What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

chipweinberger

I'll be sticking around in the comments so feel free to ask questions. AMA!

Ilya85

What was the biggest mistake you made in the early days that almost killed the business?

stavros

What was your anti-counterfeiting strategy? That sounds interesting.

nippoo

How did you navigate the world of compliance testing and certification, with all the different countries involved (FCC, UL, etc). Are there any markets you've decided not to sell to as they're not worth the paperwork?

bgnn

It's a poor take to be honest. I'm an EE with main expertise in IC design but I design a lot of the chip packages, PCBs, mechanical stuff like custom made sockets etc and write a ton of SW, be it tools for myself for development and testing, be it the firmware of the chip I'm designing or another chip I use on the board. For me it never felt like SW was the hard bit, because you can write and test it pretty immediately and pretty much for free. HW felt harder because of the tooling costs, lack of documentation and examples, things that aren't obvious at the beginning (EMI/EMC) etc etc but these are very minor compared to the actual issue: long and expensive development cycles. Now, that doesn't apply if your HW is extremely simple and just a glorified uC and rhe development time is mostly the code running on it. This is why this is such a poor take. One can argue for anything at extremes. SW can be very very complex and much harder than HW, and vice versa at different extremes.

Hackbraten

How is fulfillment not a nightmare?

iambateman

This is cool! Thanks for sharing. What understanding about hardware did you start with, and what tools did you use to learn what you didn’t already know?

simonreiff

Wow, congrats on this project! Really cool. I majored in piano performance many years ago and will definitely check this out.

Echo4309

Good to see some hardware love! Congrats on hitting 2500 units. How’d you decide to make the first jump and actually build your first prototype?

dmd

I've been using an Anatek Pocket Record for the past 34 years. Bought it when I was 14. That's value! https://www.izcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/pm_Pocket-Record.j...

dgellow

Wow, congrats, I remember reading your HN post. I hope you will continue writing blog posts on your journey, I expect quite a lot of software engineers would be very interested going though a similar journey now that LLMs removed most of the fun of programming. It’s neat to work on something physical for a change

stevage

That's a super interesting device. Definitely pondering ordering one.

fragmede

> Have a strong anti-counterfeit strategy. Don’t overlook this. Sounds like a story. What parts of it can you share?

TuringNYC

Congrats. I did want to respond to this >>> The hardest part of building Jamcorder was still, by far, the software -- roughly 200K lines of code spread across the firmware, app, and manufacturing tooling. It took over 3 years and many long nights in a pre-LLM world. >>> When compared to that, the hardware was undeniably smooth sailing. >>> For the record, I don’t think I’m special. It’s just that hardware’s reputation for being difficult is, IMO, overstated. For me, when I complain about hardware, its actually usually complaining about drivers, compatibility, underdocumented interfaces, firmware etc. If one were to put firmware and manufacturing tooling in a separate bucket, that is indeed the problem!

alance

Ok are you riding with two huge boxes containing all your work on an electric unicycle and I guess the hi-vis top means you're headed into traffic and the box-cords seem to be balancing at the halfway point of the boxes and this is too much anxiety for me. But hey, glad you optimized for minimalism on the PCB ♡

DavidPiper

Very happy JamCorder customer here. I've started playing in improv shows since I bought it too, and it's nice to have those on record! It's rare that I come across a product I have literally zero complaints about, or any feedback to offer. Even my concern that it was tied to an app that might disappear one day is of course covered by the fact that it's all just MIDI files on a card. Thank you so much for making this, it's basically a perfect product for me and I love it. No notes.

j-bos

Inquiring minds want to know: what is your anti-counterfeit strategy or is the fact that you're keeping it under your hat part of the strategy? Also, pretty cool that you set up your website real fast. Would you mind adding your Twitter link onto the site?

hoppp

The audio hardware industry is much more easy due to the gear addict people buying up everything.

cantdutchthis

Reading these kinds of stories always make me happy. Well done!

Archit3ch

I can't wait for ASIC manufacturing to become as easy as ordering a PCB.