This one is the peanut butter and jelly of connected hardware, a software consultancy that builds for hardware startups sitting down with a hardware development firm. Peter Tuszynski, CTO at intent, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman to talk about what AI has actually changed about bringing an IoT product to life, and what it has not. Peter's answer is more grounded than most. He has seen individual engineers go from 1.5x to 7x on output, but he calls that unrealized capital gains, because shipping more code just means shipping more unverified code until the whole process gets the benefit of that speed. Grant's framing matches, that the real return on AI today is de-risking rather than velocity, since teams using it well are looking under rocks they would never have turned over, and every time you speed up one stage the bottleneck reappears further down the line. At intent the bottleneck turned out to be manual QA, because their projects involve a phone, a peripheral, and a cloud backend, and the messiest failures live between the phone and the peripheral where Bluetooth is low bandwidth and the device landscape is a mess. So they built a QA agent that is agnostic of the underlying model, wired up to drive iOS or Android, a tethered peripheral over CLI, and a test case repository, and found that newer models can read a human readable test case and work through it the way a QA engineer would. The conversation also covers why embedded was supposed to be out of reach for AI and what actually changed, which came down to giving a model a board to flash and a way to verify what it flashed, and from there to giving models control of lab equipment and closing the loop between the physical world and what a model can touch. Peter traces the progression from prompt engineering to context engineering to harness engineering to loop engineering, and the two of them get into designing hardware to be testable in the first place, the carpenter and the CNC machine as the analogy for engineers worried about their craft, why prompting has started to look more like talking than writing, and why play, not work, is how anyone actually figures out what these tools are good for. Filip Pietraszkiewicz closes with advice for founders on getting something clickable in front of users as early as possible.Special Guests: Filip Pietraszkiewicz and Peter Tuszynski.

Epitel just closed a $26 million Series B to expand remote wireless EEG monitoring, and Mark Lehmkuhle, the company's CTO and founder, and J Carroll, its Director of Software Engineering and Architecture, join DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman to talk through how the technology got out of the lab and into the world. Mark describes Epitel as a machine learning company for detecting neurological disorders that happens to build its own wireless wearable EEG sensor, a small chicklet-sized device with two gold electrodes that sticks to the scalp with a single piece of adhesive and conductive hydrogel. The hardware, in his framing, is the means to an end, because the product is really about converting a huge stream of data into clinically actionable information. The origin traces back to a decades-old NIH anti-seizure screening program at the University of Utah, where capturing rare seizure events in rodent models meant recording EEG around the clock for nearly the lifetime of the animal. Nothing existed to do that, so they built it, using a concept borrowed from the wireless tire pressure monitor in a car, with thumbnail-sized transmitters that could record continuously for six months. The conversation gets into the electrode research behind the current product, including recreating a study from the early 1970s to determine the minimum number of electrodes needed to still see the electrographic signature of a seizure, which came down to four locations, and a second study on how close together those electrodes can sit. Mark also explains why any of this matters commercially, since self-reporting remains the primary outcome measure in many trials and is roughly fifty-fifty at best. The rest is about the part Mark says is genuinely hard, which is human factors rather than the tech stack. Their users run from neonates to people in their 90s, seizure forecasting raises the question of what a percentage chance means to any individual, and a sensor nobody wears produces no data at all. J talks about garbage in and garbage out, why knowing a recording is bad beats not knowing, and why usability is a first class citizen on his engineering team. Grant and DeAndre add the lily pad analogy for small companies that cannot cross the pond in one jump, why Epitel's first FDA clearance was a milestone rather than a sellable product, why connected devices are never finished as long as they are supported, and why a little ignorance may be the only thing that gets a first-time founder to launch at all.Special Guests: Justin ("J") Carroll and Mark Lehmkuhle.

Roxie Alsruhe had never done anything in hardware or manufacturing when she came home from the hospital with her first born and ran straight into a problem that a lot of families quietly deal with, which is knowing when a bottle of breast milk expires without having to decode a CDC chart while you are exhausted. That problem became HoopDee, a set of NFC-enabled silicone rings that stretch onto any bottle and sync to an app with a tap, so everyone in the house can see what is in each bottle, where it has been sitting, and when it expires. In this episode Grant Chapman and Drew Westrick talk with Roxie about a founder journey that ran backwards from the usual hardware story. She started with an ugly PowerPoint instead of a prototype and shared it with friends until she knew the problem was real, then tested the tap-to-sync experience with stretchy bottle bands and NFC tags bought off Amazon, and released the app months before the hardware existed so she could iron out workflows and collect feedback while manufacturing caught up. They get into the reality of hardware once it arrived, including longer timelines and higher tooling costs, simplifying the design down to a single over-molded piece of silicone with a laser-etched secondary process, and the test rig her dad built to stretch samples a thousand times to find the right formula. The back half is go to market, which Roxie is candid about being the hardest part, because her core audience is first-time parents who have not experienced the problem yet. She talks about why the conversion rate at in-person expos is so much higher than anything online, how grandmothers and sisters at her booth end up selling the product better than she can, and why TikTok Shop and affiliates are the closest digital version of that moment. She closes with advice for new hardware founders, which is that everything takes longer, keep reserves, and keep asking for feedback even when it stings.Special Guest: Roxie Alsruhe.

