So, back to work. . .

I say that, but really we’re just getting frustrated at our inability to do the simplest things. I mean, I’ll admit this is largely self-inflicted. I’m not willing to use a google account, so that’s a giant pool of collaboration tools out the window. We’re pretty cheap, so we’ve got an aversion to paying for simple stuff (although we do pay for stuff eventually if we really can’t figure out a way around it.)

Stuff we need and don’t have:

• Chat
• Some way of sharing links. (yes, that could be chat)
• Some kind of shared note-taking facility. I’m not even talking something complicated. A google doc would work fine, and is in fact what we typically do at my dayjob.
• Email.

At times like this I’m reminded that we’re like characters in an RPG. We have to go on a quest to find out what the quest is. Similarly, we’re starting a company to provide business support with the explicit goal of discovering our shortcomings, and hopefully amending them.

This is our first day trying to build and develop the “Mayday Recorder”.

So far, it’s been devoted entirely to software infrastructure, without any interaction with hardware whatsoever. So maybe I should say it’s our first day trying to get ourselves into a position where we can imagine building and developing this thing?

Software tools

• AWS lightsail, smallest instance
• Trac wiki/task tracker
• Hugo static website generation

Stuff we still need

• Email? I know that we could just use personal accounts, but it seems so bland.

• Shared storage space – dropbox exists, but they want money.

Is this niche product feasible?

Well. . . I think so. It’s a thing that’s often come up, in conversation with friends. My estimate of the per-unit cost is under 5 USD, and I think could reasonably go for 20.

Costs so far

These costs assume I have some supplies (e.g., bench power supply, multimeter, wires, resistors, &c.) already.

At this point, these items are all for prototyping.

Item	Qty	Total
3.3v-5v bidirectional ttl level shifter	x5	$2.66
Digispark Attiny85 dev board	x5	$13.89
W25Q32B flash memory module	x5	$7.00
mini breadboard	x6	$3.75
total		$27.30

In addition, there are some travel costs, which I’m not going to detail here.

Time spent

About 4 hours scoping, about 4 hours system admin, about 1 hour writing.

Hi, and welcome to the show.