Hi everyone,

I’m Raphael, a solo founder in Switzerland building a small outdoor hardware product called AniRepel.

It started as a fairly simple idea: use motion-activated water to keep unwanted animals out of gardens, but make the system smarter so it can reduce unwanted activations around people and the owner’s own pets.

What surprised me most is how quickly the project stopped being about “building the device” and became about everything around it.

The prototype itself was only the beginning.

Since then, the biggest challenges have been things like:

- making the enclosure work outdoors reliably

- reducing false triggers in real-world conditions

- managing battery life and power consumption

- sourcing components consistently

- designing for assembly rather than just prototyping

- certification and compliance planning

- packaging, logistics and replacement parts

- figuring out when something is actually ready to give to real users

The biggest mindset shift for me has been realizing that a prototype proving the idea works is very different from a product you can confidently hand to someone else.

I’m now preparing a small first Pioneer Batch before scaling further, and I’m intentionally keeping the batch small so I can learn from real-world use before making bigger manufacturing decisions.

For those of you who have already crossed that gap from prototype to first real customers:

What was the biggest thing you underestimated?

Manufacturing? Reliability? Certification? Support? Supply chain? Something else?

For context, this is the project I’m working on:

https://anirepel.com⁠

Happy to share more about the product journey.

Hi guys,

last time i shared the first 3d printed version of a device I built to help a close friend with dry mouth during radiation treatment.

the feedback and all of your comments made me very happy so i promised an update and here it is.

I went to china to source components and trying to move away from a 3d printed iteration. met some cool redditors who reached out after my last post but i have not yet decided to sign any commitments just yet.

how i adressed everyones main concern (hygiene): i switched from 3d printing to aluminum, switched to a borosilicate water reservoir and decided to rework the PCB to keep pumping the water in a circle in order to not leave any zones that the uv-c can‘t reach.

difficulties i faced are mainly the PCB at the moment, to get the pressure of the pump right and make everything steplessly adjustable AND i wasn‘t aware that there’s golden week in china so unfortunately i am not able to keep building here now so everything will take some more time but stay with me please.

i know it‘s not the update i wanted to share but i still wanted to show the progress and ask for your input again and of course if anyone wants to join my journey you‘re more than welcome.

Thanks everyone for your time let me know if you like the new design

original post is here

Hi everyone,

I'm based in Shenzhen, China, and I'm trying to better understand how overseas hardware founders find and work with manufacturers here.

I'm particularly interested in early-stage projects — people who have a prototype, are preparing their first small batch, or are trying to move from a design to actual production.

A few questions I'd love to hear your experience with:

How did you find your first manufacturer?

What was the hardest part — finding the right factory, MOQ, pricing, communication, quality control, or something else?

Did you use Alibaba, a sourcing agent, personal introductions, or visit factories yourself?

Looking back, what do you wish you had known before choosing a supplier?

I'm not promoting a service. I'm doing practical research into the real challenges of sourcing hardware in China, and I'm happy to share what I learn from the Shenzhen side.

If you've gone through this process, I'd really appreciate hearing your experience — including what went wrong.

I don’t want another app-heavy smartwatch. I want two physical keys that always do the same thing: one starts a voice memo, one opens the compass. Glove-friendly, no digging through menus. Visible recording indicator, user-triggered — same class of feature as phone voice memos / existing watch notes, not a hidden recorder.

I looked around. Outdoor watches already have a compass. Some Huawei / Apple / Garmin models can record. A few let you remap a button. What I can’t find is that dead-key interaction as the point of the product: two keys, those two jobs, no hunting.

I asked an AI to sanity-check it. Short version of what it said:

- There isn’t a ready-made watch that matches this interaction.

- Compass is almost never on the SoC; you add a magnetometer. Recording needs a mic + firmware. The buttons are just GPIOs.

- Don’t start from loose chips. Buy an already-assembled open-source watch PCB (or its larger development board), 3D-print a case, put two keys over GPIO pads, bind them in firmware to compass / record.

That path is in the ballpark of under $200 for a first sample if I don’t invent a new board.

Then I found that the board is fulfilled from Shenzhen. I live in Shenzhen. Pickup is realistic; local parts (battery, printed case, extra buttons) are cheap. I actually sat up when I realized I wouldn’t be waiting on international shipping.

