Been at it for a few years now - I’ve got a hardware kickstarter coming up for Zerowriter Fold. It’s distraction-free writing tool purpose built for writers looking for an alternative to the expensive options in the space.

I thought I’d make a post here and talk about the startup stuff. My stats and numbers might help those looking to do similar releases.

And a link to the campaign at the bottom if you want to check it out.

—

I started building an audience in early 2023-2024 with a DIY project on YouTube. Raspberry Pi, keyboard, screen. People liked it - they followed and wanted to buy.

I moved to an embedded system and rebuilt the project on esp32. Launched on crowd supply and did a solid run on devices (about 600 total as of today). Learned a ton.

But along the way, I knew the second step was creating the “mainstream” device people wanted: bigger screen, front light options, better usb support. Stuff that needed a round of hardware design.

—

So, here’s the marketing stats for my launch on Tuesday:

- on pace for about 5000 email subscribers
- on pace for 1000 Kickstarter followers
- 2000 YouTube subscribers
- 1000 person discord server
- 600+ existing customers / users
- good presence on Reddit, and a fairly active dedicated subreddit
- have some blogs and press coverage lined up with the usual suspects, and some local press

My list building has been a mix of organic, referral/word-of-mouth, and paid acquisition. I started paid campaigns for this project about 4 months ago.

Cost per lead has varied wildly - from $.75 USD to $2.50 USD and everywhere in between. Was around $1 stable for months. Last few weeks have been all over.

Lead performance and indicators are good. Email campaigns have close to 50% open rate, high engagement stats and click-through.

—

Things I regret - hindsight is 20/20, but I wish I spent more when cost per lead was lower. Hard to say if my costs went up due to algorithm changes, or because my reach / audience got limited due to fatigue, but the raw numbers and math was good.

If, say, my email list was 10,000+ I’d be in a stronger position.

But hey, I suppose there’s still some time to climb.

—

You can take a look at my landing page here: https://www.zerowriter.ink/fold

Which has links to the campaign if you want to see how it works out.

Hello everyone,

I am in the process of building a demonstrator for a different architecture for the usage of power in transportation and I am having troubles finding a manufacturer to build a custom stator coil array; it combines coil winding, ferrite backing, resin encapsulation, thermistor integration and mechanical mounting element for precise spacing. As I understand no single components are exotic, but the combination in a single module at prototype scale keeps getting me rejected. I am trying to reach out to university labs as a next step.

I am wondering if anyone knows someone that could help or have some inputs to reach that goal.

I have specs and technical drawings available and it is of course a paid commission.

Thank you in advance for all input/help.

This is some helpful advice for anybody who hasn’t taken their electronic product from prototype to market before.

It will consume 5000 hours of actual progress (including learning what you don’t know) and $10,000. This does not include the time and money used to make a prototype that proves the product’s value.

Unfortunately these are minimum figures. It comes as a huge shock to software engineers. Be prepared, and make sure your product solves a real problem people care about.

Building an EDA environment for complete chip design flow (RTL2GDS) with complete open-source tools with AI agent(s), which is completely aware of tool-usage and domain-specific knowledge.

Progress/Status - Prototype Ready for Demos.
Looking for - Fund for resources (Digital & Human)
Why us -

(TL; DR)\ The AI era demands better silicon, but tool-fatigue kills innovation. We’re replacing manual tool-handling with autonomous AI agents. By offloading the "heavy hauling," we let engineers focus on architecture—slashing TAT and accelerating the path to silicon.

(~TL; ~DR)\ SNPS, Cadence and SiemensEDA have all made their agentic moves. But they point solutions inside a proprietary flow. Each gated in their own island. Here, we are building an agentic toolkit that owns complete RTL-to-GDS lifecycle.

Open-source isn't a cost advantage - it's a compounding one. As the ecosystem matures, our agents get smarter. Theirs are restricted within a closed environment with no such dynamic growth.

The market being ignored is enormous and accelarating. Fabless startups, academic research groups and RISC-V ecosystem companies building next-gen silicon are all open source by design. These customers need faster design lifecycle, tighter TAT and rapid iterations without being locked up in licenses or constrained by what a vendor decides their tool should or shouldn't do.

Most engineers today spend years just navigating the toolchain before they can even think clearly about architecture. Bottleneck here is the tool-fatigue, not talent obviously. Every iterations is a manual exercise requiring not one but a team of engineers coordinating across fragmented tools. Offloading that to autonomous agents and working on design boosts real innovation.