A vision system can see a car enter a work zone in milliseconds. Getting that warning to a worker standing two miles down the highway, wearing a helmet and running a jackhammer, is a completely different problem. Derek Bleyle, VP of Product at ClearObject, and Tim Hagan, Principal Data Scientist at ClearObject, join host Grant Chapman and guest host Elijah Clarke, hardware engineer at Glassboard, to tell the story of Clear Work Zone, from a design thinking workshop with the New York State Thruway Authority to a production system protecting crews today. ClearObject spent eight years building software for connected products before this, and the episode is an unusually honest look at what that team had to learn. They started with commercial off the shelf everything, discovered that phones and smartwatches could not deliver the range, battery life, or control they needed, and ran a six week proof of concept that ended with one of their developers soldering a wearable together in a hotel room the night before the demo. That demo was enough to earn buy in from the customer and from their own leadership, which is the real lesson for anyone trying to get a hardware idea moving. From there the conversation gets into the engineering. Why they alert when a vehicle actually enters the zone rather than trying to predict it, because alert fatigue kills a safety product on day one. Why Wi-Fi HaLow was the only wireless option that could cover a two and a half mile closure with low latency when Bluetooth is too short and cell service does not exist. How they budgeted two and a half seconds from event to a worker getting clear, and drove the end to end system down to four tenths of a second. What it takes to build a device that survives sunlight, dust, rain, vibration, and being thrown in the back of a truck with a helmet on top of it. Derek and Tim also talk about the shift in mindset that happens when a product moves from convenience to safety critical, the difference between the buyers who run safety organizations and the workers actually wearing the device, and the value of building in the hundreds instead of the thousands so real users can live with a product long enough to tell you what is actually wrong with it. If you are building a connected hardware product, this is a clear look at the path from idea to something people trust with their lives, and a reminder that the last 20% of the functionality is where 90% of the effort lives.Special Guest: Derek Bleyle.

Some founders chase a new idea every few years. Dan Evans did the opposite: he got world-class at one genuinely hard technology and rode it across an entire career. In this episode, Dan, the CEO and founder of Babba, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman for a conversation that is equal parts engineering deep dive and founder's playbook. Babba makes a portable baby bottle cooler and warmer built on thermoelectric (Peltier) cooling, the same notoriously nonlinear, power-hungry technology Dan first mastered at his previous startup, RecoverX, in the sports and wellness recovery space. RecoverX was acquired by Hyperice just months after launch, and Dan turned that hard-won expertise toward a new problem: warming and cooling breast milk safely, quickly, and on the go. The engineering half of the conversation is a genuine masterclass. Dan and the Glassboard team get into why thermoelectric cooling is so hard to control that being off by an inch means being off by a mile, how he whiteboarded the physics during the pandemic and proved the doubters wrong, and why balancing mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, fluid dynamics, and food science (you cannot cook or denature the milk) made this one of the hardest products any of them has worked on. The other half is about everything that happens after the engineering works. Dan talks through hearing past the noise of a rough prototype to what customers actually care about, why hardware's go-to-market is as brutal as the build, and why the capital moat around hardware survives even as AI speeds up design. Then he gets refreshingly honest about fundraising: 700 personalized investor outreaches, the second and third-order networks that actually lead to a check, building to be acquired, and the strange transition from venture-startup craziness to running a healthy small business. What we get into: Getting great at a "party trick" almost nobody can do, then finding every nail that needs the hammer The RecoverX story: four years of R&D, a launch, and an acquisition by Hyperice just months later Why thermoelectric cooling is so nonlinear that you have to nail the math and the engineering together The ugly alpha prototype vs the pretty 3D print, and why bridging the two is the hard part Not cooking the milk: balancing mechanical, electrical, and fluid engineering with food science The six-month roadblock, and selling into high-consideration baby purchases vs the athletic market Hearing through the noise of a prototype to what customers truly care about, and asking for the brutal feedback Why hardware's go-to-market is as hard as the build, and why the capital moat stays even as AI accelerates design The three pillars of fundraising and sales, 700 personalized outreaches, and second and third-order networks Building to be acquired, and the leadership shift from startup to small business A few lines that stuck with us: "Get really good at a party trick that almost nobody else knows, then find all the nails that need the hammer." "With thermoelectric cooling, when you're off by an inch, you're off by a mile." "The people you message might not be the people who invest in you. They might be the bridge to the person who does." "If you can find joy in the journey and not just the destination, you'll make a really good entrepreneur." About the guest: Dan Evans is the CEO and founder of Babba, which makes a portable baby bottle cooler and warmer built on thermoelectric cooling. He previously founded RecoverX, a thermal-control company in the sports and wellness recovery space that was acquired by Hyperice, and he has built his career around mastering one hard technology and applying it across multiple products. The Hardtech Podcast is hosted by DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman of Glassboard.Special Guest: Dan Evans.