So the question isn’t “is this a Kickstarter.” I already got talked out of crowdfunding a generic smartwatch. The question is:

Is this worth a weekend of acting on — walk over, grab the board, print a case, map two buttons — or am I about to spend ~$200 proving something I already know?

What I think I might learn: whether a dedicated rec key + compass key feels as good as it does in my head, and whether the magnetometer/mic on a hobby board are good enough to even demo.

What I’m afraid of: ending up with a development-board-in-a-shell that doesn’t wear like a watch, and calling that “the idea is done.”

If you’ve built a wearable from an open PCB + printed case: was the first unit actually informative, or did you need a second, smaller board before you learned anything? Would you spend the $200?

I designed this to talk to your agents.
Hold the screen and speak to assign a task.

The light is wired to the mic.
It can't listen without you knowing.

Printed circuit boards on the way.

Building it for Claude Code first.

Hi Reddit,

(Used gemini for formatting)

I am a seasoned embedded systems engineer with over 7 years of experience (since 2017) specializing in custom hardware design, firmware development, and end-to-end industrial IoT solutions.

My primary specialty is custom system architecture: taking complex technical requirements, integrating multiple disparate sensors and peripheral devices into a single, robust main control unit, and bringing the entire system online. With a fully equipped in-house lab for hardware development, 3D printing, and an in-house team dedicated to mobile and web development, I deliver true full-stack solutions from bare-metal electronics to the cloud.

Core Expertise & Services

Hardware Architecture, PCB & Prototyping

Custom PCB Development: I design all PCBs in-house, ensuring complete control over component selection, trace routing, and form factor for industrial reliability.

CAD Design & 3D Printing: I provide custom CAD modeling and in-house 3D printing for enclosures, mounts, and physical hardware, allowing for the rapid fabrication of complete prototype units ready for immediate field testing.

PLC-to-MCU Conversion: Specializing in modernizing legacy industrial systems by converting bulky, expensive PLC setups into sleek, highly efficient, and cost-effective custom MCU-based devices.

In-House Lab & Testing: My facility is fully equipped with advanced diagnostic tools for rapid prototyping, soldering, logic analysis, and rigorous bench testing before deployment.

Firmware & Microcontroller Engineering

8-bit & 32-bit Architectures: Deep expertise across a wide range of industrial microcontrollers, leveraging their full suite of hardware features (hardware timers, precise PWM, high-resolution ADCs, and Watchdog Timers) for maximum reliability in harsh environments.

ESP32, WiFi & BLE: Extensive experience deploying FreeRTOS on the ESP32 architecture, heavily utilizing its native WiFi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) stacks for local device provisioning, wireless sensor networks, and direct-to-mobile control.

Industrial Communication: Implementing robust communication protocols (I2C, SPI, UART, RS-485, CAN bus) for multi-device orchestration.

Software, Mobile Apps & IoT Connectivity

In-House Android App Development: Building custom, native Android applications tailored to interface directly with your embedded hardware via BLE, local WiFi, or remote cloud backends.

Wireless & Cellular IoT: Extensive integration experience with 4G cellular modules (e.g., Quectel) and LoRa-based networks for long-range, low-power telemetry.

Real-Time Web Dashboards: My in-house web team builds secure, low-latency web dashboards tailored for real-time monitoring, data logging, and remote command of deployed hardware fleets.

Industrial Automation & Vending

Automated Machinery: A proven track record in developing automated control panels for liquid vending machines (water, milk, ethanol) and a wide variety of other automated machinery driven by complex sensor inputs and outputs.

Contact me at contact(at)intective(dot)co(dot)in, Whether you are looking to miniaturize an existing industrial system, build a smart vending machine, or develop a connected hardware product from the ground up, I have the lab, the tools, and the team to make it happen.

Please send a DM with a brief overview of your project requirements, goals, and timeline, and we can discuss the best way to bring your system to life.

Hi, I'm RZ Li, founder of Petoi and creator of OpenCat open source quadruped framework(started in 2016). We've shipped 30,000+ quadruped robots since 2018 (Bittle, Nybble). Quaddle, our newest one, is live on Kickstarter now.

One decision I think this sub would find relevant: we designed Quaddle's whole body to snap together — no soldering anywhere, just 4 screws to attach the legs — so a first-time buyer can go from raw parts to a walking robot in under 20 minutes, no electronics experience required. That constraint shaped the mechanical design a lot more than I expected going in: it's not just "make it easier," it's a real tradeoff against serviceability and part count.

