2,234 karma · joined August 14, 2018
I'm merely putting the number in perspective. 6 digits isn't really something that's particularly concerning on any Facebook spreadsheet.
I mostly play the same three or four games and have for about a decade. Stuff like KSP and ARMA where save state and modding are extremely important.
It's a command and telemetry package for working with embedded systems, arduinos through satellites, and includes data visualization and command interfaces. It's released under AGPL by Ball Aerospace and has a following at NASA as well.
It's particularly useful for dealing with small systems where you'd usually write a python script for FTDI/serial communication. You can instead just define your commands and telemetry structs in a config file and the system makes it work.
At the end of the day, on a smallish platform like this, the downvotes do also hurt. Some days it seems more users feel like downvoting everything than upvoting anything and unlike reddit, very few downvotes immediately result in censure.
This is a gross oversimplification, but I think the takeaway is it's ok to have spaces for both discussions.
I'd also add that both discussions are happening concurrently. The race issue is big right now, but economic justice is still a central topic. Occupy was a good example even if not a well organized one.
I don't have any stake in C2, I just want to make clear that they are the standard that this will be measured against and that they are said standard for a reason. Anything advertised lesser should be viewed with suspicion, particularly for safety critical products.
All that said, there are opportunities to improve, but those opportunities mainly exist in the software space. Focusing on hardware solely to create a moat isn't innovation, it's making landfill fodder.
Finally, I have significant experience in this area, both as an athlete and a coach. Enough that I would unmask myself very quickly if I mentioned any details. I don't coach anymore and don't have any financial interest in that either. Teaching people to use these devices safely isn't an "instructional videos" and "warm up" ordeal. This will sound silly but people generally don't know what their body is doing without tight feedback loops and their perception breaks down under stress/over the duration of a workout. We frequently had people row in front of mirrors to get things to click (another business opportunity in the computer vision space). It's painfully obvious when you go anywhere that has mixed classically trained and self trained rowers who is who.
I only raise questions because the move-fast-break-things approach is dangerous when you're breaking people. I couldn't care less about the VCs getting fleeced by this.
1. Each machine computes effective Watts differently, so pulling your guts out might be 1kW on one machine, and 400W on another. Whichever one everyone has the most experience with wins here.
2. There are a bunch of different designs across about three different resistance modes available A. air B. water and C. hydraulic piston. Air is generally regarded as the best as it doesn't change felt resistance with time, though it can be somewhat noisy, maybe 70dB. Water heats up as all the energy is dumped into it without anywhere else for it to go, so the viscosity changes very noticeably over a long workout. These also tend to have a nylon strap instead of a chain which stretches and can cause an odd sensation. Finally the worst, hydraulic piston, which has the smallest mass to dump energy into, will change resistance dramatically in a short time, and have been known to fail with experienced rowers, sometimes explosively.
There is room for an electrical resistance variant in this lineup, as has been shown with cycling, though it's important to note that thermodynamics specifies the energy has to go somewhere, and you may end up with a dangerously hot resistor bank somewhere on the machine.
It should also be noted that experienced rowers can output a considerable amount of power. Enough to cause piston rowers to overheat and explode/vent. Just because your resident mechanical engineer can't break the prototype doesn't mean you shouldn't find someone who can hit National Team numbers and have them go at it for an hour straight.
I'm not saying these things are death machines or anything, but the concept of adding essentially seated row to a rowing machine is fairly dangerous. Throwing an air damper up to 10 and ripping on it for a couple minutes will leave you quite sore the next morning but adding high weight can start pulling muscles or slipping discs.
There are two major rowing postures you'll find people tend to use, hips rotated forward and hips back (spine slightly arched forward/convex). Neither is really wrong but for high resistance you need to be in the hips forward position (back slightly concave) as is the technique for weight lifting in the seated row. IME most people don't actually comprehend which position they're in but using the wrong one can be catastrophic. You typically have to spend a few hours with someone ensuring they stay in the correct orientation before they really get it.
Add to this that I could recreate this business using the C2 API in a couple weeks and suddenly have a market of everyone who owns a C2 (all the people in this thread complaining that it doesn't support their machine) along with a literal potential customer list available through C2.
For those not in the know, rowing machines all have different calibrations. C2 is the standard because they're very consistent across machines and are by far the best made allowing for many thousands of hours of use without failures. Most experienced rowers won't touch anything other than a C2.
Edit: reading further, the 'moat' here appears to be electrically controlled 100lb high resistance settings. Be VERY careful with this. It's well established that most non-trained athletes will hurt themselves with this feature as it's a common trope on C2 machines. The rowing posture can be rather dangerous for high weight if misused.
Precision data gives them convictions and convictions give them promotions. As they say, any metric that becomes a target... This is why giving the police invasive surveillance tech is a terrible idea, they will only focus on the data that fits their narrative and discard the rest. The defense doesn't even need to know that any other data exists.
You know what... Nevermind.