The walker is one of the most common and least reimagined products in healthcare. Matt Cumella set out to change that. A doctor of physical therapy with a board certification in geriatrics, Matt spent years in post-acute and aging care, and in this episode he joins Grant Chapman and Drew Westrick to trace the whole arc, from a formative burn-trauma ICU rotation to building Nuvio. He makes a simple but overlooked point: for the people he treated, the hardest moment often was not walking, it was standing up. Nuvio's first walker was reengineered around that, with an H-frame you step inside of (rather than shuffling behind), and ergonomic handles set at the right height to help someone rise out of a deep couch or chair. From there, Matt and the team pushed further, adding sensors to put a physical therapist's eye into the device and turn every session into meaningful, reimbursable data. What we get into: Matt's path from sports-med dreams to a burn-trauma ICU rotation that reset his whole view of the field Why daily independence, not peak performance, became the goal, and why a small loss of mobility can cascade into a house of cards in older age The walker everyone settles for, four posts and tennis balls, and why the real problem is sit-to-stand, not walking The H-frame design: stepping inside a ring of stability, the kitchen-sink demo, and a walker that folds and stands on its own Designing for three stakeholders at once: the patient, the home environment, and the caregiver who loads it into the car The pivot from the analog "acoustic" walker to a smart one, and the goal of putting a physical therapist in your walker Why the data matters: reimbursement, evidence, and moving from "how far did you walk" to the next 10 to 20 metrics The art of a properly constrained product, working through prototype to production, and continuity of care from hospital to home A few lines that stuck with us: "It's less about the top 5% of performance. It's getting 85% of your points back." "How do we put a physical therapist in your walker?" "We built a device that, even if you didn't know it was smart, would still win." "Product can be for anybody." About the guest: Matt Cumella is the founder and CEO of Nuvio and a doctor of physical therapy with a board certification in geriatrics. He spent years in post-acute and aging care before building Nuvio, a reimagined walker and, increasingly, a sensor-driven care platform for people working to regain their mobility and independence. This episode of The Hardtech Podcast was hosted by Grant Chapman and Drew Westrick of Glassboard.Special Guest: Matt Cumella.

