Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

Is it real or is it joojoo?

I've been looking forever for a (cheap enough) tiny touchscreen wifi device to embed into laser cut switch-plates and stick on my walls to control my X10 stuff. This looks close enough to get my interest. I think I'll need to root android to do what I want to do though. Is rooting android hard on this device?

How big is this usb dongle that gets you 3g? A picture would be helpful. The absence of one creates the impression that its been omitted for good reason, ie: its completely impractical to actually ever use.

Bluetooth?

External keyboard?

Charging dock or must we fiddle with little wires and connectors to charge it, get our music out of it?

Expansion interface port like iphone, or all/only usb?

Usb host mode, slave mode (like a disk) or both.

You product is an early adopter/uber-geek toy, you need to add the ability to drill down to much, much more technical detail in your web site. You need more pictures, and probably video of the device in action. I've got my finger on the paypal button, I need just the tiniest nudge to give this thing a try.

You might want to check out a Chumby One for $120:

https://store.chumby.com/

I like chumbies, I made a neat robot with a pulled apart chumby as a brain, but it takes a lot of pulling apart and re-jiggering to make a chumby fit in a wall plate. Its fun to do it once, its decidedly less fun to do it 10 times.

I'm about to just use ipod touches and give up on some of the more advanced stuff I wanted to do. I was hoping to use picwing frames but they turned out to be more vapor than real. I thought cruchpads were going to be it, and then they got joojoo-ed. Still looking.

Did you check out the Zii Egg?

I think you totally misunderstand the content of this post. Argument please, otherwise i have to think that you are just trolling. Thanks. Alberto

I don't think kqr2 does much trolling! He was just trying to help me out. Its a good point though, Your market and the Chumby market have much overlap. You should have a look at how they do things over there for ideas. You don't have enough meat on your site to actually sell these things yet. $200 is a big enough number that people don't buy just to try. I actually plunked down money because I was convinced that a chumby would be useful for something I wanted to do.

Hi, thanks. I finally understand your point of view. I will think about the ideas you inspired. thanks a lot. Alberto

Thanks a lot for your clever comment. Sincerely.

1) Rooting androind on this device is not hard, we can provide detailed informations. 2) The USB 3G dongle is very small, we will have pictures uploaded on the website in a couple of days. We are choosing amongst different designs. 3) No bluetooth 4) No external keyboard for now, we are conducting research about which models in the market android could support. 5) The ports on the machine are only 1 micro USB, and 1 9.5 mm audio out jack. 6) Charging is via usb cable to pc, or with included adaptor. 7) usb mode host

I will upload more pictures very soon, i am waiting to meet with the factory to buy the prototype i have ordered weeks ago, but the chinese holidays slowed down business here. Thanks a lot again. Alberto

I will upload more pictures very soon, i am waiting to meet with the factory to buy the prototype i have ordered weeks ago, but the chinese holidays slowed down business here. Thanks a lot again. Alberto

Ouch. So its still in its joojoo phase. Ok, criticism numero uno: You should absolutely not "presell" these things. You should not look like you're within a hundred miles of taking money before you've got crates of them sitting on a shelf ready to ship tomorrow. Apple can get away with this kind of thing because they have a track record of delivering on time. For everyone else, its a "close browser, c-ya, not coming back until everyone I know has bought one, received it and raved about it" event.

If you responded, in thought, to this with even a tiny bit of "but I need the money from presales to pay the manufactures to get the fist shipment going", hang it up, you're just about certain not to make it in the hardware business.

Sorry to sound harsh, but I've been on this train before.

Yes, you are perfectly right about Apple and its track record. We do not have that. Anyway i am not pre-selling anything, the device is currently produced and i can ship you 500 hundreds of pieces to you in a week. Anyway, you are perfectly right. I will send soon some prototypes to influentials tech blogs, and you will see the real thing soon. Thanks a lot for your feedback. Alberto

Reply on news.ycombinator.com