I wonder if we're on the brink of a world where hardware development is as easy as software engineering. Projects like this make me think so.

If you asked me 3 weeks ago I’d think you’re crazy, but this was genuinely not that hard. Honestly I had never even touched CAD before this.

I think my next challenge is supply chain, sourcing a custom board, and figuring out unit economics for a product version.

Hardware development still has fundamental physical constraints that software doesn't - material costs, manufacturing complexity, and safety requirements create barriers that CAD and 3D printing alone can't overcome.

Yeah I'm learning that's the real hurdle. I'm doing my best to lean on others in the space to guide me through the process.

a lot of supply chain appears to be a relationship based economy. I may end up flying out to China at some point.

I noted in a different discussion here that I'm about to the point where my next computer is going to be a Raspberry Pi 500 w/ a second gen. Wacom One 13 display w/ stylus and touch and a battery, for which assemblage I'll make a folding tablet shell...

Or, maybe it will be a shell/case for the Pilet which I'll be getting from Kickstarter.

Development, yes. Production, no. That's really where the rubber meets the road. Upfront costs, profit margins, and scaling challenges, are not comparable.

Probably not, even something really fast like a 3D print still takes hours to “compile” so to speak.

But, it looks to be a whole lot easier than it used to be!

Most of the iteration process was just me staring at the printer waiting for it to screw up or to find out if I screwed up.

We need a really good physical simulation of the 3D printing/curing (or whatever they call it) process to plug in to the modeling software, somehow.

With text editors, it’s nice to have the UI be entirely made up of text. Makes it easier to think about how one would edit their text editor.

Ah and vim is text editor, not really an ide.