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Comment by Aurum197 | Hacker News Reader

Thanks crazygringo. To answer your questions: - We have made an MVP, and it works. - While the speaker doesn't go into the earcanal, it hovers over it. - It is private. Much like holding your phone to your ear while speaking. - The part that swaps out is the audiomodule. - The battery life isn't that great for the MVP; but we hope to improve it with our production model.

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Battery life and battery weight are my two big concerns. Otherwise I think this has potential to be an absolute blockbuster. Especially if you can produce a whole line of unique designs.

Tootie, while the battery life is short of AirPods, it is at par with many other earbuds. Since our module is independent of the earrings, we do plan to offer many styles of earrings. That's part of our business model: that the same customer will buy multiple earrings per module. About the weight: that was our big concern as well. But we did make a few that are lighter than some standard dangler style earrings.

Perhaps you could integrate the battery into the earring part so while you're wearing one pair you can hot-swap to a fully charged pair. I like the concept though, very interesting!

It's an idea we considered seriously. But ultimately we decided that we wanted our customers to have the option of throwing away the module when it got outdated, but be able to hang on to the jewelry especially if they buy a precious metal version.

Well, hopefully they will recycle the batteries but it's a good point!

Great work! First person I showed your site to said "Why didn't I think of that?!", which is always a great sign.

If you can compete with or beat most other earphones for battery time, you're already set. Unless you can identify some low hanging fruit, I wouldn't invest much more time into power management because getting Apple-like power management without degrading the connection and user experience is really hard. The two work against each other unless you've got the resources to run large tests to compare changes and perturb towards a solution.

I'd recommend focusing on sourcing. The manufacturers who make cells for Apple and auto manufacturers bin their output just like other silicon fabs and only give Apple/automotive customers the best cells (selling the rest to less discerning clients making consumer electronics, ecigs, etc.). On the extreme, I've seen batches of 18650s from the same manufacturer vary from 2Ah to 3.5Ah depending on what quality of Samsung cells they got. You could probably eek out 10-30% more life that way, but it's hard to predict the final outcome during R&D.

Thank you, Akiselev! And that's exactly where we are: trying to figure out sourcing.

Binning could be done too. Selling a normal and a pro version, with the pro one receiving the better batteries they got from their supplier

What does binning mean in this context?

It refers to manufacturing a product and then separating it into tiers based on how well the process went. It's like how 16 GB MicroSD cards are just failed 32 GB cards, they don't set out to manufacture multiple sizes.

Did not know that!

Thanks tpetry. I wasn't familiar with binning.

Have you spent much time looking at hearing aid designs?

I think you'll find a lot of embodied wisdom on how to discreetly route audio into the ear canal.

One of the design features that we wanted to include in our main embodiment was: OPEN-EAR audio. Having something sitting inside the ear all day did not appeal to us; which is why we went with this design. There are a number of ways to disguise an in-canal hearable, but the "in-canal" option was something we wanted to avoid for all-day wear.

OPEN-EAR audio doesn't work in crowded cities, where you will find most of your demand.

If it's just podcasts or notifications it works fine 99% of the time. It's really just when the subway is pulling in, or an ambulance is going by, that you won't be able to hear. But as long as the button on the earring works as pause/play, it seems fine.

True. There are situations where open-ear is not a great solution. But it works well for most of our use cases.

(And apologies for the all caps open-ear)

I dont understand why would anyone wear this. It is less annoying regarding look than Apple earphones (that look like in-ear cigarette, I am still unable to get used to someone wearing them). I cant remember when it was last time I have seen someone wearing such a large piece of earrings - except maybe some old lady.

Is this just a prototype and you can make them smaller? Probably not as you need that part over the ear channel to hide the transparent tube, like with hearing aid, right?

If you live in any city where people have a sense of style; London, Tokyo, Paris, you'll find a plenty of people wearing "such large [...] earrings".

Yes it's somewhat of a niche market; but if done right, it can work. If they're selling them with precious gems/metals they wouldn't even need a huge market to be viable.

Imagine if they designed the audio-module so you can slip it out of the earring and into an in-ear device/holder for in-ear use a la AirPods, then on your casual days you don't need the fancy jewellery.

We do need the earrings to be reasonably large if they are to cover the battery, the circuit board, and the speaker. HOWEVER, the module can be worn with stud earrings (in which case the module will show but they still have many advantages over earbuds.)

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