Show HN: I built this notifying device – electronics, code, design, marketing

You&#x27;ve made some interesting choices here. Lots of people here are questioning using a gateway, but I think this is a great choice for what you are doing, and required to get decent battery life. However, I think using ZigBee will end up pricing you our of most markets in the long run. Especially if you elected to go with the very pricing Xbee modules from Digi. These are developer friendly, but way to expensive. If you are serious about building this as a product, I would investigate alternative RF solutions, there a lot of good ones out there.<p>Check out the 6lowpan standard, which is specifically designed for this kind of communication. Dust Networks (<a href="http://www.linear.com/products/smartmesh_ip" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linear.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;smartmesh_ip</a>) has a good implementation. The other alternative would be to go with some of the proprietary RF standards, I know this sounds prohibitive at first but will end up saving you money on your BoM in the long run. Check out Atmel&#x27;s LightWeight Mesh (<a href="http://www.atmel.com/tools/lightweight_mesh.aspx" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.atmel.com&#x2F;tools&#x2F;lightweight_mesh.aspx</a>) which is based on 802.15.4, the same as Zigbee and BT, so if you want you can even run ZigBee on the same hardware. Linx also makes a great proprietary RF module (<a href="https://www.linxtechnologies.com/en/home" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linxtechnologies.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;home</a>) which is extremely cheap even at low quantities.<p>If you are using Xbee (which it seems like you are) then you are likely not using a SoC, so designing in a different radio may still be relatively easy.<p>PM me if you have any questions, I&#x27;ve been working on this IoT stuff for a while now. Congrats on the crowd funding campaign and best of luck.

Congrats, this is an interesting project and props for doing it all on your own! I thought our kind has gone all but extinct these days :)<p>That said, here&#x27;s a problem from just watching the video - all the focus on the design of the device assumes that it should be on a display. That&#x27;s the domain of the home automation market for passionate amateurs - &quot;Look, look, I automated my door!&quot; A proper installation is <i>always</i> discrete and does not clash with existing interior design of the space. It would be something that blends in easily and, ideally, paintable over. Definitely not a computer-mouse like puck that just screams &quot;look at me!&quot;. Your whole point of this being &quot;technology that is not worth hiding&quot; is way off for practical applications. I realize that you probably trying to pull Nest here, but this is an utilitarian <i>non-interactive</i> device, it has no business being visible in my space. I would strongly suggest adding an &quot;OEM&quot; model that is just a flat white box.

That sounds cool! I do recommend you highlight a few practical use cases, i.e. what benefits does (or will) it provide? Try to lead with <i>why</i> rather than with <i>what</i>. It took me a long time to realise they&#x27;re all the way at the bottom.<p>I also recommend not repeating the words &quot;notifying object&quot; so often - right now my eyes might go from: &quot;Notifon, the notifying object.&quot; (1st headline) to &quot;Transform any object into a notifying object!&quot; (2nd headline) to &quot;Notifon &#x2F; Transform any object into a notifying object&quot; (video) to &quot;Preorder now&quot; to &quot;Notifon is a wireless Internet-connected device that sends you instant notifications based on real life events.&quot; and I&#x27;ve learned little more than the 1st headline told me.<p>Thanks for sharing this and good luck with your crowdfunding campaign!

This is cool marketing but it is way <i>expensive</i> than I expected. I am not sure pricing is DIY-friendly but you would certainly find people to buy that.

Looks great! Out of curiosity, why go with the hub&#x2F;node approach using ZigBee for sending such a small amount of data? There are WiFi modules like TI&#x27;s CC3000 (<a href="http://www.ti.com/product/cc3000" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ti.com&#x2F;product&#x2F;cc3000</a>) available for very low cost that would make separate hub hardware unnecessary. This is the product used in Spark Core (<a href="https://www.spark.io/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.spark.io&#x2F;</a>), for example. I imagine there are a few different reasons why you might spring for a hub-based solution despite the higher cost, but just wondering what your thinking is.