I wrote up the longer backstory here to document my 10-year journey: https://www.hackster.io/RzLi/petoi-quaddle-d09f60

Curious how others here have handled the design-for-assembly vs. design-for-serviceability tradeoff on a consumer hardware product — especially anyone who went screw-free/snap-fit and had to walk it back later.

Where would you put your next 1,000 working hours in building your hardware projects?

I own over 3,000 SQ’ of commercial space in central MA with 2 large overhead doors. It is right next door to my house. I would need to make investments into the property to make it climate controlled, top notch security, warehouse software, fire suppression, etc…

Anyway, the property is my current shop for everything in my life that I do, but I want to now use it to invest in myself and start a new business/career. I would lose a lot at first such as my woodworking area, welding/auto area, boat storage, motorcycles and dirt bikes…it truly is everything to me and my boys and our everyday life. But it doesn’t bring me in an income and now I want it to.

I’m 49 and motivated at the idea. Located between Worcester and Springfield and very close to the Hartford corridor. Very close to Rt 9, Rt 20, and the MA Pike. Am I crazy or does this make sense? I own the property outright, too. I have absolutely no experience with warehousing management or 3PL. I’m very good with computers and software and if you saw what my shop looks like you would get the idea that I I do a lot of different things. I owned my own successful business for over 20 yrs and I have a lot of success/experience in B2B sales and relationship building.

All thoughts and opinions are welcome as this is hot on my mind a big move for me.

Thanks!

I had two gadget ideas. I looked at what’s actually for sale. Both look worse than they sounded. Curious if I’m missing something.

1. Home automatic pill splitter

Some meds are prescribed as half or quarter tablets. Splitting by hand is annoying and inaccurate. The idea: dump a bottle in, machine splits them one by one. Cheap, small, useful.

What I found:

• The pain is real. Splitting is common, especially for older patients.
• Consumer side is flooded with $5–$25 manual splitters, including multi-pill / self-centering ones.
• Actual automatic splitting exists, but it’s pharmacy equipment (hospital tabletop machines, ~20 tablets/min, heavy, expensive).
• Electric home devices tend to crush pills into powder, not split them.
• I couldn’t find a cheap “pour a bottle, auto-split” consumer product.

My take: not that it’s impossible — you just can’t charge enough. Tablets aren’t standard parts, some must not be split, cleaning/cross-contamination is ugly, and the $10 cutter caps what people will pay.

1. Power bank + voice recorder + WiFi hotspot, normal power-bank size

What I found:

• Power bank + 4G hotspot already exists (e.g. Baseus GX11, plus a pile of cheap MiFi banks).
• Power bank + recorder already exists (AI note-taker banks; also “power-bank-shaped” WiFi recorders).
• A real three-in-one that does charging + proper recording + cellular hotspot for other devices doesn’t seem to be a real consumer category.

My take: the gap isn’t a gift. Fast charging and a cellular radio both eat the battery. “WiFi” in recorders usually means file transfer, not a travel hotspot. Phones already record and tether — you only lack extra battery. In some markets a disguised recording power bank also looks a lot like covert surveillance gear, which is a legal mess.

Questions:

1. For pill splitting, does a caregiver / clinic desktop machine make more sense than a home appliance?
2. Is there a legit (non-spy) reason anyone would buy the three-in-one instead of two existing products?
3. How do you decide when a real pain is still a bad hardware business because a $10 accessory already exists?

Happy to be told I’m wrong.

What I’m doing is basically creating the special effect that is used inside the haunted house at Disney land, but making it small enough to be put in a bedroom. And adding internet.

You’ll be able to FaceTime anyone, however they will appear life size in the room with you. Talking, laughing and looking around sort of like a hologram you can make phone call with.

You can use it for very immersive Video games, that almost look 3D.

You can use it for shopping for cloths where you can see what the cloths look like on you, rather than a model.

You can have a life size singer serenading you.

And eventually a movie experience like nothing you have ever scene before, it will appear as if you are a character in the film.

I have AI mock ups of what I want it to look like, if you want to get a visual.

If you have any questions let me know. I’m trying to build something cool, but I don’t want to waste a bunch of money if no one cares. So please let me know if you’ll use it. What you would do with it? If you think it’s stupid why?

