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Comment by mrarjen | Hacker News Reader

My guess as well, the R&D that has gone into this would certainly allow it to be that much. But once it's out in the open I'm sure some people will take it apart and hopefully we will see easier (cheaper) ways of recreating it DIY style.

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The hardware on these things is pretty beefy too tbh. Like it's not just motors and servos from the electronics hobby shop.

it's like legitimate hydraulic suspension and batteries and power supplies and obviously, LIDAR + it's accompanying software

I would love to DIY this thing but it's a lot more advanced than DIYing even a Powerwall or a Model S

I forgot about LIDAR, in that case, my estimate was too low. LIDAR stuff is expensive, even the lowest end stuff is thousands.

An agricultural grade LIDAR sensor (for drones) costs $250-$500. I wouldn't trust it in my Tesla, but for a DIY Spot Mini clone it'll do.

Still, that's just the sensor...

(based on my very small amount of knowledge) -- the LIDAR in the recent SpotMini video looks high res/high quality -- would a cheap one mean mis-stepping on stairs? I imagine problems of quality abound for less than several thousand

Can you buy one of these with an SDK?

You'd have to roll your own... there are libraries for Raspberry Pi and Arduino though.

I think the parts are probably at least 20K, and the software is the proprietary effort of many, over a decade or more, so the homebrew version will be incomparably inferior, to the point where it's not really "the same thing", like how a Power Wheels car isn't a Tesla.

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