[HN Gopher] Petoi Bittle - a programmable robot dog
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Petoi Bittle - a programmable robot dog
Author : metalwhale
Score : 67 points
Date : 2024-04-22 06:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.petoi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.petoi.com)
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Is it just me, or is $269 monstrously expensive for some
| injection moulded plastic, plastic geared servo motors, an
| arduino compatible board, a battery and some connectivity
| modules?
| lambdaone wrote:
| I presume the value is in the associated open source software.
| You could obviously build your own for less in hardware costs,
| but once you've put in the effort of doing so, you will have
| spent far more of your time on the project than the cost of the
| ready-made product. You're paying for the bundling and the
| convenience.
| beambot wrote:
| The Sony Aibo harkens back to the late 1990s. It was (roughly)
| the same, but cost >$2000 in 1990s dollars. TLDR: It's not
| expensive.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| A luxury product for early adopters that looks great and
| works out of the box does not seem roughly the same to me
| than a device you still ultimately have to calibrate, expand
| (the default model of this doesn't even have a camera iirc)
| and program loads to do anything.
| ginko wrote:
| There's also PuppyPi which looks quite a bit more solid (but is
| also more expensive)
|
| https://www.hiwonder.com/products/puppypi?variant=3977603314...
| beambot wrote:
| Unitree Go2 for $1600 is wildly capable.
|
| https://www.unitree.com/go2
| renewiltord wrote:
| Have you used it? What was the experience getting it into
| the US?
| M4v3R wrote:
| The bill of materials might not come close to that number, but
| materials are not the only cost when creating a hardware
| product. In your end price you need to factor in stuff like
| time spent on research, designing, testing, prototyping,
| writing & debugging software. Then there's manufacturing,
| packaging, storage, marketing and probably others. When you
| take all these into account plus the fact that this will not
| sell in millions of units, the price suddenly doesn't seem that
| high.
|
| And from a consumer point of view - a very technical person
| could probably pull off something _similar_ to this, but the
| amount of hours a project like this would take a single person
| is probably in the hundreds and you would not approach the
| quality of this unless you invested a lot of money into
| equipment (assuming you don 't own high quality 3d printers and
| other things required to build this).
| lemper wrote:
| bro how much did you pay for your car that is presumably around
| 1000kg?
| bArray wrote:
| I'm not sure that is a good comparison. My old car cost ~$500
| and weighed about 1000kg. If anything that is a comment on
| consumerism and not the value of things.
|
| The value of this platform comes from the R&D, scale,
| support, packaged software, etc, etc.
|
| Assuming they sell 10000 units at an average ~$300. At that
| scale likely a $100 of each unit is in parts/tooling, then
| assembly/flashing/testing. That's approximately $20mn to be
| split by:
|
| 1. Likely minimum team of 10 people on development for 4
| years, at ~$100k per year (with overheads), for $4mn.
| Kickstarter in 2020:
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petoi/bittle
|
| 2. Investors probably threw in $4mn along the way and look to
| claw that back (couldn't find investment info on a quick
| search).
|
| 3. Tax appears to be ~20% in most places, so 20% of $30mn is
| $6mn.
|
| Leaving approximately $6mn, everybody gets a bump and they
| are left with enough to expand and run the company for ~2-4
| years without needing to raise additional investment. That's
| a lot of pressure to get a new product out there.
| dvh wrote:
| If you sell hw products and you're not charging at least 4x
| parts costs you will go bankrupt.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Your parent should really check out the BOM on his iPhone or
| MacBook before complaining about $270 being "monstrously
| expensive" hardware. And all those gadgets benefit from high
| volume discounts on parts, decades of sunk R&D costs and the
| volume economies of scale, assembled by sweatshop workers,
| not niche low volume production runs for enthusiasts like
| this one.
|
| The price of Pizza at your local non-fast-food restaurant is
| also significantly higher than that of the bulk raw
| ingredients it's made of. Now also try adding the R&D costs
| of inventing the Pizza to that see where that gets you.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| _she_ doesn 't have an iPhone or a MacBook because I do
| think they're expensive. I buy my phones used on eBay and
| cringe if they cost more than PS50
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| How you feel about your SO's phone pricing is besides the
| point.
|
| The point was that you don't understand the distinction
| between the retail price of a product and raw BOM costs.
|
| Please read the comments here trying to educate you.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| what do you mean about my SO? I was referring to myself
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Sorry but you did refer to yourself at the third person
| as "she", so how was anyone supposed to know?