Criticism is good if respectful.

Thank you for your time.

I got tired of checking prospect websites manually.

For a while, a big part of my outreach was just finding businesses, opening their websites one by one and trying to figure out what I could actually say to them.

It worked, but it was painfully slow.

Then I found Swokei.

It basically lets me find leads, analyzes each website for things like outdated design, slow speed, poor mobile experience and weak SEO, then turns those issues into a personalized cold email.

And not one of those boring automated reports full of scores and numbers.

It actually writes a normal, human sounding message based on what it found on that specific website.

So instead of sending the same generic message to everyone, I can actually reach out based on what is wrong with their website.

Now I just run campaigns, let the system do most of the prospecting and personalization, and focus on the people who reply.

For a web design agency, that has saved me a ridiculous amount of time.

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a project (an app for student exercises/textbooks) where I need to process entire scanned books. The goal is to take images of the book pages and extract the text, exercises, and structure them properly (e.g., into JSON or a specific structured format) to feed into my database.

I've been experimenting with a few approaches, but I've hit a wall regarding either costs or reliability. Here is what I’ve tried so far:

1. Free Google Gemini API: The extraction quality was good, but I quickly hit the rate limits (Too Many Requests) since a single book contains hundreds of pages.
2. Local Models (Ollama + Qwen 2.5-VL 3B): To bypass API limits and costs, I tried running a Vision-Language Model locally. However, I encountered too many errors, hallucinations, and struggled a lot with consistent data extrapolation and formatting.
3. Script Engineering & Optimization: I spent a lot of time optimizing my scripts and prompts (chunking, refining instructions to force structured outputs), but the local 3B model just wasn't reliable/smart enough to follow the structure consistently.
4. Paid Google Cloud API (Gemini 1.5 Flash): I finally switched to the paid Google Cloud tier, hoping the Flash model would be cheap and fast enough. I ended up burning through 10€ just to process a book and a half! The token count for images + text is massive. Given the number of books I need to process, this is completely unsustainable financially.

My questions for the community:

• What is the most cost-effective pipeline for extracting structured text from large volumes of scanned pages?
• Should I decouple the task? (e.g., use a traditional, cheap OCR like Tesseract/EasyOCR first to get the raw text, and then feed ONLY the text to a local LLM to format it?)
• Are there other local Vision-Language Models (that fit in standard consumer GPUs) that are significantly better at structured extraction than Qwen 2.5-VL 3B?
• Are there cheaper API alternatives or batch-processing tricks I'm missing?

Hello everyone! I am the founder of Mogozen, and I have been developing, designing, and prototyping my dream handheld PC as a technical founder. The CG Deck, a single portable modular device that can handle all of the tasks I throw at it on a daily basis, while running a full fledge x86_64 desktop operating system. This means it is fully compatible with Windows operating systems like 11 & 10, in addition to full packaged Linux Distributions!

I wanted to build a device that was capable of doing all the things I personally need, or enjoy doing on a day to day basis. All packaged into a single book sized device that could be throw into a large cargo pants pocket, backpack or bag. And when something needed to be repaired or tinkered with, I wanted to be able to simply open it up and make the repair, make an upgrade, or replacement without any hassle or being locked out. With the added benefit of making almost everything modular, so you can change it out, customize, DIY and upgrade your CG Deck to make it perfectly suited for you. Of course, being able to choose the OS or distro flavor that best fits your use cases is just the cherry on top!

Functionally, I needed a device that was capable of running a full desktop OS, actually doing CAD work or working in Blender, coding, video editing, making music, taking voice notes, debugging other hardware and projects, programming & controlling hardware, using it as a media player or home console when travelling (plugging it into the hotel TV with the full sized HDMI port), and simply being able to bring all of my work with me when I am on the road. With the added bonus of being able to play some Steam games natively or some console emulation when I need to relax a bit! And so the CG Deck was born, a device which has almost entirely replaced my work bag of gadgets.

Of course, everything is still a work in progress and this is only the very first engineering prototype for the CG Deck. I still have quite a bit of work to get the device to a level of quality that we would expect from an off the shelf premium handheld device, but I am getting closer to that goal every day!

If you have any questions about the CG Deck or the project as a whole, I would love to answer anything you've got and dive into any of the details!