This is a special one. Grant Chapman flies solo (a Hardtech Podcast "after dark" on a Friday) with Ben Wrightsman, founding board member of AMVIC, the Advanced Machine and Vehicle Innovation Center. Ben is a Hoosier lifer who has spent 30 years at the center of Indiana's hard-tech story, and he is exactly the kind of guest who can connect electric race cars, battery chemistry, contract manufacturing, and the coming wave of humanoids into one throughline. The conversation traces his arc from teenage electrician to Purdue, to Delphi's electric race car program and the EnerDel battery pedigree that quietly runs through nearly every EV today, to a decade building the Battery Innovation Center from fewer than six clients into a 600-plus-client powerhouse. That story becomes the blueprint for AMVIC: a nonprofit built to accelerate the entire machine, not just one subsystem, and the organization behind the upcoming AMVIC AIM IN Summit. What we get into: Ben's 30-year arc: electrician, Purdue, electric race cars, and the Delphi and EnerDel battery pedigree behind modern EVs How a scrappy battery lab on a landlocked naval base grew from fewer than six clients to more than 600, and pivoted from government dependence to a thriving private-market model Why hardware has to crawl, walk, run, always in that order, and why you should rent a manufacturing line before you ever build your own "Small fingerprints on very cool big things," and the quiet power of being the connective tissue in an ecosystem From the Battery Innovation Center to AMVIC: going from one subsystem to the whole machine, and why it is structured as a nonprofit Why the real AI story is a manufacturing renaissance: power, fiber, high voltage, and the data-center buildout nobody sees Humanoids, the dangerous jobs nobody wants, and why the robots are not coming for your job (with a Y2K and internet reality check) The origin of the AMVIC AIM IN Summit: how a 25-person dinner with a crazy idea became a sold-out summit built on demos, not sales pitches A few lines that stuck with us: "We have small fingerprints on very cool big things." "Hardware has to crawl, walk, run, and you have to do it in that order." "The renaissance in AI and data centers is really about manufacturing." "Compound interest is a hell of a drug." About the guest: Ben Wrightsman is a founding board member of AMVIC, the Advanced Machine and Vehicle Innovation Center, a nonprofit accelerating advanced machine and vehicle innovation. Over 30 years he has worked across electric racing, batteries (Delphi and EnerDel), contract manufacturing, and the Battery Innovation Center, and he is one of the driving forces behind the AMVIC AIM IN Summit. Join us at the event: The AMVIC AIM IN Summit is September 23rd in downtown Indianapolis, starting at 8:00 AM, with a Critical Energy panel, an OEM and innovation panel, a humanoid showcase, and Ben speaking. Register here: [event registration link] This special episode of The Hardtech Podcast was hosted solo by Grant Chapman of Glassboard.Special Guest: Ben Wrightsman.

Some products are altruistic and some are shrewd. The best ones, like Uplift, are both. In this episode, Jeff Runnels, co-founder of Lexia Solutions and inventor of Uplift, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman for a conversation that starts in a childhood classroom and ends up rewriting how venues think about accessibility. Jeff tells the story from the beginning: being pulled out of class into the "blue group" as a kid with undiagnosed dyslexia, a Quiz Bowl moment that made him question his worth, and a diagnosis in the tenth grade. Years later, a dinner with his wife Bliss and a formative friendship gave him the insight behind Uplift, a relocatable, battery-powered lift that gives a wheelchair user a real seat at the table without asking them to leave their chair or wait for a building to be remodeled. Then it turns into a masterclass in go-to-market. Jeff walks through the genuinely clever business case: how Uplift restores dozens of ground-floor seats, disperses accessible seating into every section, and uses ADA equivalent facilitation so that accessibility becomes something venues are motivated to buy, not just required to provide. What we get into: Jeff's origin: the "blue group," a Quiz Bowl gut-punch, and a dyslexia diagnosis in the tenth grade The dinner with Bliss, a friendship named Hal, and the dignity of meeting someone at eye level What Uplift actually is: the ClearSight seating system, a relocatable lift that sets up in under a minute The seat math: restoring roughly 45 ground-floor seats and dispersing accessible seats into every section The legal moat: ADA equivalent facilitation (Section 103), the swimming-pool-lift precedent, and why Uplift needs no construction Making accessibility pay: venue revenue, luxury suites, and accessibility as a sponsorship asset Building it safe: the multi-year UL and CSA certification journey, and why every test matters The unglamorous middle of hardware: a bad shop, a second mortgage, a U-Haul, and 72 hours to a patent Why fixed-bid hardware is impossible to estimate, straight from both sides of the table Assistive tech that ends up helping everyone, and why looking at the world a little differently is the whole point A few lines that stuck with us: "They don't really want to be picked up. They just want to be on your level." "You're weaponizing capitalism to make the ADA happen." "If you didn't write it down, it didn't happen." "We named it Lexia Solutions. Dyslexia." About the guest: Jeff Runnels is the co-founder of Lexia Solutions and the inventor of Uplift, a relocatable lift that brings wheelchair accessibility to bars, luxury suites, and concert floors with no construction required. The company name comes from dysLEXIA. Jeff was diagnosed with dyslexia in the tenth grade and has spent years building Uplift toward UL and CSA safety certification. The Hardtech Podcast is hosted by DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman of Glassboard.Special Guest: Jeff Runnels.

