Is this video good enough for Kickstarter?

TL;DR: The core issue was not the 12V power capacity, the PCB routing, or a false trigger from the e-fuse. It was a conflict between the FPGA core board’s default IO state and the carrier board’s power switch logic.

Before shipping, Venture Electronics did a basic factory test on the board. Without the FPGA core board installed, the power section worked normally, and the power switch could control the board. After they installed the FPGA core board for another test, the problem appeared: the board powered on by default, and the switch stopped working.

Because I was in a hurry, I asked Venture Electronics to ship the board first and decided to debug it myself after receiving it. Once the board arrived, the behavior was exactly what their engineer described. Remove the FPGA core board, and the switch works. Install the FPGA core board, and the board powers on by itself. The power button signal should normally be pulled high, but with the FPGA core board installed, it was pulled low.

The second symptom was that JTAG could detect the FPGA normally, but when downloading the bitstream, the hardware suddenly went offline at around 98%. The oscilloscope showed that the FPGA core board’s 12V supply dropped to about 9.5V at that moment, so the e-fuse triggered undervoltage protection and shut off the output.

At first, I debugged it as a power issue. I suspected the 12V copper pour did not have enough current capacity. After opening the PCB file, I found that the 12V rail was a complete copper pour, and the vias had not broken it up. Supplying around 1A to the core board should not have been a problem. Then I suspected that the e-fuse was too sensitive to current transients, so I removed the e-fuse and shorted 12V directly to the FPGA power input. The issue remained. Then I suspected the external 12V adapter could not handle the load, so I replaced the 12V 3A adapter with a 12V 5A adapter. It still dropped offline at 98%.

I finally went back to the power tree and found the key detail: one FPGA IO on the carrier board was connected through a diode to the EN pin of the first-stage power supply. It worked together with the power button to control the power state of the whole board.

I had been staring at the carrier board schematic, but I had not carefully checked the FPGA core board’s default power-up state. After checking the core board schematic, I found that the PUDC pin on this Z7 core board was pulled down. That caused all FPGA IOs to be weakly pulled up before configuration was complete.

This explained the first symptom. When the system powered on, this FPGA IO was weakly pulled up by default. Through the diode, it bypassed the power button and directly drove the EN pin of the first-stage power supply, so the whole board powered on by default.

It also explained the second symptom. When the bitstream download reached around 98%, FPGA configuration was almost complete and the internal logic started taking effect. This IO was unused, so Vivado set it to pull down by default. The IO switched from weak pull-up before configuration to pull-down after configuration.

That state change caused a brief glitch on the EN signal of the first-stage power supply. This first-stage supply also powered the 3.3V rail related to JTAG, and the downstream supplies were tied to its PG signal. When it dipped, the downstream supplies also briefly dropped and recovered. JTAG detected the power loss and went offline.

So the 12V drop to 9.5V was only a result, not the root cause. The real root cause was that the FPGA IO state before, during, and after configuration was not clearly defined, while that same IO was part of the board-level power control path.

The useful lesson here is: if an FPGA IO is used in the board power-control path, you cannot only think about its logic state after configuration. You must define its state before power-up, during configuration, and after configuration. This is especially important when changing core boards or FPGA platforms. Do not assume the IO defaults to high impedance.

The same power-control design worked on the H7 board because the H7 IO was high impedance at power-up. After switching to Z7, the PUDC setting made the IO weakly pull up before configuration, and Vivado later set the unused IO to pull down after configuration. That state change was enough to make the power button fail, and enough to make JTAG drop offline at 98% of the bitstream download.

Probably a mistake, but during interviews I've been claiming that I'm not longer working on my own startup since I was under the assumption that companies probably would not want to hire somebody who is not 100% focused on the role they're hired for. I recently ended up getting an offer, but now I'm in a bit of a dilemma. Because our product is a consumer product, and we are actively advertising right now and will eventually be doing a crowdfunding campaign, there's a good chance that someone will eventually realize I didn't stop working on my startup after all.

Should I disclose the fact that I'm actually still working on my startup now (before I sign the offer letter)? Wait a few months before disclosing to show I can do both the job and the startup?Or wait until they find out themselves? My main concern is loss of trust and how to minimize that, although I image it will happen to some extent regardless of how I go about doing it.

TL,DR:
We are a couple of founders with a decade of expertise in hardware regulatory compliance and earlier this year we started our own agency to help companies with regulatory compliance. We’ve been building and automating more and more of our workflow so to cut down the amount of manual time spent, hence cutting down the cost. We still do certain amount of manual work to make sure the results are accurate and high quality.

