DeskHog, an open-source developer toy

by constantinum • 1 year ago

274 106 1 year ago

bitwize• 1 year ago

Hog Speed. You're a hedgehog that runs fast. Sounds like a lame game concept with niche appeal at best.

This thing looks seriously cute and next to useless. Like a mini Chumby. A perfect gadget for "the street to find its own uses for".

rideontime• 1 year ago

I still can't believe this company is named "post hog."

joshdavham4• 1 year ago

Why is it called PostHog anyways?

vasco4• 1 year ago

If only there was a tool for finding answers to our questions:

https://posthog.com/docs/posthog-direction#:~:text=PostHog%2...

julianeon• 1 year ago

Judging by the amount of free publicity it generates, I think it was the right choice.

jnsie• 1 year ago

Post hog ergo propter hog

NitpickLawyer• 1 year ago

27 lawyers in the room, anyone know...?

sibeliuss• 1 year ago

This thing is rad.

So many props on the Series D fundraise. Well deserved. (Best company ever.)

knowitnone• 1 year ago

how many are you buying?

mananaysiempre• 1 year ago

Can it play Doom?
...We're working on it.

Seriously though, can a ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather[1] (dual-core Xtensa @ 240 MHz, 512KB built-in RAM, 2MB external PSRAM, 4MB Flash) play Doom? As usual with these microcontroller-type things, it looks like storage poses a harder limit than compute, but maybe just a bit of Doom could be crammed in?

[1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/5691

tecleandor• 1 year ago

Seems like you can do it using Retro-Go, that's using a port of PrBoom 2.5.0. (No sound, though)

https://www.hackster.io/naveenbskumar/yes-arduino-nano-esp32...

shakna• 1 year ago

Espressif do publish one [0] themselves, but that requires extra RAM - 4MB, not the two this seems to have.

So its probably doable, but may require a few modifications.

[0] https://github.com/espressif/esp32-doom

madduci• 1 year ago

Since it's an ESP32 board all the way down, it should be possible. You can already run Super Mario NES edition on it

bradleykingz• 1 year ago

Working at Posthog must be fun

hugs• 1 year ago

you saying that is probably the reason they did this.

jatins2• 1 year ago

Developers: "Ha I don't fall for silly marketing"

Also, devs: "They are shipping a toy, must be a fun place to work"

It may be a fun place to work fwiw, but this is just marketing not something a team of engineers decided to ship between jira tickets!

fuziontech3• 1 year ago

This was literally something someone did on the side between other stuff. We don't use Jira.

fuziontech3• 1 year ago

It is :3 It's exactly how you think it would be like working here.

And we are hiring. Come join us! https://posthog.com/careers

QRY• 1 year ago

Okay I am definitely applying, but I need to build one of these first!

fnord77• 1 year ago

FYI, my Pihole is blocking this domain.

IAmBroom• 1 year ago

You can't fit posthog in your pihole?

Try more ClotdMilk-Fat.

enlightens• 1 year ago

They do web analytics so definitely end up on block lists for people who don’t want to be tracked.

(I’ve used PostHog on several projects and feel that they are better for privacy than, say, GA, but understand why people would block them)

joshdavham4• 1 year ago

This looks really cool, but I'm not really sure why they made it. PostHog is primarily web analytics software from what I understand. Why build hardware?

vasco4• 1 year ago

From the looks of it, for fun.

daniloc3• 1 year ago

Here's the truth: it was a weird idea from our Slack – build a tamagotchi! – that I took too seriously. In a couple of evenings, I had a prototype working. Then everyone was so excited we just ran with it.

Our audience is developers: we make you happy, you'll love us and make us the first part of every project you do, on your own and at the workplace.

Meanwhile, man, hardware is just so much fun. But most folks have no idea how much easier it is to build now. Basically, if you can use open source software, you already know how to hack on microcontroller.

So this foray into developer toys is about helping you have fun with something that maybe you wouldn't have played with otherwise.

But you can also display real-time PostHog data on it, out of the box. Which means you can expense it. A merch win-win.

joshdavham4• 1 year ago

Did you make an HN account just to reply to this? If so, I think that was really cool of you to do!