Most people optimize their workouts and their meals, then spend a third of their life doing nothing intentional about sleep. Eight Sleep built a business on closing that gap, and in this episode Sam Kang, the company's Chief Product Officer, joins DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman to talk about what it actually takes to build the Pod, the smart mattress cover that heats and cools your bed. Eight Sleep has surpassed $500M in Pod sales, expanded to 34 countries, and been valued around $1.5B, and Sam runs product across all of it. Having come up through product-development consulting before leading hardware and then product at Eight Sleep, he is that rare guest who is deeply technical and has also been through the fire and flames of scaling a consumer-hardware company. It turns into two conversations in one: a real engineering deep dive, and a product masterclass any founder can steal from. What we get into: From a product-development consultancy to the bedroom, and why 10,000 hours at a consultancy build a problem-solving muscle rather than a single vertical Generalists vs specialists, and why shipping great hardware needs both The two dozen physics domains packed into one product: embedded software, electronics, thermals, and fluid control Why cooling a bed is dramatically harder than heating it (heating is nearly free; cooling means moving heat somewhere else) Why hardware is held to a higher bar than software: you cannot ship-and-improve your way out of a leak Appliances designed to fail, engineering to the warranty, and how better tools let teams fly closer to the sun The doorman vs the revolving door, and the cost of optimizing for the business case over the customer Ship or die: balancing customer, engineering, and shareholder value long enough to have real impact Latent demand, and how to detect it before sinking 18 months into a product The art of the MVP, the "hair on fire" test, and the crawl-walk-run of AI-generated ads, painted 3D prints, and the Wizard of Oz test Leaving your ego at the door, and why you need someone else to tell you it is ready to ship A few lines that stuck with us: "You can't software-update a leak." "At a consultancy, your 10,000 hours are all in problem-solving, not in any one vertical." "When the ego finally goes in the trash can, engineers get phenomenal at product, because they're chasing the user's happiness, not their pride." About the guest: Sam Kang is the Chief Product Officer at Eight Sleep, the sleep-technology company behind the Pod. He came up through product-development consulting (Mindtribe) before leading hardware and then product at Eight Sleep. The Hardtech Podcast is hosted by DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman of Glassboard.Special Guest: Sam Kang.

Mobile phones are supercomputers in our pockets, yet turning them into ergonomic gaming machines or daily-use handhelds requires an extraordinary degree of mechanical precision. ohSnap has built a brand around ultra-thin, magnetic, high-utility phone accessories and controllers—products that live on your person 24/7 and must feel flawless every single time you touch them. In this episode, Head of Engineering Shafae Ali sits down with DeAndre and Grant for a deep dive into the intersection of technology, industrial design, and human experience. The first half explores Shafae's self-taught origins in engineering, the painstaking mechanics of snap fits and magnet integration, and why the last 15% of hardware refinement is where most products fail. The second half pivots into engineering leadership, the philosophy that "great design is invisible," structured brainstorming without physics constraints, and how ego-free team culture drives breakthrough innovation. What we get into: What ohSnap creates: Ultra-thin magnetic mobile grips, chargers, and the MCON magnetic gaming controller designed for seamless mobile play. The electromechanical challenge: Why designing products that live in your pocket requires far tighter tolerances than static home devices like thermostats. The 85/15 Rule in hardware: Why reaching 85% functionality happens early, while the final 15% demands ruthless obsession. Technology vs. Design: Why practical tech (like early Bluetooth headsets) eventually gives way to markets won purely by superior user experience. "Great design is invisible": How subtle tactile cues, snap tension, and weight distribution create subconscious user satisfaction. Shafae’s origin story: Watching Total Recall at age 11 or 12 and immediately trying to build sci-fi hardware in real life. The "Anti-Question" engineering framework: Asking "how do we produce less heat?" instead of "how do we cool this component?" Structured brainstorming: Creating a dedicated space where physics don't exist and "magic" is encouraged before applying math equations. AI & User Experience: Comparing today's raw AI interfaces to the first iPhone (which shipped without an App Store) and predicting the future of frictionless UX. Building an ego-less engineering culture: Why throwing individual egos in the trash leads to collective problem-solving and mutual trust. A few lines that stuck with us: "Great design is invisible." "You get 85% of the way there pretty early. That last 15% was just absolutely hard." "Brainstorming should be structured... Physics doesn't exist here. We don't believe in physics, we believe in magic." "Instead of asking 'how do we cool the product?', ask 'what if I just made less heat?' That's when you get real innovation." About the guest: Shafae Ali is the Head of Engineering at ohSnap, a hardware company dedicated to creating non-bulky, magnetic mobile grips, chargers, and gaming controllers like the MCON. Known for his self-taught velocity and deep attention to detail, Shafae leads electromechanical design with a passion for user-centered engineering. Host & Show Credits: The Hardtech Podcast is hosted by DeAndre Harakas and Grant Chapman of Glassboard. Glassboard is a hardware product development company helping founders and enterprise teams bring physical products to market. Episode Links: ohSnap Official Website ohSnap MCON Magnetic Controller Special Guest: Shafae Ali.