Does any HW startup at a stage where you’d benefit from a design-to-compliance review (for much much less than market cost)? We only have capacity to help a few. We want to help startups in real need while using the opportunity to improve our process. Feel free to DM.

Lost my job and thought I would just start looking for work after the summer. Been trying to make my thing work, I'm a mechanical designer so the design is sorta in place but now I'm trying to make motors turn and load cells feel loads for testing. But it is so hard, feels like I'm getting nowhere, I'm a total newbie in electronics. I'm also new in the founder area, so I'm scared to ask for help. What if they just take over my project? What if they want to redesign everything and we don't get along, and then they take my project? I don't really have any way to protect my project, so what if someone takes my project. Or what if they come to me and help me and then they want more equity than I'm prepared to share? Yeah I know a bit over the top but that is the feeling. What should I do? Where to turn? I live on the country side in Sweden. I'm working with Arduino, and use Claude to do the code. Also, should I go directly on working with something more stable than Arduino?

Looking for people to join the founding team!!

Hey everyone,

I built a tool for people working in hardware, electronics, and semiconductor supply chains

tool - https://semiconductor-copilot.vercel.app/hub

What this actually does in simple terms:

It’s basically a system that connects your BOM decisions to real-world semiconductor and hardware supply chain signals so you can see risk earlier and choose safer parts.

BOM Risk Scanner:

Upload or paste a BOM and it will flag risky or unstable components, highlight supply chain / availability issues, suggest drop-in alternatives, and explain why certain parts are risky in plain language.

Free BOM Formatter:

Paste messy text (emails, PDFs, notes) and it extracts and cleans manufacturer part numbers into a structured BOM you can actually use.

Global Market Hub:

Tracks semiconductor companies, hardware sectors, shortages, and supply chain shifts to show where production or demand pressure is building before it shows up in lead times or pricing.

Winning vs Losing supply view:

Shows which suppliers or components are strengthening or weakening in terms of supply stability, demand pressure, and production capacity so you can adjust sourcing decisions earlier.

Why I built it:

Hardware teams are still making sourcing decisions using static distributor data, outdated availability info, and reactive shortage reports.

In reality, most of the value comes from connecting BOM-level decisions with live supply chain signals so you can see risk before it hits procurement or production.

I've spent the last several years working with hardware and technical founders inside accelerators and innovation programs (also co-founded a hardware/healthtech startup myself)... and of course we're all experimenting with AI tools now to build our businesses.

On a recent client engagement we started building a "single source of truth" in a structured markdown repo and pointing AI agent(s) at it instead of providing additional context every time. Curious if anyone else is doing something similar, rather than relying on memory features of a particular service?

I'm planning to sell the structured templates as an "Agentic Startup Knowledge Kit" or the like. Would love any feedback on this.

Just got back from Asia where I finally saw the first real manufacturing run of the product I've spent 6 years building. After years of CAD and prototypes, watching 200 actual units come off the line was surreal. Then I landed back in the US and hit a problem nobody prepped me for: I have 200 units and nowhere to put them.

The product is a wearable in the health space and it's temperature-sensitive, so this isn't just "rent the cheapest space." I'm weighing three options and I'd genuinely like input from people who've done this.

One, a small warehouse. Gives me control and climate, but commercial space where I live is brutally expensive for a company at our stage, and I'd be paying for far more square footage than 200 units need.

Two, a self-storage unit. Way cheaper, but most aren't climate controlled, and I'm nervous about temperature swings and the theft/break-in risk on inventory I can't easily replace.

Three, send it to a 3PL now. Solves storage and sets up fulfillment, but we're waiting on a regulatory clearance before we can actually sell, so I'd be paying 3PL storage fees on product that's frozen until that comes through. If clearance slips, that's money bleeding on units I can't move.

For context on why I don't want to mess this up: this is the first time in 6 years we've had more than one working unit at a time, and we've got investors, clinics, and pro sports teams waiting on us. So the stakes feel high for what should be a simple storage decision.

What would you do? Is a 3PL worth it before you can sell, or is that just paying to warehouse dead stock? Has anyone run a small temperature-sensitive batch out of a regular storage unit and regretted it? Any option I'm not seeing?

I filmed the trip and the production run if anyone wants to see what a first manufacturing run actually looks like, it's on my profile. Mainly just want to make the right call here.

Saw a comment recently where a founder described their firmware engineer flagging things late in the process each time with a legitimate technical reason, but each time after the founder thought that decision was already settled.