Aeolun• 1 year ago

There’s a walking little toy on my posthog dashboard already. I have no idea why they made it, but I sure do appreciate it.

h1fra• 1 year ago

I was expecting them to display posthog metrics on it, but not even

daniloc3• 1 year ago

You can totally display PostHog metrics on it! We just didn't want to stop there.

swyx• 1 year ago

i would buy it if the screen looked a bit better. based on this website it looks really small and not super useful for the "keep analytics up on screen" usecase

fuziontech3• 1 year ago

Sounds like something that might show up on a DeskHog Pro

seveibar• 1 year ago

Hardware is becoming more accessible, so more software companies are going to release hardware products or build hardware products for internal purposes. The future of physical world innovation isn't going to come from legacy hardware corpos, but from software companies that run hardware experiments that become real hardware products. Hats off to Posthog for making it cool!

The reason hardware has sucked in the past is poor tooling. But now open-source solutions are getting pretty good, and AI is covering many knowledge gaps.

fidotron4• 1 year ago

This is the truth - my recent work has dragged me into doing exactly this, building hardware "giveaways" to promote SaaS in niche industries, and enabling the backend devs to have an API they can understand to control it.

It has made me wonder why such things haven't been more popular attached to Grafana. For example, take a LED strip and use that as a gauge or similar. Many devs seem to fetishize screens and enjoy extra displays in their environments, while normies (at least the feedback from the recent work) have been telling me they actively want to get away from any screens. OTOH using LED strips rapidly turns anywhere into a vape shop.

oersted• 1 year ago

Could you elaborate on these hardware projects? They sound cool.

If your workflow lets you crank out hardware quickly and cheaply enough for just a marketing stunt, you must be using methodologies we could learn from.

I’m not convinced developers just like normal screens though, tactile/analogue widgets are always cool and welcome!

andylynch• 1 year ago

I’d love to set up stuff like this, but our IT security guys would really not like the risk with everything else on their plate!

joshvm2• 1 year ago

These do exist but they're remarkably expensive and the infrastructure is apparently terrible. Several companies sell "smart led displays" that people use to show their follower counts while streaming. There's no reason you couldn't make one and have it subscribe to ntfy or something like that. But adoption seems ropey because the use cases are always clocks and $200 for a screen is a big ask for most people.

See the "tidybyt" https://www.theverge.com/23303371/tidbyt-review-desk-accesso...

There are anecdotes about offices having a "build status" LED and you would get shamed if your commit broke the CI.

alisonatwork• 1 year ago

I think it's the same reason why phones killed cameras and portable music players. It's neat to have dedicated devices that do one thing well. It's even neater to have one device that can do all the things. It's easier to transport, easier to store, easier to clean and so on. From a sustainability perspective it's probably also generating less waste, although I don't have enough knowledge in materials science to confirm that notion.

I sometimes wonder if this impulse is part of the appeal of LLMs for the people who use them for everything - not that they're actually better at anything, but just that they're kinda good enough at all of the things to make it easier to consult them than to consult dedicated sources of information.

Saigonautica• 1 year ago

I agree wholeheartedly!

I like to use the TM1640 and RGB LEDs. It's cheap, works well, requires a minimum of external components, and can convey a fair amount of information. It can also drive a 16x8 LED matrix if I do want something screen-like.

Usually I'll control it with a Wi-Fi MCU like the ESP8266 or Pi Pico W. Total component cost, including board, sits around 5$ each with a minimum quantity of 5.

thepryz• 1 year ago

When someone mentions smart devices without screens, I’m always reminded of David Rose’s work on what he called “Enchanted Objects”. If you look on YouTube, you should be able to find some talks he did at TED and Google highlighting his work.

micromacrofoot• 1 year ago

the options for hobby electronics these days are incredible, you can get a microcontroller for under 20 bucks and attach it to almost any sensor, light, or display you can imagine — add a little beginner python and it's connected to your smart home

belmarca• 1 year ago

This really echos our own experience at BLINX [1].