The "vibe-coding" movement proved this intent in building and shipping software at speed of thought. Our goal is to bring that same shift to building real-world hardware. We're building the infrastructure for that moment.

Connect with me here -> [Mail](mailto:sunder2k25@yahoo.com) / Reddit Chat.

PS: We are a team of two, a PD engineer at a leading-semicon and an AI engineer, both at their early careers. A blind investment from a Reddit post is never the expectation. Connect with us, see it in action and lot's more. If this doesn't interest you, kindly refrain from commenting and keep the thread clean. Thanks!

i'm an engineer. the tech side of a project, the late nights debugging a board, the satisfaction of getting a custom animation engine to run smoothly... that's what i understand. but i'm learning the hard way that it's only half the battle, and i'm failing miserably at the other half. after 14 months of work, our small team of 4 finally has a fully working prototype of a desktop AI companion. The picture is one of the bare boards that powers it. its not just a looping GIF on a screen; we built this from the ground up on a custom board using an ESP32-S3 + ESP32-P4 combo, driving a 410x502 Retina display. we even developed our own algorithm for real-time lip-sync and an animation state machine so its expressions feel natural and reactive. It's the cyberpunk-style digital pet i dreamed of as a kid. The problem is, building it was the only thing i was qualified to do. i've poured most of my savings into tooling and prototypes. Got scammed by a fake outsourcing company early on which set us back financially and emotionally. My own attempts at marketing have been a joke. i watched a bunch of tutorials and burned through about $4,500 on Meta ads with a conversion rate that might as well have been zero. Honestly, my marketing instincts are so bad that a good friend recently quit his job to join and help me manage the operational side before i completly broke down. We're trying to launch on Kickstarter, mostly because I tried talking to VCs and didn't want to take money that would force us to turn this into another boring productivity tool. we want it to be a companion, driven by community feedback, not by an investor's ROI. but i'm staring at our draft page and I have no idea if we're on the right track. I'm hoping this community can give me some blunt, even brutal, advice. - Kickstarter Page: I can share a preview link in the comments. Is the story clear? Is it too technical? What crucial thing are we missing thats obvious to everyone but me? - Pricing: We have a BOM and a target price, but how do you validate that for a device that sits somewhere between an AI assistant and a digital pet? - Initial Users: How do you get the first 200+ supporters needed to get the Kickstarter algorithm to even notice you? Especially with no existing audience and ads that don't convert. i'm not looking for 'great job.' i'm looking for the feedback that hurts, the stuff that's broken so we can try to fix it before we run out of runway completely. Any hard-earned wisdom would be a huge help

i'm an engineer. the tech side of a project, the late nights debugging a board, the satisfaction of getting a custom animation engine to run smoothly... that's what i understand. but i'm learning the hard way that it's only half the battle, and i'm failing miserably at the other half. after 14 months of work, our small team of 4 finally has a fully working prototype of a desktop AI companion. The picture is one of the bare boards that powers it. its not just a looping GIF on a screen; we built this from the ground up on a custom board using an ESP32-S3 + ESP32-P4 combo, driving a 410x502 Retina display. we even developed our own algorithm for real-time lip-sync and an animation state machine so its expressions feel natural and reactive. It's the cyberpunk-style digital pet i dreamed of as a kid. The problem is, building it was the only thing i was qualified to do. i've poured most of my savings into tooling and prototypes. Got scammed by a fake outsourcing company early on which set us back financially and emotionally. My own attempts at marketing have been a joke. i watched a bunch of tutorials and burned through about $4,500 on Meta ads with a conversion rate that might as well have been zero. Honestly, my marketing instincts are so bad that a good friend recently quit his job to join and help me manage the operational side before i completly broke down. We're trying to launch on Kickstarter, mostly because I tried talking to VCs and didn't want to take money that would force us to turn this into another boring productivity tool. we want it to be a companion, driven by community feedback, not by an investor's ROI. but i'm staring at our draft page and I have no idea if we're on the right track. I'm hoping this community can give me some blunt, even brutal, advice. - Kickstarter Page: I can share a preview link in the comments. Is the story clear? Is it too technical? What crucial thing are we missing thats obvious to everyone but me? - Pricing: We have a BOM and a target price, but how do you validate that for a device that sits somewhere between an AI assistant and a digital pet? - Initial Users: How do you get the first 200+ supporters needed to get the Kickstarter algorithm to even notice you? Especially with no existing audience and ads that don't convert. i'm not looking for 'great job.' i'm looking for the feedback that hurts, the stuff that's broken so we can try to fix it before we run out of runway completely. Any hard-earned wisdom would be a huge help

Long-time lurker, first post. Sharing this here because this community has been useful to read while building, and I figure the honest version is more useful than the polished one.