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I was correcting "his iPhone or MacBook"
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| I still don't get it. Everyone here is male. Right?
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Could be, but here I identify as strong independent Asian
| woman.
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Cool. I identify as a giant robot super monster cat.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > I buy my phones used on eBay and cringe if they cost
| more than PS50
|
| I'm with you on this one, sister.
|
| Don't even get me started on the kid down the street
| selling lemonade...
| blowski wrote:
| Similar to how software engineers get paid $1000s just to keep
| hitting the keyboard.
| tomcam wrote:
| Excellent business opportunity for someone with your knowledge
| imtringued wrote:
| I wouldn't say it is monstrously expensive, but it is kind of
| underwhelming at that price point. It doesn't even have three
| degrees of freedom on its legs, which is what I would expect on
| a basic quadruped.
| regularfry wrote:
| It's a tradeoff with size. It's very hard to squeeze shoulder
| servos in and keep it that small.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Kind of, compared to high-volume products most consumers are
| used to see. R&D gets expensive fast.
|
| Just try designing these up to first partial prototype and try
| calculating cumulative man-hour spent x local minimum wages x
| highly optimistic sales^-1 = pure R&D cost per unit before any
| manufacturing or even design reviews. It's not going to make a
| lot of commercial sense.
|
| 3D printing people sometimes says dollar stores makes them feel
| defeated. I'm not yet at that level but it's true, a 10-pack
| ball point pens at $1 makes very little sense if you knew.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| I was looking at https://www.unitree.com/go2/ recently, which
| seems rather good value I thought.
|
| Some of the videos look really impressive, such as the back
| flips, climbing stairs and the lidar
| jbl0ndie wrote:
| They do look impressive but the videos are all 3D graphics
| rather than real. The texture on the robot body and shadows are
| the giveaway.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Interesting, I didn't actually realise that. Will await to
| see some reviews :)
| bArray wrote:
| Looks like a cool platform, but you won't be paying $1600 USD
| https://shop.unitree.com/en-gb/products/unitree-go2?variant=...
| :
|
| > $1,600.00 USD
|
| > Shipping costs $399 per unit, Remote Countries $500-$1000
|
| > Not include customs duties, Please comply with local customs
| laws pay customs duties and clear the goods
|
| By the time you are done, you will be paying between $2000 and
| $3500 for the base model. It might still represent good value,
| but it's still more than it is advertised.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > Shipping costs $399 per unit
|
| Do they send it by pack mule or something?
| peppertree wrote:
| $1600 version is just a remote control toy. If you want the ROS
| programmable version it's around 10k.
| squarefoot wrote:
| They have a repository on GH with some of their projects code.
| The OpenCat page also contains information on how to calibrate
| the servos using a serial monitor, so that one isn't dependent on
| their phone app. Good! https://github.com/PetoiCamp
|
| Now, what about an updated meow/purr version for us cat lovers?:)
| macrolime wrote:
| Looks like they also have a robot cat
| https://www.petoi.com/products/petoi-nybble-robot-cat
| squarefoot wrote:
| Yes, I already noticed, but it looks a lot less polished than
| the dog, and is also more expensive. Probably an older
| product with higher prices, that's why I would welcome an
| updated version.
| l_j_w wrote:
| I got one of these when I backed them on Kickstarter. It was a
| fun build and works well. I gave it to one of my neighbors' kids
| since I didn't really see myself using it all that much, and he
| enjoys it.
| snapcaster wrote:
| How old do you think kids have to be to engage with this?
| Considering buying one for my grandson who is pretty into
| legos/tech/etc. but is only 7
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Ok but it doesnt say anywhere on that page what you can do with
| the basic package?
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