Pr. Marc Feeley's lab develops codeBoot [2], an online IDE to teach students programming (and more!). We created BLINX as a hardware platform for students to go along with our IDE. The device acts as a data collector for various Grove sensors and publishes the data as an HTTP endpoint. You can program it directly from codeBoot.

BTW if anybody has any questions feel free to reach out!

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/company/blinxinc (working on a landing page)

[2] https://codeboot.org (also working on a landing page)

doubleorseven• 1 year ago

i still wish i had a small keyboard with like 9 configurable keys that can execute what ever i want like "start debug" or "open tty at a specific folder" or "git status a specific repository" and so on...

EricBetts• 1 year ago

Have you heard of, or considered, a elgato stream deck?

fader• 1 year ago

Adafruit makes a keyboard kit that you can assemble and write your own macros in Python: https://www.adafruit.com/product/5128

fragmede• 1 year ago

Macropad keyboarda exist, just need to do the software configuration for your particular use case.

I have one with a rotary knob that I hooked up to my debugger so that I can step forwards and into fluidly.

ctxc2• 1 year ago

Brilliant usage of the rotary knob!

sandebert• 1 year ago

There are lots of keyboards like that. I use an eight-key version that I found on Amazon. Works just fine, no complaints.

ctxc2• 1 year ago

Hey, the website on your profile is broken.

Btw I did exactly that! I cut (literally) a cheap keyboard at the numpad boundary. Installed AHK (Windows) which runs macros on button click.

Postits to label each button.

Now I have one of those fancy few-button keyboards that do my bidding.

I've been meaning to post it. Would that be interesting?

themikesanto• 1 year ago

Yes, please do!

gala8y• 1 year ago

Look up "macropads" on the Internetz.

yRetsyM• 1 year ago

Something like this https://www.mylocalbytes.com/products/localdeck?

bfors• 1 year ago

This is probably the one I would get - https://protadesigns.com/ It looks great, and also I appreciate that it's a one man operation

RollingRo11• 1 year ago

Couple other people suggesting some great options, I'll throw a hat in the ring for building your own!

This May Pad kit is great (https://keyhive.xyz/shop/may-pad)

Also great options from keebio (https://keeb.io/collections/macropads)

The tidbit is also really cool! (https://nullbits.co/tidbit/)

Again, just options if you feel like this would be a cool project and you're cool with doing some soldering. Other people have suggested good pre-built solutions, and many macropads can do what you're looking for.

kamranjon• 1 year ago

Well that’s certainly one way to make me want to work at your company.

madh• 1 year ago

epaper version would be cool

teraflop2• 1 year ago

Don't get me wrong, this seems like a fun thing to play with. But it feels very weird to see so much marketing and branding poured into something that's literally just a plastic enclosure and software for an off-the-shelf dev board made by somebody else.

Like, the page says:

Want more hardware? We included an I²C expansion port, just for people like you.

No you didn't! Adafruit did! You didn't even add a connector.

allknowingfrog• 1 year ago

I'm no expert, but it seems like the value add is the firmware they wrote to turn this into a more accessible platform. Hardware is always composed of other hardware, so "included" is not inherently the wrong word, though it maybe takes too much credit. In general, the intent feels wholesome to me. As a software guy, I had no idea that hardware could be so approachable, and I'm suddenly excited about the possibilities.

teraflop2• 1 year ago

Hardware is always composed of other hardware

In general I agree, but there is absolutely no composition at all happening here. (Unless you count buying a dev board that's designed to run on a battery, and plugging a battery into it.)

I truly think it's great that they've made software that people find approachable. It's the branding of someone else's hardware product as their own that rubs me the wrong way. They aren't saying things that are technically false, but it still feels misleading.

INTPenis• 1 year ago

I instantly pictured this being a rubber duck. And then I started thinking, how could a virtual rubber duck help you deduce things?

Mostly you'd want it to listen and be supportive I guess.

But maybe, just maybe, could AI somehow summarize a very short suggestion or response based on what you say.