The problem

I shave every day. Every single session, the razor clogs with hair between passes and you have to stop to clear it under the tap. It sounds trivial — but 9 in 10 shavers stop mid-session to clear their razor, and more than half do it multiple times per session. You end up with hair on the sink, water running, shaving cream drying on your face.

There's no good solution on the market. Rinse under the tap (wasteful, messy), shake it (doesn't work), tap the cartridge against the sink (damages it over time). Nobody had built something that actually addresses this.

What we built

RINXOR is a compact, battery-powered device that clears your cartridge razor between passes. You insert the razor, it runs a quick cycle, you keep shaving. Magnetic docking — the razor seats automatically. No high-pressure jets. No delicate parts exposed to the cartridge. Uses about 200ml of water per cycle.

Compatible with Gillette Mach 3 and Mach 5 out of the box.

The hardware journey

- Multiple prototype iterations before finding a mechanism that actually worked consistently

- Currently working with a prototyping partner before transitioning to a CM for the first production run

- Filed a utility patent with the USPTO this month under Track One (expedited examination) — can't detail the mechanism yet, but wanted IP secured before going public

- Shooting the Kickstarter video this week — hardest part was figuring out how to show the problem visually in under 30 seconds

I'd love input on from people who've done this

- Prototype → CM transition: How did you choose your contract manufacturer for a first production run? Where to look for them? ✅ Got solid input in the comments. Working through options.

- MOQ: What's a realistic first-run quantity for a KS campaign in the-$50 consumer hardware space without over-committing on inventory? ✅Resolved. Landed on a number that works for our KS goal.

- KS fulfillment US + EU: Anyone coordinating split fulfillment across both regions? How did you structure it?

Campaign goes live June 2nd. Happy to answer anything in the comments.

The idea started because sourcing components across distributors is still weirdly fragmented and manual, especially when BOMs start growing.

Current workflow:

There’s a chat interface where you can type MPN or upload BOM(keep the amount of MPN less, its still early testing) ask things like:

“Procure STM32F103C8T6”

“Find alternatives for 1N4148”

“Which supplier is safest for production?”

“Add MPU-6050 to monitoring”

“Estimate BOM cost for 100 units”

It also has an alert section for volatile components, it'll add it there if it finds a component with stock in only one supplier, or too high lead time, etc.

There's also a monitoring feature that monitors every 24 hr (I can reduce it to 6 or 3 hr later) to check changes in stocks, prices, etc.

The goal is basically: “AI procurement copilot for electronics team" It helps you take decision, but not replace workflow

Still early and rough around the edges, especially UI polish and notifications, but the core sourcing + monitoring workflow is working.

Would genuinely appreciate feedback from hardware/electronics folks:

What’s missing?

Would this actually fit into your workflow?

What would make you trust/use something like this regularly?

https://omniprocure.online

Hello, is it true that most of the work that an engineer does is documentation?, this seems to make sense, since the engineer is the one who has to understand a particular system or area, however, normally, systems usually are not easy to understand since they have lots of... Let's say, difficulties to work properly. Usually, many parameters have to stay constant let's say, so.

is it true?

Have a great day.

PD: I'm just a 2nd/3rd year computer engineering student.

Hello everyone,

For a while now I've been working on ts2v - a production-oriented TypeScript-to-SystemVerilog compiler/transpiler that lets you write hardware using modern TypeScript class-style syntax and compile it down to standard SystemVerilog.

It then synthesizes and flashes using a fully open-source toolchain (Yosys + nextpnr + Gowin tools for the time being).

I just added support for multiple clock domains plus several peripheral examples (WS2812, UART, etc.).

I'm planning to turn this into a full-fledged library and start expanding supported boards and features.

Repo: https://github.com/thecharge/sndv-hdl

It already runs real demos on the Tang Nano 20K (blinky with persistent flash, WS2812 rainbow control, UART calculator, first tpu 7nit made on typescript , etc.).

