zkirill

> avoid asking people to do surface mount unless it is reasonably straightforward - it was never meant to done that way.

This is the kind of comment that I was hoping to read here. Would you mind elaborating? What is considered straightforward? Can a PCB be designed or printed in such a way that makes it straightforward to surface mount components? Does the number of PCB layers factor into this?

> do you mean sell an electronic product as a kit?

Not quite. The person who would do the soldering would not necessarily be the end consumer. They would do it as part of a network of assemblers, for a fee or pro-bono as a community service. I wrote about this in more detail on the project page [1].

[1] https://flyingcarcomputer.com/posts/flying-car-mechanic-netw...

I was going to ask if there is a good list of C books and then answered my own question. It categorizes _Modern C_ as Intermediate level.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/562303/the-definitive-c-...

Not vintage but I loved reading your reference project. Sent you an email just in case.

Sure! I found your email through your profile and will send you a message.

Just wondering if git is used to collaborate on hardware design? I've only seen projects share completed KiCad/PDF/BOM.

I just learned about Easy EDA! The drag and drop of parts is insanely cool. Just wondering if you can mix KiCad with Easy EDA in one workflow? Or, when would one choose KiCad over Easy EDA and vice versa?

The SBC is called Banana Pi M1+. Thank you for introducing me to Helios (Kobol). Their blog and wiki were a very useful and humbling read.

After I posted my question I learned that BPi didn't open source their PCB layout. It looks like I will need even more help than I originally planned.

Awesome article. Just wondering, how can a hardware company voluntarily submit their device for reverse engineering and dismantling as a show of good faith? Given the right circumstances this is basically a free security audit and marketing for the company.

As far as I know the first Apple computer was not really a computer but a box of parts that the customer had to assemble themselves. The early days of Apple is probably the best example of "building in public" because so much of it was actually just selling the dream. In any case, the opposite is infinitely worse. Too many people wasted away for years "building in private". If and when they did finally release it was to the sound of crickets. Hacking for pleasure is one thing. If you're trying to build a business then you must be always be selling and marketing.

I have always been curious about a different approach. Let's say that I interview you and a few other people, and then match you in a party with someone whose skills and character are complementary to yours. Then I match both of you with an idea that suits your party's combined skill set and also has a chance of making money. You're welcome to pivot and try something else after reasonable time and effort was put in. Everything else is boilerplate like 49/51 equity split and vesting schedule so you can focus on delivering maximum value.

AWS SES and WorkMail. It gets the job done. listmonk (self-hosted) for mailing lists because it comes with double opt-in and GDPR compliance. Proton Mail and SimpleLogin for experiments.

Does anyone have any experience with mass testing flash drives as part of an assembly line?

Another tool for testing flash drives that was recommended to me was H2testW.

Do not discount the cynic. I persist. Here is my question, for example. How would Apple and its ecosystem have evolved differently if they never adopted Objective-C? Would it be possible to accomplish everything with C and better tooling?

Be careful not to mistake "real users" with paying customers. If your aim is to build a business, then making that distinction early on is crucial. As far as your first sale is concerned, ask yourself who is your target customer, where are they, what do they do, and how do they do it. Then, simply walk up to them and tell them that you understand that they have an urgent problem which requires an immediate solution. And that you are able to provide that solution to them today at a price that they will find agreeable. Good luck!

The plan is to first figure out how to legally market, distribute, and sell this physical thing. It's more difficult than I imagined as you can read in my blog. Feedback from Hacker News has been invaluable to me during this process. I will replace the placeholder website as soon as I can start accepting payment.

It's tricky because the kind of buyer I have in mind would feel uncomfortable with that operation despite having the best instructions. It would lead them to pass on this product at this stage thereby ruining my market validation.

I want to make the experience as seamless as possible given the constraints, and popping the SD card in the slot is the best I came up with so far.

Having said that, the comment by tjohns below made me rethink some things. I may end up providing both the download link, and also mail the SD card.

> Mailing SD cards in their final form in a regular envelope is not secure. An adversary could intercept and reformat, and it'd be tough to tell. I realize this is unlikely, but still, I'm like.. why?

I agree. It's a poor medium for many different reasons. However, if I can sell these, then I can sunset them and start working on the actual electronic device, which will house the OS and software on eMMC or SSD.

Thank you for writing this. I was wondering how to price things during the market validation stage and this gave me some ideas. Blog post incoming!

Cool find, thanks! If gummy glue fails or is hard to source then I will definitely try this.

I want to create a company that is like Apple of the 90's and resurrect the "bicycle for the mind". Is there any chance you would consider mentoring?

Looks like it's a similar standard by Huawei. [1] Very cool. I can see this being useful for tablets that have the SIM port but lack the cellular module. Wonder if this would ever make sense on an SBC.

[1] https://www.androidauthority.com/what-is-nano-memory-968723/

What about residue?

Check out Tcl/Tk. It is cross-platform, simple, stable, has a long history, and runs blazing fast.

I hope that this is having an opposite effect where people are starting to step outside of the walled gardens to look for "the good stuff". Google pulled this shit with us too a few years ago by attempting to force us to share our signing keys. We ignored them and told our users to download the APK from our website instead which they happily did. Then, Google bumped the minimum API version and new versions of Android refused to launch apps that were not updated. Our users found workarounds before we did, by using some kind of obscure adb command. The new API bump introduced some needless asinine changes that seemed to exist just to please some PM at Google. Enough is enough.

Glad to hear that this passed muster in the food industry. Do you by any chance remember how the SD card was packaged or protected from damage while in transport?

I am opposed to DRM and would never do that.

Subscribe to the mailing list and you'll be the first one to find out! Seriously, though, HN is not my target market. I just needed a sounding board. Although, getting to the front page did grow the subscriber count from 7 to 48 people in 24 hours.

I am re-imagining the personal computer to take on the hegemonic order of Apple, Microsoft, and Google (Android). It may be a challenge.

Being able to patiently explain something to a layperson using simple words and short sentences, in a sympathetic non-condescending way.

The tech industry is in some kind of a communications complexity arms race spiral where normal people have no idea what any of us are talking about anymore. It created a prime feeding ground for charlatans who can sound smart for long enough before they move on to the next insanely awesome thing.

> The thing is: unless you know what you need to feel good about your product, price-shopping is senseless.

For the benefit of future readers who stumble upon this: in the comments of that linked thread you will notice that a Polish lab replied saying they can get the job done for one-third of the price. They reached out to me on a Sunday (!) which is a good sign. Always be price-shopping.

Yes, please. Can you email me at poland.qyqa2@8alias.com?