A native backup camera is seemingly more cost-effective.
There's nothing wrong with the post otherwise, since this is clearly a real project and I suspect the community would be interested in learning about it.
First up : no scroll bar so there is literally no visual cue that I need to scroll. Scrolling "activates" the next portion of content.
Somewhere around the middle part : I can scroll and see the scrollbar, but WAIT! Another portion of the page starts hiding the scroll and hijacking the scrolling to show something. Uggggh again?
Scroll some more : Scroll bar appears once more! I am free to scroll to the bottom of the page. Nothing makes me hate a webpage more than some shenanigans like this that breaks what a webpage should be.
Only when the Show HN is of a website that hijacks scrolling.
When it doesn't, surprisingly, there are neither complaints about hijacking scrolling nor complaints that would be resolved by hijacking scrolling.
There may be a message in that.
> It's annoying commentary because you're looking at it through a very narrow lens that 99% of the people don't care about.
IME, non-technical people are thrown even harder by violations of basic platform UI conventions like hijacking scrolling or having no indication that scrolling is necessary.
If I thought that was a really nice product and sent the link to my dad (he likes gadgets and cars, after all), he'd have no clue what to do after landing on the page. He usually drags the scroll bar to navigate a webpage. Good job on alienating a huge portion of your potential users.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739
It's a good point.
That said - it seems it is 2-3 years too late to be launching this.
1)By 1 May 2018, all new US Cars will have back-up cameras by law [1]
2) Most Cars sold since 2011/12 seem to have integrated back-up cameras
3) $500 for a Car accessory (!) that by definition will be fitted on a lower end car older model (since high end cars had this for a while) aka Low sales.
4)OBD port contention
Pivot Idea - Dash cam recorder (go in front plate) with AI for alerting based on User set rules (in addition to Dash Cam recording)
[1]: https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/nhtsa-announces...
Edit: Why in the name of funk did you design your website to take away manual scrollability? If I want to quickly skim it I have to endure the pointless transitions - I get that you want to enforce a certain flow - but let me cleanly escape out of it as well,
$500 ($650 CAD) is way too high for me. Disappointing.
And of course there are international markets. China buys more cars than the US, these days.
The advantages of mounting your smartphone, with the cutting edge hardware and active software ecosystem that come along with it, are truly huge. When I rent a car now I am incredibly frustrated without the mount. Luckily ours has a magnetic pluggable backend, so I can pull it off my adhesive mount and attach the vent clip for use in other cars.
I couldn't imagine a better group of people to do it with, either.
That reads like a dismissive swipe. Please guard against that here, especially when responding to new work. It may be the default human tendency, but it's destructive of thoughtful conversation. Not all new work is good, but most things that do turn out to be good start small, and all invite a litany of obvious objections while embryonic.
A better way to bring this up would be to provide more detail about your comment's context (example: products X, Y, Z came out 2 years ago) and then expressing your point as a sincere question (example: how is your product different from X, Y, Z and isn't there a risk that the market is already mature).
1. $499 is a lot. A lot of people who would be willing to pay that probably already have backup cameras built into their cars.
2. I'd rather have a fixed screen that's 100% always there and ready. Sometimes I just want to hop in my car and not have to worry about pulling my phone out. The magnetic mount looks nice though.
3. ODB port may already be consumed by another gadget (e.x. Automatic). Could you use a low-power accelerometer/gyro to detect backups instead?
Also, what if I have something else already in the ODB port? It looks like I have to get a Y splitter or something, but having dangling cords under the steering wheel doesn't seem like a good idea.
As others have mentioned, too expensive and too late for cars.
Pickups and vans have longer service lives and IIRC some are exempt from the camera thing. People who DD small cars tend to suck at backing big stuff (like company trucks).
Using it as a rear dashcam could help reduce liability (e.g. "my driver didn't back into your fence and I have video to prove it"
Putting this on a trailer would make it easier to back into tight spaces with precision.
Since it's wireless and a self contained unit it could be marketed for use on boat trailers as well
A fleet that deploys these could easily swap them from vehicle to vehicle with near zero cost.
RVs suck to back, camera makes that less so. There's also a lot of older RVs out there since they depreciate so much they tend to get passed through lots of owners and stick around a long time. A $500 camera can be swapped from RV to RV and is an easy upsell when someone buys a used RV that they're likely planning on sinking some $ into
You also can't see behind you very well with an RV. If you're towing a trailer with ATVs, a small boat or something you can't see if it's back there unless you get out and check.
The list goes on...
In general we want to integrate our products into the car and the driving experience as much as possible.
I think you understand why Automatic, useful over 10 mph, needs to be more integrated into the driving experience than you do.
I guess it can be said that the device needs to know when the car is in reverse gear. Personally I hate these rear view cameras that decide for you when you need them and have no way to turned on manually.
I would much prefer more control and less info leakage potential.
I also wonder how frequently would one have to carefully clean the camera lenses and solar panels for it to work, them being situated where they are. What's up with all those devices being designed to operate only on dry sunny days?
The RearVision also comes with a security tool that must be used to attach and remove the camera frame.
For $130 I can buy two really good quality 1080p dashcams and two 16GB microSDHC cards (I know, not the intended function of this...) and mount one facing forward and one to the rear.
You still have to run wires to power your dashcam and display video where the driver can see it -- that's what $500 buys, the need to not have to add wires to your car.
search youtube for "G1W-C" for sample videos.
I still think there's a market for the product for older/used/classic vehicles, but wondering what your perspective is on this.
The bottom line is it's generally 40 years from the point when features like seat belts, air bags, traction control, and backup cameras are first introduced and when they reach 95% saturation.
Throughout this adoption process, demand for these features among those whose cars don't have them increases significantly!
Your customer base consists almost exclusively of those who are both willing to spend $499 on an accessory and who don't already have a reverse cam. Many potential customers won't have an OBD port in their car because OBD-I wasn't around until the '90s. Muscle car enthusiasts and parents (happy to spend $499 to prevent an accident) passing down an older car come to mind.
It would be great to see a second generation version that works without OBD.
It certainly looks cooler that way, though.
All of our over-the-air firmware updates are cryptographically signed.
1. designed for the front license plate
2. recorded the last n minutes of driving to memory
3. could trigger a copy of the last n minutes to a SD memory card or to my phone.
For instance, I have this one; it's very small and not likely to get stolen:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UUS52YG?psc=1
Hasn't gotten me anything yet but I hope to get Youtube karma someday.
On the other hand, this product does add value, it just happens to be evil:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11934455
A backup camera would be great, since my car doesn't have one and there are kids living next door, but my OBD port is already in use by another tech gimmick…
We will of course leverage whatever tools both platforms provide to make the launching experience as seamless as it can be! We can also take cues from accelerometers, the OBD port, and other sensors, as you mention.
The video screen is definitely the main focus of the app, for obvious reasons. When the video stops, we also show an app launcher screen that's optimized for use in the car (large touch targets :) ), which you can configure to include a few of your favorite music or nav apps.
Please fix your broken website, and fire your "designer".
Other than that, it should work on basically all cars, assuming you don't have e.g. an existing backup camera that mechanically blocks the installation.
[0] http://blog.arronhunt.com/post/66973746030/stop-scrolljackin...
Obviously the camera can't be on all the time, as I'm sure they're cutting the power budget pretty close as it is, given the size of the solar panel.