honest.

My scam alerts go off immediately when I see such a severe project-to-funding-target mismatch. And that's why I call it "dishonest". It could also be "naive" but, again, it's the old "ignorance of the law isn't an excuse" situation. If you are going to go on Kickstarter with a hardware project and have no prior experience in manufacturing, do everyone a favor, do your homework and set a funding goal that will not have you scam your supporters out of money when you burn through it too quickly and can't deliver.

steven_pack8• 11 years ago

It's probably the number one question we get asked now rebootthesystem, by people in our network who considering KS. It's a catch 22. Aim too low, you can't deliver (unless you get additional capital... which might be the point), aim too high, people don't believe you'll get there, project fails.

It's because of these incompatible goals that projects will keep going to low and keep posting eulogies on HN.

nugga• 11 years ago

I don't understand the "people not believing you'll get there" point. The pledger loses no money if the project doesn't attain its goal so there is no reason to not pledge just because it might fail.

jkestner7• 11 years ago

You're talking about LIFX, and many were there with you speculating on their chances to deliver. Given that Kickstarter was booming and the failures were becoming more public (and the creator hadn't even delivered his much simpler previous project), it led to this article: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/09/18/kickstarter...

And also led Kickstarter to writing the "not a store" post and encouraging LIFX to cap their campaign.

While I hope for more diligence from project creators, I think setting a high bar to eliminate risks also eliminates many interesting Kickstarter successes.

cpeterso• 11 years ago

Clicking the green "Learn more" button on http://koalasafe.com/ scrolls the page to the next section in Chrome and Safari, but does nothing in Firefox and IE11. I filed a webcompat bug:

https://webcompat.com/issues/1570

steven_pack8• 11 years ago

Thanks mate. Admittedly we don't typically test with those browser when we push changes. :|

kenz0r• 11 years ago

Selenium is great for this. For this particular case, it won't access an element unless its visible, so you can validate that the scroll happens on button press. Easy to make a quick smoke test that can run in a few browsers

gfwilliams• 11 years ago

As someone who's now shipped 2 hardware KickStarters on time (both of which were bigger than KoalaSafe), I find it a frustrating when people post up 'hardware KickStarters never ship'. It's just not true.

It's definitely 'buyer beware', and if you back a KickStarter that shows loads of renderings and no working finished product then you may hit trouble - but many people come to KickStarter with a working product, having already done their homework and made arrangements with a manufacturer. Those people will almost certainly ship, and it's a shame that other failed KickStarter projects make them look less legitimate.

But I totally agree with polar8 on this...

1. Design with the factory has been true for me. I did one KS in China, one in the UK - and the factories work totally differently. The time it takes to get things arranged is insane, and you absolutely need to not only have a manufacturer, but to have a design that they're happy with and can source parts for before you KickStart if you plan to ship on time (even if you plan on tweaking the design a bit later).

2. Sourcing - When you order 1000s of something, suddenly lead times matter. Generally you can't just go to Farnell and get things next-day, if they're not in stock, 13 week lead times are not uncommon - and a company can have 4000 items in stock one day, and they'll be gone the next (so checking stock levels is not enough!).

3. Features - definitely be sensible. Listen to your backers but be very careful about adding their suggestions. Changes really set you back, and the most vocal backers views are almost certainly not those of the majority. Adding features in software after the ship date is easy and people like it, but delaying the ship date for features would rarely be appreciated.

4. Margins. I think people feel bad about adding a big margin, but you've got to. There are loads of hidden costs, and most backers would prefer to pay a bit extra and have you still making and supporting devices 2 years from now.

divisionfurtive3• 11 years ago

I completely agree. As a hardware maker (e-watches) with KS experience (2 campaigns), I find it frustrating that hardware projects on KS start with a negative perception from the public. It seems to me that a track record indicator is missing on KS. Like ebay feedback or a star-rating system...something that people can quickly look at and determine the level of reliability of a returning hardware maker. The number of project created is not enough...it does not speak about level of satisfaction.

norswap• 11 years ago

Unrelated to the topic of the article. But I find such devices (kid surveillance, it's what it is) heinous.

federico3• 11 years ago

Indeed.

ohitsdom• 11 years ago

Heinous? If you had a 7 year old, would you let them use a device with unrestricted wifi access?

amelius• 11 years ago

Is it just me, or are most hardware projects on kickstarter easily replaceable by cheap standard hardware like a mobile phone or a raspberry pi, and the right software?

It seems strange then, that shipping is such a big problem.

HeyLaughingBoy• 11 years ago

Most of the ones I've seen are. However, all the Kickstarters I've seen are targetting consumers. If your product is based on something like an RPi, then your parts costs are already much higher that they should be and your profit will be close to zero because B2C prices are typically very low.

If you are targetting commercial/industrial customers, then the added cost of standard hardware is generally not a deterrent IME.

moron4hire2• 11 years ago

Of all the kickstarters I've funded (and it has been a lot) only two have failed to deliver, eventually, and only one of those was a hardware project. It was an attempt to make an open-hardware GPU, and when it turned out way more expensive than he imagined, he released all the work he had done on github.

The other failed project was Neil Stephenson's "Clang!" sword fighting game. We all know how that ended >:(

tgb• 11 years ago

Surely Clang! had significant hardware components, too?

moron4hire2• 11 years ago

Oh, yeah, actually forgot about that. It just bothered me that they just seemed to throw everything away. After burning through several million dollars, I think they could have at least just done a Github dump or something.

bsbechtel2• 11 years ago

For those commenting here about working with your factory ahead of time, would any of you be willing to talk a little about the process of choosing a factory to partner with? Thanks.

divisionfurtive3• 11 years ago

I have a 2-step process.

1 - Are communications easy, fast and meaningful? That's the first step. Contact more than one supplier (on a initial round, think 10 to 20). Make small challenges like posting design files on a secure site that requires the supplier to create an account...you'll get rid of a lot of unworthy suppliers that won't bother and therefore are not going to be proactive in the future.

2 - Invest in requesting prototypes (or samples if making more than one prototype does not make sense) from more than one factory ahead of time (top 3 of the step above). The good factories will perform well at this task...bad ones will deliver half-baked stuff.

With time, the very good suppliers that really want to build a business relationship with you will become obvious and you can reuse them in the future...making your life easier. Don't be lazy when looking for suppliers...that's the biggest pitfall. Invest time and money...it's important.

bsbechtel2• 11 years ago

This sounds more or less like the process I've gone through. I have yet to explore the option of manufacturing in China....have you done this? Is the process more or less the same?

When hardware Kickstarters ship

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