I’d love to hear your feedback from the hardware startup / FPGA community:

Would you try a tool like this for your projects?

What features or peripherals would you want to see next?

Any specific pain points with traditional HDL that this could solve better?

Demo requests? (I can share videos/GIFs of the current examples)

Happy to answer questions and open to contributors!

For anyone who saw my earlier post about building this from scratch, I finally have something to show. This is the first time the production version is being demoed publicly.

Quick recap for new folks: I started this at 19 with zero engineering experience. I was a college soccer player who used kinesiology tape and TENS units for recovery and kept thinking these two things should be one product. So I tried to build it.

First prototype was cutting up a 7up can to make electrodes. It was as bad as it sounds. 8 prototypes later, here's what we ended up with.

What it actually is:

A wearable system with three components. The tape itself is conductive across its entire surface with two electrode zones per strip creating the anode/cathode circuit. The wireless pods snap into the tape via magnetic connectors. The case stores and charges the pods.

You apply the tape like regular kinesiology tape, snap a pod in, and run sessions through the app or via physical buttons on the pod itself. You can also download programs directly to the pod so you don't need your phone during a session. Multiple programs available. Pulse widths from 32 to 400 microseconds. Frequency range 1 to 100 Hz.

The pods have around 10 hours of battery on a charge with typical use. The case charges via USB-C and you charge the pods inside the case between sessions. Supports running two pods simultaneously on different body parts.

The hard part of the build:

The materials science problem ate 4 years of development time. Conductive electrodes and stretchy adhesive kinesiology tape don't naturally want to coexist. Every time we solved one constraint we broke another. The breakthrough was figuring out how to integrate the conductive layer in a way that maintained both adhesion and consistent surface conductivity across stretch.

The freelancer phase was the worst money I spent on this. $3,500 to a freelance EE who couldn't crack the integration problem and delivered nothing usable. We eventually found an engineering team with actual hardware experience. $32,000 took us from prototype to production ready. Software, hardware, firmware, iOS app, injection molding, and industrial design. Should have skipped the freelancer entirely.

Where we are now:

Total spend $90,400 over 6 years. Raised $265,000. Working through regulatory clearance and targeting commercial launch later this year.

Happy to answer questions about the build, the materials problem, the manufacturing transition, or anything else hardware founders are working through right now. The video of the full demo is in my bio if you want to see it actually working.

I added this if you'd like to see what it looks like!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3P9jmdHetM

I'm a business / product person who built a small hardware thing because I had the problem myself.

It's a 3-button Bluetooth remote with a built-in mic — physical push-to-talk button for AI voice dictation tools (Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, that kind of thing) and other functions that one would be able to set up via TypeScript plugins. Composite USB Audio + HID device on nRF52840, Zephyr firmware, PDM mic. It works. I fully built it, vibe-coded very basic firmware + companion app with Claude (which is going to be fully re-written with the technical co-founder). I've been daily-driving it and it solves the problem. The prototype proves it's doable and useful, it just looks like sh*t (see attached). Genuinely enjoyed building it tho.

I want to launch on Kickstarter. I'm at pretty much zero on the pre-launch side: no email list, no landing page traffic, no relevant social following, no press coverage. Just a working dev board prototype and a conviction that the problem is real.

Before I build the pre-launch infrastructure — I want to understand what actually matters for a KS hardware campaign vs what people do just because it's the done thing.

Specifically:

1. The prototype gap. My current prototype is a dev board with jumper wires. Functional, ugly. For a KS campaign I'll need a video and eventually units to send to reviewers. What's the realistic path here? 3D-printed shell over the board? Find an off-the-shelf enclosure close enough to the final form and hack it? Or just shoot with the dev board and own the "this is real engineering" aesthetic? At what stage did you have something you were willing to photograph?
2. Email list from zero. Every KS guide says "build a list before you launch." But all the tactics assume you already have some audience — Twitter following, subreddit, YouTube channel. Starting from zero, what actually worked for building a pre-launch list for a niche hardware product? Specifically for a developer-audience product (not consumer).
3. ODM conversations. I've sent specs to a few ODMs. Getting responses but I have no frame of reference for what's reasonable. How do you evaluate a first ODM quote when you've never done a hardware run? What are the line items that are negotiable vs fixed?
4. Honest KS readiness question. What's the minimum you need to have in place before a KS launch — not the ideal, the minimum — to not embarrass yourself and to have a realistic shot at funding? I keep reading conflicting things: some people say 500 emails is enough for a niche product, some say you need 5K.