Interesting. Seems similar—complete with slightly creepy base station—to Sen.se: <a href="https://sen.se/store/cookie/#mother" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sen.se&#x2F;store&#x2F;cookie&#x2F;#mother</a><p>(Though it appears Karotz is a separate thing: <a href="http://store.karotz.com/en_US/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;store.karotz.com&#x2F;en_US&#x2F;</a>)<p>There&#x27;s also Electric Imp, but it&#x27;s a bit more of a platform&#x2F;DIY: <a href="https://electricimp.com/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;electricimp.com&#x2F;</a>

How do you know the garage door is &quot;open&quot;? If you receive an identical notification whenever the sensor is triggered, the door could be open or closed.<p>With something like a garage door, knowing its state is very important, perhaps more important than knowing when the sensor has been triggered. When someone leaves the garage door open (kids), this is what we need to be notified about. Is the Notifon up to this task?<p>Also, range might be a real issue when the nodes are placed outside or in the letterbox.<p>One more thing, and this is just a personal preference in response to the idea that I &quot;won&#x27;t want to hide the device&quot;. I don&#x27;t understand why people think white plastic is the best choice of color. So many cheap kitchen appliances are white plastic. If you have floorboards and warm living areas with warm tones everywhere, shiny white plastic objects are an eyesore. IMHO.

Been working on overcoming some similar issues for another IoTs project.<p>The wireless chipsets for IoT are really limiting IoT because there are so many tradeoffs. Zigbee seems to have most of the technical challenges solved yet have such a high cost. Raw rf&#x2F;radios require custom (error prone ) software stacks but are super cheap, wifi uses TONS of power and BLE is fairly limited in range even if it in theory can get better range... I think as soon as someone solves the chipset for the IoT, its going to be as simple as slapping I2C sensors&#x2F;actuators and 3d printing mechanical parts for fast innovation.

Wow, Amazed someone used ZigBee instead of Bluetooth Low Energy. There&#x27;s just so many more BLE chips out there and Android and iOS phones are even compatible nowadays.

That you managed to do everything is impressive, especially given the costs involved in production tooling for plastics. I assume you had to build a large quantity of PCBA&#x27;s as well, to get your per unit cost down to something you could actually make a profit on, which means that was another large check you had to write for components and assembly.<p>Can you give a ball park figure for how much you invested, bringing this product from concept to market?

This is pretty cool. Can you describe how you went about designing the slick outer packaging? Did you use an external vendor to design &amp; produce? I am doing a DIY project with my kids and wondering how to get the outer packaging for the arduino board inside. Any pointers appreciated...

This is brilliant!<p>I&#x27;m right now looking into building something similar but for industrial&#x2F;agricultural applications in unattended machine monitoring. I&#x27;m planning to prototype using a similiar Digi device: the 900 series with 1 mile range.<p>I would never have thought of a consumer version. Fantastic idea.

This looks really cool. Just a side note, you might want to update your website to use screenshots from iOS 7. The current screenshots look a little dated because they are from iOS 5 or 6.

The web page gives me pretty much absolutely no idea what this product does, except for the abstract &quot;notify me of things&quot;. How does it do it, how do you interface to it, etc?

Looks very nice. When I went to the page, I wondered, &quot;notifying about what?&quot;<p>Your video did a great job at presenting the product and explaining what it&#x27;s good for.<p>Good luck with your crowdfunding.

You&#x27;ve got precious little runway left on that campaign, which launched in early March. What other promotion have you been doing to get people to buy in to Notifon?

Good first pass. But the page you link to needs copy-editing. There are a few sentences that don&#x27;t have agreeing verb tenses. Not much, but it is there.

1) All screenshots are of iPhones, is there Android compatibility? 2) PushingBox only allows login with a Google account.<p>Both of these mean I could never be your customer.

What do you need to do for FCC compliance? Is it all taken care of because you&#x27;re using ZigBee?

interesting, it looks like you spent a lot of time on it, congrats on launching. Did you also consider using zwave over zigbee? I&#x27;ve been looking at installing a zwave hub and a few light switches, motion sensors and thermostat. Care to compare&#x2F;contrast?

I really need to understand and learn how it works on such less power. Kudos.

This is really awesome. Great work.