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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

Is there so much of a shortage of hardware engineering talent that these startups really need to be using hobby hardware?

I am not formally trained in electronics, but I managed to learn enough in the last year to design and manufacture my own PCBs for respiratory breath analysis with Atmel microprocessors. Essentially, they're like Arduinos but I also attached an off-the-shelf SD card reader and a bluetooth module. After that experience, I learned enough that I can simply build virtually everything into the board itself if I were to try again (which I'm still sort of in the process of doing).

Point is, the fact they're just using Raspberry Pis tells me that they barely know what they're doing. No reason why they can't design their own hardware to do the same thing but consume way less energy. What else do they truly need other than a basic microcontroller and a GSM module? GPS maybe?

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I design my own boards too, but throwing a SOM into my layout is way too attractive to pass up, especially when schedule matters more than COGS.

Make-versus-buy decisions abound in product development. If you aren't a full stack electronics and firmware designer, then you have to manage the design project with its uncertainties, including schedule. A buy-in gets you moving right away, to address other project issues that require a prototype. You can always design it out later.

Dealing with complex chips often involves discovering bugs in the docs, and a second board spin to fix them. Then you'd better have a good scope and some real knowledge.

Despite its hobby orientation, the RPi is legit.

Sure but the added cost is not a big factor when you're making a handful of them.. If you're making tens of thousands though? Then it begins to add up.

10,000 @ $35 is $350,000 - that's really not that much money. That's like 1 to very generously 3 engineers for a year. Can you really design, build, validate, ramp, stock, fulfill and deploy your own hardware for less than that? I strongly suspect they ran the numbers and the answer was a hard no.

Not to mention the time penalty - as a rule of thumb it takes about minimum 6m average 12m to go from concept to physical units in people's hands at scale. These Pi's are shipping today. As a startup, that's hard to pass on.

And then the designer up and quits, leaving you with a sketchy and gratuitously complex design that nobody can fathom.

A volume like 10k puts you in a dreaded "in between" zone. You're not making a one-off widget that a customer is willing to pay an unlimited amount for because it solves a unique problem. And it's not enough volume to make something that just rolls off an assembly line. All of the simplistic mental models for how to proceed, don't work.

I work in such an industry, making specialized equipment. Every component is an expensive buy-in. It's ridiculously hard to find cost savings every component is up against the same math. Then again the competition faces the same problem.

> I am not formally trained in electronics, but I managed to learn enough in the last year to design and manufacture my own PCBs

How did you learn? I'm not formally trained in electronics either and would like to be able to do this.

I picked a somewhat easy project and paid an engineer I found online $20.00/hr over asking to do the design with me one on one over screen sharing in 2-3 hour increments. 2 weeks later a board was born.

What makes the RPi "hobby hardware"?

I'm referring to the OP's terminology, but it's also not entirely untrue. The intent of the Raspberry Pi was/is not to be a shortcut for tech startups who can't C++ their way out of a paper bag. It's also not like the Rpi has enough power to be of practical use to the average person, or even most atypical folks, hence it's more of a hobby or educational tool.

Interesting, but this has a hint of gatekeeping I would say. If someone makes a product and it's somewhat successful, who cares what it's built on!? The actual intent according to their website is

> Computing for everybody

> From industries large and small, to the kitchen table tinkerer, to the classroom coder, we make computing accessible and affordable for everybody.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/

I would say that's exactly what we're seeing here.

IMO every company, employee, or hobbyist should be able to buy the same number of Pis. Fulfilling orders of thousands for corporations while leaving individuals to fight over out-of-stock listings is not computing for everybody.

It's not that it's their business model to suffer from supply chain issues.

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