It's impressive that the cost of usable LIDAR tech is well within the reach of personal projects now. The sensors used on the first self-driving cars (from companies like SICK, etc.) likely perform much better but the price point of multiple k$ is not really viable for experimentation at home.
Not to make everything political, but I wonder how the US tariffs will affect electronics-adjacent hobbies. Anecdotally, the flashlight community on Reddit has been panicking a little about this.
I'm sure most electronic hobby projects are going to be financially out of reach for many people for awhile at least. Many people who run businesses that are running small homebrew projects are struggling, too [1]. But it can be extremely hard to tell what might happen with a POTUS who seems to change his mind on what tariffs should be implemented on a whim with zero thought process put into it, no prior notice when they're going to be implemented or removed and then implemented again times 500% or whatever.
I know the Hong Kong post also recently blocked outbound packages entirely sent to the US [2], so I don't know how that's impacting shipments of tech like this & etc byt would be curious to know.
Never mind hobbyists - I work in electronics R&D and my two favorite suppliers are US based even though I am not. Anxious to see how this plays out and that's not even considering our production departments.
> Not to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement]
For what it's worth, this type of Lidar scanner was possible to make well over a decade ago with ROS1, a Phidgets IMU, a webcam, and a lidar pulled out of a Neato vacuum (the cheapest option at the time). This would be around the difficulty of a course project for an undergraduate robotics class and could be done with less than 200 USD of salvaged parts (not including the computer). Hugin was also around over a decade ago.
I would not consider asking a question about the impact of current events on a market segment relevant to the discussion topic to be political. The disclaimer is presumably to encourage respondents not to drag things in an off topic direction. Ironic, considering the outcome.
This seems to be using classic formula -> get trivial, ready made component, design 3D printed enclosure and hook it up to Raspberry Pi. Instant Hacker News homepage.
So, where's your hardware project? Have you ever made one? I think you're underestimating the amount of time and effort that went into the linked project.
Not to make everything political... [proceeds to make a political statement]
Being all polite and non-political and shit is what brought us to this pass.
Never lose an opportunity to make the people who voted for the current state of affairs feel isolated, rejected, guilty, and generally bad. Being nice to them doesn't work.
Please, I don't want to come on to HN to see politics injected into everything. Stay on reddit for that.
I logged in to make a comment regarding something within my area of expertise: the technology present in the parent link and how this technology has been accessible to hobbyists for over 10 years.
>I don't want to come on to HN to see politics injected into everything
If it's political to wonder how tariffs impact the cost of the project we're discussing, then everything is political, and it's pointless to complain about politics being "injected into everything."
>You’re feeding into the confirmation bias I already have about how the opposition thinks
It's wild that you acknowledge your cognitive bias and then blame others for it instead of working on it. If I wrote something like that, I hope I would have the wherewithal to notice that something is seriously wrong with my thinking.
Yes the opposition thinks evil is evil. The opposition also thinks water is wet. Check back here tomorrow for more obvious things rational people think.
The opposition reductively believes this is an existential battle between “good and evil”, they’re the “good”, and that’s a position from which one can justify almost anything to eradicate “evil”.
Well, Trump is the one that almost always frames things in very binary way. If someone contradicts him, it is "fake news". His opposition is typically much less so, and much more rational and thoughtful.
Even many in the opposition agrees with many of his goals (control immigration, protect American industries, shrink the government).
You can always know, if you want to, by actually engaging in constructive dialog. Which probably isn’t going to happen in this thread because it’s ostensibly about a raspberry pi LiDAR scanner, and thus neither really the time nor place.
The MAGA crowd is not even remotely interested in 'constructive dialog' and is so far down the hole of drinking the kool-aide, constructive dialog with them will likely never be possible.
You cannot have constructive dialog about astronomy with someone who thinks the sky is made of green and purple polkadots because that's what someone told them, and dismiss all evidence to the contrary as a massive conspiracy.
They don't even believe in democracy or constitutional rights - at least, for anyone but them.
It's true, a Hokuyo or a Sick that sold for several thousands a decade ago is laughably bad compared to something under $100 from Shenzhen these days. When there's a need there's a way, I guess.
I hope they decide to develop some disruptive stereo/structured light/tof cameras eventually too, those are still mostly overpriced and kinda crap overall.
Short term there's some suffering but while hobbyists are definitely more price sensitive, they are also the most flexible ones. In production you don't just need one piece, you need a steady supply and any change of components affects the whole product.
How China/US interact will determine the longer term future of that economic relationship but many companies are already adjusting because he future is currently uncertain. With the free trade agreement with the EU and more producers moving to the US I think that it's been a good disruption even if I'm now also scrambling to find alternative PCB manufacturers.
How many will follow through with these announcements? During Trump's first term, announcing huge projects in the US and then not following through was a common tactic for companies dealing with Trump. Foxconn, for example, announced a new $10 billion factory in Wisconsin. They made some initial investments and stopped when people stopped paying attention. Instead of the promised 13.000, they now employ about 1.000 people there.
And what about all the companies that will have gone out of business by then? This mainly affects small companies, which are exactly the companies you need for a healthy economy. In some cases, they have shipments already paid for that they can't accept because they don't have the liquid assets to pay the unexpected tariffs, so these companies are now at risk of going out of business completely unnecessarily.
It never makes sense to use tariffs for economic reasons. It just does not work. Tariffs can make sense for strategic reasons if you're willing to take an economic hit to lower dependence on other countries for critical industries or technologies. However, the idea that taxes are ever "a good disruption" for the economy does not bear out.
>It never makes sense to use tariffs for economic reasons. It just does not work.
This week two USA companies from which I bought some products from Europe sent me an email explaininig how they have to rise their prices due to tariffs, as they need to import from China for now.
Guess who will be faster: these companies finding an alternative supplier in the US that match China quality-price, or I finding an alternative supplier from China? They just admited that they are buying from China anyways.
Not to make everything political, but I wonder how the US tariffs will affect electronics-adjacent hobbies. Anecdotally, the flashlight community on Reddit has been panicking a little about this.