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xnzakg
Sad to see the quality of the content from Lumafield slowly going down. Feels like the content got less technical after they moved it from "scan of the month" to their blog, and now it feels like the descriptions are just slop, not matching the scans themselves.
Examples:
- Each window is sealed under a thin polymer layer, balancing optical clarity with biocompatibility while preserving the ring’s continuous, scratch-resistant exterior. <- they're on the interior of the ring, and I'm assuming if they're polymer, they're not very scratch resistant.
- This flexible board architecture allows the Oura Ring to maintain its circular form as well as distribute heat [...] <- what heat? And how?
- The charging coil runs along the ring’s outer circumference [...] <- scan shows a small coil on the inside, not running along the circumference
- [...] we can easily visualize the deployment channel and insertion mechanism that guide this filament to its precise depth and angle. <- I can't see the insertion mechanism.
- spiral geometry <- the Bluetooth antenna isn't spiral. Nor does it communicate "through the user's skin"?
- miniature microphones (visible as small cylindrical cavities) <- they're rectangular.
stavros
Also I'm doubtful that the needle in the CGM penetrates only "the top skin layer" given that it was around 1 cm long.
djhn
Even discarding the factual contents the sentences appear to be AI.
But especially nonsense like ”allows the Oura Ring to maintain its circular form as well as distribute heat” is what you get when you RLHF your chat bot for lazy students cheating on homework.
grishka
It blows my mind they used AI to generate a couple paragraphs worth of rather nonsensical text. It would've taken them about as much time to just write something sensible by hand.
jcims
mikeselectricstuff on YouTube did a teardown on the Omnipod wearable pump a while back, very cool mechanism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2MQUUkubgs
Insulin is incredibly potent and can easily result in life-altering if not fatal consequences at relatively low ratios of the therapeutic dose, so these things need to be dialed in and extremely reliable.
Aurornis
YouTube teardowns from knowledgeable engineers are a gold mine for learning how real world products are engineered. I always recommend these for early career hardware students and engineers.
chiph
A friend's coworker had their pump lock on, and inject the entire reservoir of insulin into them. They were discovered in their home by the police after family members lost contact. No idea if it was an Omnipod, but I would hope that all insulin pumps have a separate watchdog circuit to prevent this.
stevezsa8
Did they survive?
chiph
Sadly no. They were found unconscious, then taken to the hospital where the doctors determined that brain death had occurred.
While I don't have diabetes, I will be getting an advance directive made. This was horrifying.
rationalist
Presumably no, but the comment is unclear - the police could have found them unconscious, although it is mostly likely they were found dead.
mlsu
What's so wild (and a little disheartening) is that the omnipod is a disposable device. Use it for several days, and throw it out.
This is an extreme corner of quality/cost/reliability optimization. The delivery mechanism has to be extremely repeatable and reliable, it has to fail in safe ways, but at the same time, it has to be cheap enough to throw away.
Durable pumps are all made with very expensive precision mechanisms, lots of metal and high quality plastic.
nerdsniper
I know people from Lumafield read these comments occasionally, and I'm grateful for all of this!
Why is the Omnipod available[0] to explore in Voyager, but the Dexcom is not? I'd like to send links to both for my diabetic girlfriend to enjoy, who uses those two particular devices.
0: https://voyager.lumafield.com/project/16d13f1d-58f5-4572-b2a...
tlb
Great images, OK writeup. There are some bits of bullshit, like "The proximity of microphones to processing hardware minimizes latency". No, the speed of electrical signal propagation (around 2/3 the speed of light) is not significant for microphone placement.
anonymous_user9
It's AI slop. The descriptions are all meaninglessly specific like that, saying things that are technically true but don't make sense to point out.
cindyllm
[dead]
secabeen
It's sad to see such waste with the Dexcom. A sizeable, single-use coin cell with a total useful life of 15 days, after which the entire unit is discarded.
stavros
And it's a bitch to open to harvest the cell, as well. You have to break it open with a fair bit of hassle.
sllabres
It's always interesting to see how are things build in the Lumafields "Scan of the month". The the most interesting scan from Lumafield I saw was not a Scan of the month, but in "Adam Savage’s Tested: Surprising Flaws in 18650 Lithium-Ion Batteries" [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y23nfAOiXQ
PS: Nice company logo btw. ;)
hyperific
Glad they're still doing these. I really enjoyed Scan of the Month and then they just stopped doing new scans after the Moka Pot.
paulwetzel
Really love these scans! I would love to have on of these at home, just to tinker with devices and understand how they work. Then I usually want to check the price, see "Talk to sales" an decide probably not the price range that is good for private use. Nonetheless, great articles and an amazing device.
mikestew
I’m sure there’s the small issue of radiological safety as well. Obviously one can be trained to not fry yourself with x-rays, but I wouldn’t, say, pick one up off Aliexpress and have at it.
eichin
Some of their earlier videos go into a lot of detail on the safety interlocks (including that the radiation near the device can be lower than ambient because it's basically a large chunk of shielding :-)
As for pricing, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45392896 had some numbers from 5 months ago. It seems like the kind of thing that you'd want as a nearby service, unless you needed to do continuous inspection (they have some automated conveyor sampling products too, it looks like.) My last company had a few 3d-printed components that would have been interesting to spot check after wear testing, but for a lot of things, the competition for the scan is "open it up with a screwdriver" :-)
throwway120385
I bet it's something you can lease with a traceable calibration certificate.
skyberrys
The custom Lipo battery with thermal effects and weight considered is really beautiful to see. I've been curious about custom Lipo battery shapes for rings because my fingers get cold when I wear rings. Would a battery heating up just a bit help make that comfortable for me?
mikestew
Would a battery heating up just a bit help make that comfortable for me?
In something ring-sized? Maybe for about five minutes, and then the battery dies. (I assume you mean using resistive elements to create heat; heating the actual battery seems like a bad idea.)
skyberrys
My bad, I read the article wrong, they are only concerned with thermal heating while it's charging. I did seem unexpected that a ring could heat up enough to be a concern while being worn.
Terr_
> my fingers get cold when I wear rings
Unless the ring is shaped as a heatsink/radiator, I imagine it would eventually get into equilibrium, and you wouldn't feel the heat-flux.
Is it possible that the "coldness" comes from its indirect affect on blood-circulation?
skyberrys
Yes I think you are right and also fingers tend to swell and shrink with heat and cold so the ring that fits nicely in a cooler room will restrict circulation slightly once I'm feeling warmer, leaving me with one cold ring wearing finger.
DJBunnies
A battery. Which can catch fire. Around your finger?
skyberrys
Phones catch fire and men tend to stick them in the front pant pocket. But yes true, so far I haven't gotten into smart jewelry. I was pretty into jewelry for a while but never rings because of the cold finger situation. Necklaces can be problematic too. I chipped my front tooth slightly when I jumped wearing a big crystal and smacked myself in the face with it.
burnt-resistor
These are largely somewhat pretty but ultimate unrepairable e-waste.
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The entire library of scans on this site is great. It gives me a similar feeling as being a kid and playing around in 'The Way Things Work'[0].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Nz1y7Sj74