[j-bos]

Inquiring minds want to know: what is your anti-counterfeit strategy or is the fact that you're keeping it under your hat part of the strategy?

Also, pretty cool that you set up your website real fast. Would you mind adding your Twitter link onto the site?

[diydsp]

With 2500 units sold, no one has moved to counterfeit yet(1). A device this simple will be cloned by AI in an afternoon. There is no imaginable anticounterfeit strategy.

(1)2500*$175=$437,500. Estimated profit is 33-66%, so $150-300k. Nice for a soloprenuer, but limited market, so small target for piracy.

[chipweinberger]

Counterfeit != clone. I welcome competitors. They can help grow the pie.

[illwrks]

My guess is that it’s on the software side partnered with the app.

[chipweinberger]

Yes the anti-counterfeit is primarily app enforced (though entirely offline). I do use the firmware encryption features of the ESP32-S3, whatever that is worth, and the firmware is tied to the HSM.

[maximilianthe1]

What happens when app is outdated and can't be installed to current android os?

[chipweinberger]

The device does not require the app. It still records MIDI 24/7 to sdcard.

It's more the opposite. The app requires a genuine device.

[crtified]

I think that highlights one of the reasons why, in this case, hardware has not been hard. (besides the fact that you are very clever)

The value you have created is actually more in the App than in the hardware.

As a maker of small devices (mostly open source) including MIDI - and putting aside commercial aspects like injection molding - I could recreate the hardware side of this project without much issue. The necessary components are likely already in this room with me. (I won't - I'm not in the business of copying things that people don't want copied)

But I'm not a software engineer, and therefore could not produce software of the scope and quality that you have, which is where the unique functionality of your device sits high above the relatively simple "receive MIDI data from MIDI devices" principle of the hardware by itself.

[alwa]

Are we talking about the app operationally day-to-day, or the app vis a vis the way it helps end users flash encrypted firmware images OTA to the ESP32 (like Chip alludes to in gp comment)?

If there are no more app updates, presumably there are no more firmware updates either, so the flashing part probably doesn’t matter (and you can probably flash the last published image to an authentic device by other ESP32-y means if you really need to).

As to the day-to-day: Pretty sure the hardware still records regular ol’ MIDI files to the SD card. The app seems incredibly well-thought-out and ergonomic but, at the end of the day, nonessential to the device’s core function.

Somebody could presumably build and sell their own “MIDI Recorder Loop Nonstop Device Digital Piano Upgraded New 100%,” but it wouldn't be a Jamcorder, you couldn’t flash Jamcorder firmware updates to it just by slapping an ESP32 in a case, and the official Jamcorder companion app would not talk to it. Which… fair enough, right?

For that matter it wouldn’t surprise me if somebody could write their own client for the real Jamcorder, if they felt so inclined… but with the official stack so absolutely perfect from a design perspective, why would they?

[marysol5]

But even things like SDCards move on, we've already seen that with SDHC. I've had EOL kit in the past that just doesn't support it because it's that old, and thus EOL and doesn't support that standard.

Saying "It's just writing to an SD" is today

[invictati]

Oh good, you're not pulling a Cricut where the app interactively proves to the cutter that it has an AES key and then encrypts all the G-code with it before transmitting over Bluetooth.

Right?