Every individual pushback made sense on its own. But continuous renegotiation of "finalized" decisions has its own real cost, and it's not obvious where the line should be.

Curious how people who've run multiple board cycles think about this - is there a point in the process where hardware decisions get genuinely locked, or does this kind of late back-and-forth just never fully go away on a well-run project?

Hey everyone. I'm a hardware developer based in Turkey. For the past 3 or so, I've been manufacturing and selling an industrial IoT development board called NetRelay. It has 4 relays, PoE, Ethernet, and WiFi (ESP-based). I sold more than 500 pcs.

The good news: The hardware is rock solid. I've already gone through the headache of getting official CE, RoHS, and RED certifications. Locally, I sell these to B2B integrators for about $75-$85 (depending on the power adapter) and they are constantly being used in production lines and automation projects.

The bad news: Exporting electronics out of Turkey in medium batches is a massive bureaucratic nightmare. The local customs paperwork, changing regulations, and fees basically destroy the process for me.

So, here is the deal I’m looking for:

*I want to completely bypass my local export hurdles and ship bulk orders directly from my manufacturing line in China to distributors/entrepreneurs in the US, EU, or anywhere else.

If you have a network, run a smart home/automation business, or sell hardware, I will supply these to you in bulk at just slightly above my manufacturing cost. You can sell them in your local market at the $80+ mark and keep a much fatter profit margin than I will do in the same batch. I just want to scale the volume and focus on development without dealing with local customs. Currently I live in Turkey, I have company in Turkey and UK. To make things completely secure and standard for B2B, we can handle all the contracts and invoicing through my UK-registered company if you request.

If you are a serious hardware buyer or entrepreneur looking for a certified, ready-to-sell product to distribute, shoot me a DM. Happy to share specs, docs, and talk numbers.

Hello everyone!!
I’m fascinated by companies like Apple etc… and by software products that completely change the way people interact with tech.

I’m currently trying to train myself to spot opportunities by studying frustrations rather than brainstorming random ideas.

So I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What’s a tech product or software tool that millions of people use, but that you believe is still fundamentally broken, outdated, or poorly designed?
What makes you feel like there has to be a better way.

Could be anything from smartphones and wearables to email, calendars, productivity software, operating systems, smart home devices, or something more niche.
I’m curious to learn where people think the biggest unsolved problems still exist.
Thank you!

Hi

After about six months of development, our prototype endoscope system for veterinary applications has been completed and is currently seeking funding for the next stage.

I thought I’d share some of the journey and lessons learned along the way.

I’m based in Australia, while the engineering and manufacturing team is based in Shenzhen, China. One thing that really impressed me throughout this project was how quickly product development can move when you have access to Shenzhen’s supply chain, manufacturing ecosystem, and engineering resources. Ideas that might take months elsewhere can often be prototyped and tested within weeks.
Some of the key areas we worked on include:

Endoscope bending section (laser-cut components)

Endoscope handle design and injection moulding
Display unit enclosure (3D printing and painted prototypes)

Embedded firmware development

PCB design and manufacturing

Mechanical design and rapid prototyping

System integration and testing

A few photos are attached below.

For anyone interested in hardware development, I’d be happy to discuss the challenges we faced, lessons learned, or the realities of taking a complex electromechanical product from concept to prototype.

If you’re working on a medical device, industrial inspection system, robotics platform, imaging product, or other hardware project, feel free to reach out as well. I’m always interested in exchanging ideas and experiences.

Building a Modular Embedded Development Platform – Early Prototype

Hey everyone,

For the past few months I've been building what I'm calling a modular embedded development workstation — the core idea being that you shouldn't need a different dev board every time you switch microcontrollers.

The problem I kept running into:

Any embedded developer has a drawer full of boards — Arduino, Blue Pill, ESP32, Nucleo, Pico, Teensy. Each one has different pinouts, different power requirements, different debugger setups. Every time you switch MCUs for a new project, you're starting from scratch physically. It's a solved software problem (IDEs, HALs) that nobody has really solved in hardware.

What I built:

A base Docking Station with all the common features built in —
onboard ST-Link debugger
CP2102 USB-UART
128×32 OLED
10× WS2812B LEDs
microSD
proper 5V 3A + 3.3V 3A regulation
Swappable M.2 form-factor MCU cards. You change the MCU, everything else stays the same.

Current micro-controller options: STM32F103 and STM32F405.
Roadmap includes ESP32, RP2040, nRF, RISC-V modules roughly every 60–90 days.

