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Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: In many other threads on HN, people lament and protest the difficulty of getting paid well as a freelancer or small business in the technology industry. Let’s not trash someone for charging a handsome price for a product that’s had a lot of time, thought and design talent invested into it. Everybody knows that other clocks ant timers exist. Nobody is forced to buy this one. But we can still appreciate the effort and talent that someone has put into trying to create something beautiful, and respect them for charging a premium for it. And let’s keep Hacker News from being a place for grumpiness, especially about people trying to make nice new things.

But it's much more than just a digital clock. It's a very bright LED remote display. It's easily programmable. Also, take note of both the desktop and the mobile apps, plus both Mater and Home Assistan integrations.

Of course a device like this can be built for 10% of the price tag, or maybe for $0 if you already have the spare parts lying around, and just enjoy writing Arduino firmware sometimes. But for a less techy customer this thing makes total sense, and for a corporate customer it seems to have the full package for a hassle-free deployment somewhere in a sales department.

BOM is always a very minor part of such projects, say, 5%; the major cost is electronic / mechanical / software engineering, then marketing (including the very good web site) and sales, production and shipping, etc.

you could easily do this with a spare display and terminal

https://github.com/race604/clock-tui

bonus - i ported this to raspberry pi https://youtube.com/shorts/rgm8lAlHus4

Seems like a simpler version could be sold for well under $50

I don’t think the timer and status is for you, so much as for other people in your physical world. Examples would be someone who works at home who needs a way to signal to spouse/kids that they are busy and when they will be free, or an office worker who gets frequent walk up interruptions.

While there are certainly much cheaper ways to solve this problem, I think there is a market. Specifically podcasters and YouTubers who film at home, love gadgets that will look good in the background of a video, and love gear more than the work itself.

When I was in the office I solved this with a hoodie. If the hood was up, I was focusing and people generally didn’t bother me. I never even said anything or realized I was doing it, people just got it.

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