That is something I'd buy. Tactile, can be thrown around a bit, listens at the press of a button, responds with a random short suggestion or idea.

joshvm2• 1 year ago

That's a fun idea, just have it ask questions like the little IQ toys and have a yes/no button. Turns out this works reasonably well if you only allow binary responses. If you also had an "I'm not sure" or "I don't know how" button it might work even better.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6849eb45-6700-800d-ad3b-57458eb5c7...

(Asking chatgpt how to put up shelves without it knowing what the task is and only allowing yes/no responses)

bodge5000• 1 year ago

Brainstory was trying to do something similar, but using AI to kind of prompt you using Socratic questioning. Seemed like a neat idea, but unfortunately it got shut down.

https://github.com/brainstory

Looks like it got turned into a VSCode extension by one of the people working on it though, so that's something. Might be interesting to try if you already use Copilot:

https://github.com/cassidoo/brainstorm-buddy-extension

catlifeonmars• 1 year ago

The beauty of the rubber duck is that that’s all it is.

That being said, I’d buy your “live” rubber duck as well. Even if it gives mild Furby vibes.

newman314• 1 year ago

While cool, instead of buying this, I wonder if anyone has tried to used their Flipper for this use case.

anigbrowl2• 1 year ago

Chuckles in M5stack

kreetx2• 1 year ago

Enjoyed the joke in the cookie banner! Have been mildly surprised how people controlling larger websites haven't been casually poking fun at this before.

sakesun• 1 year ago

For internal session cookie, do we actually need the cookie banner at all ?

kreetx2• 1 year ago

They either use the cookie for something other than a session, or they just want to be better safe than sorry. (Or for the sake of humour)

quinndupont• 1 year ago

The hardware is UGLY.

jasperry• 1 year ago

I like the idea of this enough to search a bit for similar projects. The deal breaker on this for me is the 1.14-inch screen. Middle age has made it much less pleasant to look at things that small.

mikestew• 1 year ago

Goodness, my watch has a bigger screen (my watch has a higher resolution, too). But I’m about to be eligible for a lot of senior discounts this year, so perhaps it isn’t built for the likes of you and me.

socalgal2• 1 year ago

It's a amazing to me what can be made / sold for so cheap. A friend recently got one of these

https://www.surenoo.com/products/23280116

(note: the picture with the hand is way off scale. Thing is slightly larger than a MagSafe phone charging ring (since one way to power it is to put it over such a ring)

$25

Unfortunately I have no experience on how to mod it and after searching for 10-15 mins it seemed like more work than I wanted to deal with. Seems like you need to build your own firmware and re-flash it. I found someone had used it to build a nest like control for Home Assistant

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guition-1-8-360x360-es...

If I'd found an easier way to just write some python or JavaScript I might have spent a few hours/days making some round games or demos.

jonah• 1 year ago

Sounds like you can make your own software (firmware) for it with micropython:

https://docs.micropython.org/en/latest/esp32/tutorial/intro....

voidUpdate• 1 year ago

Ive had a project a lot like this on my infinite todo list for a while now

smallbread• 1 year ago

If you want something with ESP32-S3 and a bigger touch screen to hack on (the current software is very young), there's the UM squixl. https://unexpectedmaker.com/shop.html#!/SQUiXL/p/743870537. They also make a WOPR kit that can tie into home assistant.

UK-Al052• 1 year ago

It looks way to small to be of any practical use. To small to display useful information, to small to play games on it?

What's the use of this?

kube-system2• 1 year ago

toy

UK-Al052• 1 year ago

Toy still needs fun activity you can do on it.

citrus1330• 1 year ago

but what is it for?

bieber• 1 year ago

DeskHog pops up with cute animations when builds finish or tests pass—like a digital high-five.

slajob• 1 year ago

Idk... I don't see any real use. Just another gadget toy

tomjuggler• 1 year ago

The S3 is a really amazing upgrade to ESP32, dual core with FreeRTOS and Arduino side-by-side.

I'm using the same chip for my upcoming product launch - having a good look at this firmware now to see if I can learn something..

stuaxo• 1 year ago

What is this?

If it's not a hackable toy pig it'll be disappointing.

DeskHog, an open-source developer toy

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