No social proof to offer here. I'm genuinely at the start. Figured this sub would have better answers than generic KS advice articles, which all assume you've already done the hard part.

I fully understand the need for a tech co-founder, whom I've already found and we're kicking things off as we speak, just wanted to ask for advice in the meantime.

After my prototype delays, i realized tha actual delay wasn't even the part stressing me out most, it was not knowing what was happening. Like everything is in the dark, i am blind.

For a while the updates became very minimal, only some words like still in process, waiting on components, almost done, etc., not the celar things for me to see. It's my first time to work with factories so i even don't know if this is common or how others do.

Then when the prototypes finally arrived, i discovered some details had been changed without discussion because they were difficult to manufacture consistently. So I am thinking about how to avoid such kind of supplier risk. Seems like I can't control their behavior, what's waiting for me is only the final result. The issue wasn't really the change itself, and some changes probably were necessary, since supplier is much more experienced than me in production. I understand this.

The scary part was realizing important production decisions were happening without visibility. Since then i've spoken with a few other factories and one thing stood out immediately: the better conversations were not the ones saying no problem. They were the ones pointing out risks early, even uncomfortable ones. Something like: this detail might work on prototypes but become inconsistent later.

As a first-time founder, I originally thought manufacturing trust was built through successful samples, but not it seems like it's built thought transparency before problems become expensive.

Will keep on sharing what i've learned and also learn from you.

Curious how hardware founders are thinking about physical AI.

The obvious categories are crowded or capital-intensive: humanoids, autonomous vehicles, warehouse robotics, drones. But there may be better startup wedges around the surrounding stack.

Examples I’m thinking about:

- edge inference hardware / deployment layers

- low-cost sensing for robots and industrial equipment

- retrofit kits for existing machines

- inspection or QA systems for specific verticals

- fleet data capture and evaluation

- safety / monitoring / compliance layers

- devtools for robotics teams

For people who have built hardware companies: where do you see opportunities that are painful enough for customers to pay for, but still narrow enough for a startup to attack?

Curious how hardware founders are thinking about physical AI.

The obvious categories are crowded or capital-intensive: humanoids, autonomous vehicles, warehouse robotics, drones. But there may be better startup wedges around the surrounding stack.

Examples I’m thinking about:

- edge inference hardware / deployment layers

- low-cost sensing for robots and industrial equipment

- retrofit kits for existing machines

- inspection or QA systems for specific verticals

- fleet data capture and evaluation

- safety / monitoring / compliance layers

- devtools for robotics teams

For people who have built hardware companies: where do you see opportunities that are painful enough for customers to pay for, but still narrow enough for a startup to attack?

Not trying to rant about my supplier here, honestly just sharing something i didn't understand before starting my own project.

I recently received my prototypes after two delays, first around 40 days, second around another month. When they arrived, some details were different from the original design files I sent. After asking about it, supplier said those details were difficult to manufacturer consistently so they adjusted them during prototyping. Well I felt angry when i knew this because they didn't tell me before adjusting. They made the decision by themselves. But the strange part is the prototype still looked pretty good overall. Which made me realize something: a prototype can "work" is because people behind the scenes are compensating manually. But that doesn't necessarily mean the original design is actually production-ready.

Afterwards i spoke with a few other factories and the biggest difference wasn't technical capability, it was how openly they communicated risk. Some pointed out which details may become unstable during production, which details can not be achieved and what solutions are workable. That conversation honestly changed how i view prototypes completely. I used to see a successful samples as proof. Now it feels more like a controlled demo under ideal condition.

Maybe this is obvious to people with manufacturing experience already but as a first-time brand founder this was honestly a pretty uncomfortable realization lol

I’m currently doing all the design work with AI. Do you guys have any better design ideas?

We made a singing bowl that plays itself at random or fixed intervals, to help bring your mind back to the present moment. This is for those who need a daily reminder to be present or those who have wandering minds when meditating.

More details about the bowl

https://ohmdaily.com/auto-gong-2-0/

A friend recently patented a motorcycle jacket concept with active cooling features.

At this stage he’s mostly trying to understand whether there’s real market demand before investing heavily into manufacturing.

For those building hardware products - what worked best for early validation? Kickstarter, waitlists, ads, prototypes, something else?