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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

Sad to see someone’s small business close, but these products are in a difficult position of being both extremely niche and very simple. Someone went to some effort to source a nice dongle enclosure and do some printing on it, but beyond that the hardware is something that anyone with a little PCB experience could replicate it in a day. I wouldn’t be surprised if these were just sourced from a generic manufacturer in China and they asked for custom printing.

If there’s demand this would be a good project for someone to make and have ready to build PCBs you could order from OSH Park or even a fully project that you could have JLC build and populate.

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I have a tiny business that makes a gadget for musicians: Think something like an effects pedal. I publish my schematics, have shared PCB files, and even offer to give you some of the parts that are hard to get. A few people have built their own, and share their results in web forum threads about my product.

Very few people have taken the bait. I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something. Even most programmers don’t want to solder. They may still be technically inclined, but want to be involved at a higher level: Buying the basic stuff and using it as a basis for even more elaborate things.

>I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something.

But that was never the worry. The worry is a competitor undercutting you because they do not have to recoup R&D.

A few tricks to beat this are community, brand, an app that only works with the official version (hard to pull off and sad), and going more niche.

If you offered me schematics and PCB designs for a tool I desired, I might be /more/ inclined to give you money just to support you. Nothing to do with my ability or interest in DIY (I also design and sell electronics).

> I think we techies over-estimate the ability and inclination of people to make something.

If you replace 'we techies' with 'most folks' (and especially with 'folks who didn't do a thing with their hands in thei$ lives') nothing would change.

I love learning from and building that type of thing (plus have some musician friends who can never have too many gadgets). Would you be willing to share a link?

Note: if you don’t want to create a link to yourself, you could also email me at <my username>0_AT_protonmail_._com

This company and product line launched nearly 20 years ago (2007) and doesn’t seem to have changed much since. That’s quite a long time for something like this. If the owners had wanted the business to continue (perhaps they didn’t), some diversification could have achieved that relatively easily.

Your assumption here is that they wanted it to continue making money, rather than (for example) reacting to the influx of new orders from HA’s announcement by shutting it down. Perhaps a working source of revenue is being voluntarily terminated rather than having starved to death?

I explicitly wrote, "If the owners had wanted the business to continue (perhaps they didn’t)".

That's not an assumption, it's a premise which explicitly acknowledges that alternatives are possible.

Ah, excellent. Not accustomed to seeing folks here acknowledge the alternatives at all, apologies.

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