Hahaha cost effective design. There's no way in hell that thing is even remotely cheap, or optimized. Chips from TI, Tons of hand assembly, custom aluminum extrusion, seamless, no mold mark shell... This thing was not cheap. They even splurged for an ENIG finish!
That being said, it could be done for waaay less if you're willing to compromise on just a few features.
Single LED COB array at the base. Gets rid of ~7 parts (6 pcb Led array, the custom aluminum extrusion, plus all the flax flexes, plus a fair amount of hand assembly. Everything on a single PCB.
Can still do the twist dimming + everything else, the light will just have an orientation.
TBH, 'Custom aluminum extrusion' - this is not a big deal at all. In China, the tool for this is < $1k and for what appears to be about 6 inches, perhaps its a dollar's worth a material if it was WAY overpriced, most likely less than 50 cents. And the tool will last for a long time...
Any resources on who to go to to get custom aluminum extrusion? Always assumed it was too expensive, but I was fortunately wrong!
As far as the chips go... I've had much better luck with Asian chip manufacturers -- generally about 1/3 the cost for similar parts. Most have a decent english datasheet. LCSC is a good place to find them.
We basically just looked on Alibaba for factories that could do all the metal work that we needed, sent them a quotation package, set up a tour, confirmed their ISO:9001, negotiated terms, and were off to the races. If you have a CM where everything is received for final delivery it helps as they can do your IQC so your metal supplier accountability is baked in. At least thats what has worked for us.
What's said is that, to build this thing in America, it'd cost an absolute fortune because there simply aren't factories here which are really capable of making things like this in high volume cost-effectively. This reminds me of the article I read not long ago about Apple trying to build MacBooks in Texas and having all kinds of problems just finding screws for it, and having to get them from China because the local companies just couldn't do it.
I have quoted for parts in both the US and China. What I have seen is that generally, tooling is noncompetive - I got quotes for 22X the cost in the US...!
That said, the advice we got from most of the people we were quoting with was to get the tools made in China, import them to the US and produce the parts locally. We didn't end up doing that but I remember being amazed at the crazy tool quote arbitrage...
Bingo. Tooling in the US is ridiculously expensive. For other applications (tools for plastics, injection molding, thermoforming) there is often a 3-5x difference in price.
Actual processing is much less of a difference, especially at volume. So it makes sense to do tooling in China, production in the US.
ENIG is pretty standard these days and cheap in high volumes. A few cents more per board (the plating is super thin) is offset by more reliable soldering of parts like BGAs due to the superior flatness compared to cheaper HASL.
Agreed, and there are very few accelerometers/gyros available in packages that don't require ENIG for reliability as the market is driven by phone usage, it would almost definitely cost more to get an (obscure/old) accel than just use ENIG.
I agree with the rest of OPs points though, all the seperate LED boards are a bit excessive.
In many board houses Pb-free HASL costs the same as ENIG. And many board houses will try hard to convince you, that OSP is good thing (my experience is that it is not and it is total PITA, unless the board is only wave soldered) and you don't need any plating at all and if you do, ENIG is the cheapest variant.
Is there nothing that you could do better than posting comments about how much you think others are wasting their lives? Is your job really the best application of your time to help the most people?
Life is short, why spend it mad that other people like things you don't, and why spend it upset that there are people spending time on products that you don't want or think are important?
You'd probably hate me because I have most of the things you listed, and I actually think I want to pick one of these up. Sure, I could get something cheaper, but I like that it fades out, I like that it's portable, I like that I can use it to help me wake up better. And despite you and many others classifying these things as useless, the little benefits of stuff like this have added quote a lot to my personal happiness. I can adjust the temperature from the couch, I can make sure my house is locked and the temperature adjusted the other direction after I leave, I can hear announcements when a face that the system recognizes is at the front door, I can just tell the little speaker pods to adjust connected lights or temperatures or doors with my voice, etc...
On their own, none of them are super life changing, but together I am much happier because of it. I sleep better, I wake up easier, I spend less time worrying, my family is safer, and I save electricity from having lights/temp adjusted a bit more "smart" than I can do on my own.
> Life is short, why spend it mad that other people like things you don't, and why spend it upset that there are people spending time on products that you don't want or think are important?
Without a strong intention of calling out the grandparent post, probably because the people, modulated their low attention spans, the internet, and outrage culture, reinforce it.
It's so repetitive. I'm genuinely a bit impressed people have the energy.
I don't hate you, but it is conspicuous consumption to the highest degree. Most of the use cases you've listed are essentially just enabling laziness, they're not actually making anything better.
I'm glad you're happier. It's a pity you couldn't be happier without over-consumerism.
> Is there really nothing more pressing in the world that we need to suck up the talents of designers and developers to make a "better nightlight"? I'll admit that it looks like a nice enough product, but nobody needs this, and I sure hope nobody thinks they do.
Do you also feel this same way about art?
I don't really care for this kind of product but I like it when thought has been put into a product and it shows. If something brings joy to the creators and or consumers I'd argue that's a good use of talent.
I have the problems you speak of and I'm glad someone is solving them with IoT lights.
I often forget to turn off my light before I leave, and I like that I can turn it off remotely or say "turn off the lights" while I'm getting dressed.
I want to wake up to light at a specific time not tied to natural sunrise, and I like that I can schedule my lights.
I have stuff on my bedside table next to my light, so I like that I can turn on my lights with my voice instead of reaching out in the dark to grope for the light switch.
I don't know if it's a _problem_, but the ability to have _bright_ white light for when I've reading, then dimmed to a warmer shade for general use, is useful. Getting the full RGB range is a fun bonus.
> they all have disgusting privacy tradeoffs nobody should be making.
Firewalled - _no_ access to the WAN, and no access to my other LAN devices (separate network, with a hole punched through to allow allow Homekit commands in (and only from my iPad)). Good enough for me.
I use a zigbee smart bulb as a night light for my 6 year olds room. The key things it does is use only red light at night, turn down to minimum brightness after she's already in bed and her eyes have started adjusting to the dark, and switch to a bright with blue wake up light on weekday mornings.
this is not transformative in any sense, but it certainly made evening night light discussions a lot easier. (A bright light in her room shines into my room and annoys me. But if we start out with it too dim, she's not happy. This way, we're all happy. :)
Auto-dimming lights that change to warmer, less-blue light at bed time has been awesome for me in improving my sleep hygine. Same bulbs can also auto-brighten with simlar color temperature to sunlight and is a much better wake up experience than the backup alarm on my phone.
I love those things because they're cool. That's all the reason I need. I do care about the privacy aspect and I won't use anything that requires WAN access to work.
That being said, it could be done for waaay less if you're willing to compromise on just a few features.
Single LED COB array at the base. Gets rid of ~7 parts (6 pcb Led array, the custom aluminum extrusion, plus all the flax flexes, plus a fair amount of hand assembly. Everything on a single PCB.
Can still do the twist dimming + everything else, the light will just have an orientation.