mercuryrising's comments

It lets you do multiline stuff, and you get to see the output right away. You don't need let, or to repeat the "main = do ..." every time you want to run a block of code.

I think it's really helpful when you're starting out.

When the big spender with a lot of friends walks by, drunk, at 2:30 in the morning home from the bar, send him a free sandwich coupon when he hits your street. Throw in a bag of chips and a pop, make it 'special'. Perfect advertisement to target the perfect people.

Your software lets companies deliver freebies to 'important' people when they're nearby. Have some automated identity finders - find them on fb, g+, twitter, see how much reach they have. Give them some free stuff, see if they tweet about it, put them a bit higher in the ranks because they gave a good word (or any word at all).

It's pretty amazing how much that video demonstrates. I wonder what the next version of that video will be. Hopefully it's not computer related.

What do you guys think of having the component manufacturer source the parts? I've seen some that purchase parts directly from Digikey, but I'm not sure if they pool together orders for discounts, or if they just handle the purchasing so you don't have to. It seems like they could get a better deal than I could (I always assumed that a manufacturer would try to source locally in China and get stuff for dirt cheap, but they buy from Digikey too - seems kind of strange).

Does anyone know any good US based contract manufacturers? All the ones I've seen are ridiculously expensive ($17 for a 4" x 1" board with ~60 components, as opposed to ~$6 at Myro (thanks theunixbeard for catching that error)). I'd love to get something made here in the US, but I can't eat another $10 for my lights - especially for a service like assembly (where the quality seems like it won't matter that much - the light will work or it won't work). I've been toying with the idea of a stretch goal on Kickstarter to assemble some delta bots to do the electronic assembly (it'd be about $1200 for a single bot, whereas contract manufacturing is about $2000, but I'd have something to show for that money with a pick and place machine). Having a machine where you could throw a stenciled PCB on in any orientation, then pick and place the parts onto, and cook it on the spot (moving the camera up and watching for reflow) would be pretty awesome.

It's sticky being in the 'middle' - big enough where you need to use services rather than hand assembly, but small enough where you don't really have any purchasing power. The road to production has a big no man's land in the middle.

Ch00f has a great write up on the process of going through with contract manufacturing, and some of the hurdles he saw with the process - http://ch00ftech.com/2013/04/16/making-55-of-something-witho...

I recently got a new phone, and I got hooked in to all the services my friends were talking about in recent memory - instagram's dead, twitter's dead, snap chat is in flux. Not for all users, but in my group of friends these services aren't used as much. There isn't really anything keeping you from moving onto something new - your digital life isn't really that valuable. It's probably better to not read the conversations you had a year ago. The pictures are always nice, that's probably the only thing that people would care about, but with Snapchat they're gone (unless you hit save). I'm not sure what I'm getting at, but this company isn't worth $3 billion dollars.

What's the point of having google.com/nexus/5, when people are going to be purchasing it from the play store (splitting traffic, rather than sending it all to the store)?

Edit: www.google.com/nexus/5 is live now.

Although the graphs on [1] tell a slightly different story.

[0] - http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/23/a-closer-look-at-the-... [1] - http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/09/26/161841771/how-inco...

It would be non-functional if someone stole it without stealing the magnet and reed switch as well, but they wouldn't know that.

There's a bit of a trade off, as you're going to want to remove the light to charge it up, in that if you want it to remove easy, it will be easy to steal, and if you want it to be hard to steal, it will be a pain to charge. I don't have any solutions for that yet.

Thanks for asking the questions - I just reached out to a friend who said he'd help me before, maybe this thing will start rolling :).

There's 5 LEDs on the back - three reds and two amber turn signals. When blinking, the center red LED stays solid to provide a reference for the turn signal.

Originally - I wanted it to be accelerometer based, but as you may know, the roads are not very smooth, so any bumps will affect the measurements significantly. The reed switch offers silky smooth data - as the data gets integrated over one wheel rotation, it's extremely noise resistant.

Ah and your main point - communication between cars and cyclists - turn signals allow cars to know where I'm going, the brakes will let them know when I'm slowing, and the automatic lights will make sure they can see me. Be seen, be safe, be smart. It's not a perfect solution, but I think it's a step in the right direction. There's a lot of aggression between cyclists and drivers, this might be something that can allow the driver to anticipate the actions of the cyclist.

Or maybe you'll see it on kickstarter one day :)

I'm making bike lights. First a little story. I was late to class one day in March, pothole season. I was cruising in the drops, when I came up to a T intersection. A van pulls up, and stops at the stop sign. As I approach the intersection, I see a pothole, swerve to avoid the hole, and the van pulls forward. I have about 1 second before I hit the van, land with my back on the hood, slide onto the ground. I'm lying there for a moment, trying to figure out what just happened, wondering whether or not anything is broken. I wiggle my fingers, wiggle my toes, don't feel any pain. I stand up, the guy gets out of his car "Sorry man! I thought you were turning!" I say I think I'm fine... I go look at my bike - it's still upright, the front tire got wedged in a rust spot. I grab it out, hop on, and ride. I couldn't help but laugh the rest of the way to class.

That's the day I decided that bikers and automobiles need better communication. So I made a bike light that's easy to use, has front & back blinkers, brake lights, turns on when you ride (so you can't forget), a bright front light, USB rechargeable, 3400 mAh LiIon battery. I made a 3D printer to print the parts, I did the PCB design, physical design, and software. It's pretty damn cool. I ride pretty regularly and recharge it about once every three weeks. It's surprisingly water resistance - I am a little scared of selling this to people as I didn't know how it would handle water, but I've taken it through two large storms, one with huge puddles splashing all over the cases, and the light handled it all in stride.

Here's the images - http://imgur.com/a/EUzXm

I'm stalling on it a little bit right now - there's not a very good way of bootstrapping into manufacturing. I could 3D print the cases and assemble the boards, but each case takes about 20 hours to print (on my fiddly printer). There's ~100 components too, which is a pain for manual placing and reflowing. I have a couple other designs brewing that are simpler and lower cost, but without all the fancy features. Speaking of which... I have to go get some interrupts working.