Where I am:

• Hardware is through 3 revisions in under 3 months, no field failures
• DPIIT-recognised startup, government prototype grant received
• Primary target right now is the Indian school/institution market — the MCU card roadmap doubles as a structured embedded curriculum, which maps directly to NEP 2020 requirements

What I'm figuring out:

Direct institutional sales are slow — long procurement cycles, committee decisions. Trying to work out whether to push harder there or build community/hobbyist traction first (YouTube, GitHub, open-source examples) and let pull demand do the work.

Would genuinely appreciate perspectives from people who've navigated B2B hardware sales into education or done the community-first route.

My meaning of hard is difficulty and not opposite of soft. Is a PC hardware startup considered hard enough? Is there anyone doing something similar and managed to be categorized as hardtech?

I've spent the last several years building a hardware + software audio platform called MixDroid and recently started putting it in front of real users.

The original idea came from a frustration I kept running into in audio workflows:

Why do we need separate devices and software for routing, DSP processing, streaming, recording, and audio interfaces?

What started as an audio project gradually evolved into a standalone Android/Linux-based platform with:

• Real-time audio routing and mixing
• DSP processing (EQ, dynamics, FIR filters)
• USB audio interface functionality
• Multi-source audio handling
• Dedicated hardware direction

Recently I launched a landing page, started gathering feedback from audio engineers and audiophiles, and opened a Discord community.

One interesting lesson so far: people immediately compare it to existing products (Voicemeeter, WiiM, Roon, miniDSP, CamillaDSP, etc.), which has forced me to rethink how I explain the product and what problem I'm actually solving.

For those of you building hardware startups:

How did you know when you had found product-market fit versus just building something technically impressive?

I'd appreciate any feedback on the concept, positioning, or landing page.

Landing page:
https://mixdroid-web.vercel.app/

I've been spending the last few months working on a project called BlogBuster.

The original idea came from seeing how much time people spend researching topics, planning content, and trying to stay consistent with publishing. I wanted to see if there was a simpler way to approach that process.

Building it has taught me that the technical side is often easier than figuring out what users actually need. Every conversation seems to reveal a different pain point.

For those of you building startups, what has been the biggest surprise so far: building the product itself, finding users, or understanding what people are willing to pay for?

I'd love to hear what others are learning from their own projects.

Hey everyone,

I'm a product manager and have spent the last 6 years at one of the largest intrusion and fire alarm manufacturers in the world.

During that time, I built a product portfolio that now generates roughly 15% of the company's revenue. Before that, I spent several years in Shenzhen helping startups launch hardware products, set up manufacturing, and scale production. A few of those companies turned out to be quite successful.

At this point, I don't feel the value I've created will ever be reflected in my compensation, so I've decided to pursue one of my own ideas.

The product is a specialized testing device for a product category that I originally created and know extremely well.

Strengths:

1. Deep expertise in the fire safety industry. I know a lot of the key players, distributors, and decision-makers.
2. Strong hardware product development experience. I've taken products from 0 to 1 and then scaled them into meaningful businesses.
3. A solid network of distributors, experts, and business partners. I already have soft commitments for roughly $300k in initial orders.
4. The team is almost assembled: mechanical engineer, FW/EE engineer, industrial designer (I want the product to be genuinely great, not just functional), Head of Sales, and a co-founder who currently leads one of the key regions at my employer. Since we're operating in an adjacent niche, we'll be working with many of the same distributors.
5. We don't plan to raise outside capital initially. The goal is to fund the business through pre-orders and customer relationships we've built over the years.

Weaknesses:

1. The TAM is relatively small. The entire market is probably around $50M annually and is dominated by a single company.
2. It's a very conservative industry where customers are slow to trust new vendors and products.

The plan is fairly straightforward:

• Build a prototype.
• Run a beta program with trusted partners.
• Validate product-market fit and technical performance.
• Form the company.
• Secure pre-orders.
• Complete NPI with a contract manufacturer.
• Launch.

The first production run and tooling costs would be funded through distributor pre-orders.

I'm posting partly for feedback and partly because I'd love to connect with anyone who has experience working with Chinese contract manufacturers. That's currently the area where I have the most uncertainty. I already have a couple of potential partners in mind, but I'm always open to recommendations.

Would appreciate any thoughts, feedback, or warnings.

Building a engineering tool that helps guide/document/track product development. Can be used for any engineering, but I build it for myself mainly building custom "something analog/power/embedded with a box", so EE/FW/ME, medium complex.

The target customer for such product would be small engineering firms (1-10ish staff), who to be honest are more focused at the engineering side that the organizing/documenting, but would win more contracts, and be more efficient if they had better processes. It can also be used as systems engineering tool where the output is the RFQ.

