[rxt_ian]

I'm curious that this story seems to be missing a big part of hardware design - certification.

It seems like the design was being changed up to the minute these were shipped to customers, so it doesn't seem possible that any testing was carried out on the final design?

[phasetransition]

Given that these went straight to backers, and would have required the final die cast parts to test in the thermal chamber, they probably had not gone to an NRTL at the point the article had been written.

This product is about at the point of DVT in development flow, and therefore would be sent to testing about now. But, instead, being sent to backers.

PS, not a hypothetical circumstance for me. I've previously certified a number of luminaires under UL and CB Scheme. I was the technical chair of ANSI C136.37 for several years, and on the working groups of several other standards.

[rxt_ian]

Totally agree, I've also done electronic design work in the lighting industry, though not enough to end up on any standards body.

I was trying to ask in as charitable way as possible...

[nickvec]

Yeah, I was confused on that front as well. Unclear why a prototype wasn’t initially made by the factory to be vetted and approved before producing hundreds of lamps.

[faeyanpiraat]

There was a different lamp startup article kind of recently, where they talked about this, and if I remember correctly they needed to run the lamp for like 1000 hours straight for it to receive some kind of certification.

I could search for it if you want to read about that.