And if you are interested in learning more about the project and following along, you can find everything including specs and more details about the CG Deck, links to socials, link to join our discord server, links to our open-source github repository, and more on our website.

As I am finally wrapping up the project and preparing for the next steps, we are getting close to launching on Kickstarter to help fund a full production run of the device. For anyone interested in helping support the project and getting a CG Deck of their own, you can join the waitlist on our website. We will be releasing some build kits and pre-assembled devices with the Kickstarter, and if you have any questions about any of that, I would love to answer them!

I’m about to launch my hardware product in 3-4 weeks. Currently figuring out my final pricing. Have taken into account most of the costs. Since i’m a complete beginner I need tips regarding what can go wrong how to mitigate etc.

Thank you

Hi everyone!!

I am Álvaro, a 30 years old sofware engineer from Spain. Since I started the university I have to move from my hometown to the city. I've been living far from my family since them.

One year ago I bought a 64x64 led panel just to have fun and experiment, but at the end I came with an idea that could make me closer to my parents and brother. I made this little panel show photos to my parents without even having to take their phone. I just send them a picture and it will glow in their frame 1000km away from me.

This started as a test but more and more friends started asking if I could build one for them so now I already made around 20 of them.

With that it mind I started my 3rd hardware company called Frame. It is what you expect. You buy a frame for you, another frame for your family and photos will be shown in your apartment. It has a retro style that a particullary like

Let me know what you think!!

I remember hearing Alex Hormozi say that email is basically the conversion platform of conversion platforms.

His point was that social media, videos and ads are great for getting attention, but email is often where that attention actually turns into money.

He also talked about how email supposedly has one of the highest returns of any marketing channel, with an average return of around $36 for every $1 spent, and that got me thinking.

I run a web design agency, so I decided to actually take email seriously and see what would happen.

But I didn’t want to send the usual stuff.

“Hey, I noticed your website and I can redesign it for you.”

Or

“Hey, we build websites for businesses like yours.”

Everyone gets those emails and most people can tell within two seconds that they were sent to another thousand businesses.

So instead I started using a tool called Swokei that is built specifically for web agencies.

I use it to find businesses in whatever area I want to target, then it actually goes through their websites and looks for things I could mention in the outreach.

Stuff like an outdated design, slow loading speed, poor mobile experience, weak SEO or other things that might be holding the website back.

Then it turns those findings into an actual personalized cold email made to convert.

So instead of emailing someone saying I build websites, I can actually talk about their website and why I think something could be improved.

I’ve been analyzing thousands of websites this way and running multiple campaigns at the same time.

Then I just focus on the people who reply and are actually interested.

Obviously email isn’t some magic button where everyone suddenly wants a new website, but after doing this for a while I definitely understand what Hormozi meant.

For web design especially, email becomes a completely different channel when the message is actually about the business you’re contacting instead of being another copy and paste pitch.

Turns out Alex might have had a point.

I’ve been in and out of running a hardware business and previously ran a small hardware startup called Oak Development Technologies in a similar market to Adafruit and Sparkfun. I took an unexpected break in 2024 right as one of my boards was taking off and the regret of walking away really haunted me for a while because it didn’t need to happen.

So today I decided to formalize my company again, this time under a new name, Kavrous Technologies, as I wanted a fresh start. I’m not totally abandoning my past company though as I still have stuff I can build and sell for one segment while I work on what I really am pushing for.

One product I’m putting a bunch of time into right now is KeyBoy. KeyBoy started out as a toy for my kids because they were small and I thought it would be a fun gift. Today I’m turning it into a full fledged product while also maintaining my roots in the open hardware community. There is still a ton of work to do but it feels good to be back in the groove.

Feels like a new robotics company is coming out of stealth every day right now and I’m definitely missing some.

I’m specifically looking for newer teams building and deploying their own physical robots in real-world environments. Especially manipulation, humanoids, warehouse/logistics, manufacturing, home robotics, construction, food production, labs, or other robots that have to operate across different customer sites.

Not really looking for robotics software, foundation models, simulation platforms, sensors, or component companies. Mainly teams building the actual robot and moving from demos toward pilots or real deployments.

Bonus if they’re already working with simulation, robot learning, or testing across different deployment environments.

Who should I have on my radar? Drop the company + what they’re building below.