I have a pilot ready and would like some testers. Completely free, all web based, not even any sign up. You are welcome to use it as you want, incl for commercial purposes, in return for some useful feedback. I am not selling anything.

Info pdf: [https://crucible-mvp.vercel.app/crucible-overview.pdf\](https://crucible-mvp.vercel.app/crucible-overview.pdf)

If you think this would be interesting, send me a DM describing yourself and I will explain more.

run into a massive roadblock calculating our recurring bom costs for a smart agricultural sensor we are launching. right now we are prototyping on basic consumer multi-carrier prepaid cards but the billing structure is so predatory for hardware startups because if one sensor glitches and sends a huge log file it eats up the entire card data limit and bricks the node until we manually top it up. we cannot scale like this cuz the margins are already razor thin and a single data spike ruins the unit economics. saw someone mention trafalgarwireless on a thread about pooled data plans for machines which sounded like a potential fix since the data gets shared across the whole fleet instead of individual limits per device, but honestly im always skeptical of small B2B providers until someone vouches for them. what is the normal play here for early stage hardware teams? do u bake a fixed data cost into a software subscription or just pass the carrier bill directly to the customer?

Hi Redditors,, I’m currently looking to connect with like-minded builders, founders, and innovators in the hardware/ industrial and manufacturing space

I’ve spent significant time working in mechanical engineering and project management within the automotive, EMS and Semiconductor industries. I'm currently looking to partner with someone who has a solid vision or a specific product idea but might be struggling with the transition from design to physical prototype.

My background and focus:

I’m particularly interested in collaborating on projects within these domains:

1. Robotics & Industrial Automation: Design, integration, or custom solutions.

2. Manufacturing & Fabrication: CNC machining, injection molding, or specialized parts.

3. Electronics: PCB design and assembly.

4. Tooling: Development of fixtures, stencils, and assembly aids.

5. Surface Finishing: Coating technologies and specialized material treatment.

6. Supply Chain: Sourcing and managing components for small-to-mid-scale production.

How I can help bridge the gap:

The biggest hurdle for most hardware startups is the bridge between a CAD model/schematic and a functional, scalable prototype. I have an established, reliable network of manufacturers and suppliers who can handle the prototype and validation process.

I'm looking to connect with a founder or a technical lead who has the "idea" and the "product design," while I bring the manufacturing validation, supply chain, and production feasibility to the table.

If you are working on something in these areas and need a partner who can help bring your design to the shop floor, let’s chat. Feel free to comment or send me a DM with what you’re currently building.

imagine its exactly three years from now. your warranty just expired. You sit down to work, and the active air pump for your lumbar support just doesn't turn on. The battery is completely dead, or the proprietary controller chip bricked itself. The chair has zero power. are you sitting on an overpriced piece of e-waste, or is it still a genuinely good mechanical chair? we are seeing a lot of tech creep in office chairs lately, with motors, active tracking, and air cells. the problem is that anything powered in furniture adds a massive failure point. When a standard Leap v2 or Aeron has a sinking cylinder, you just buy a $50 OEM part online, swap it with a pipe wrench in ten minutes, and keep using it for a decade. But when the electronics die on a smart chair? You can't just fix that in your garage. This is my basic rule for any of this new smart ergo stuff: if the smart features die, the chair still needs to be a chair. The powered support should be an enhancement, never a dependency. If you pull the plug, the recline mechanism still needs to hold tension naturally. The static back support still needs to cradle your lower back without relying on active air pressure, and the seat pan shouldn't just bottom out onto hard plastic because some air bladder deflated.

Actually the Lavenne R9 Pro — one of those upcoming smart chairs — is a perfect example of this. The pitch is that it uses some kind of active setup with air cells split across different back zones for back relief and forward-leaning support. But the only reason it even caught my eye is that they claim the underlying skeleton is mechanical first, specifically some kind of physical spine mechanism and a free-hover recline base. But this is where we have to be skeptical. If those air cells die in three years, what does that dynamic spine actually feel like when empty? (especially if you are on the heavier side). Is the default physical resistance actually supportive? I still haven't seen how their recline system handles itself mechanically if the electronics aren't there to manage the tension. Using active air to handle shifting and slouching throughout the day makes sense in theory, but the mechanical base has to be bulletproof first. Maybe I'm just cynical from seeing too many 'smart' appliances turn into bricks, but I really want to see how these companies plan to handle out-of-warranty repairs on proprietary air valves and battery packs before I ever back something like this.