What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

Summary

What I learned selling 2500 MIDI recorders, part 1: Hardware is not so hard July 19, 2026 A year and a half ago, I launched Jamcorder. A Jamcorder, in situ. It marked the completion of two life goals of mine. First, I finally had the piano recording device I’d always wanted: a fully automated device that captures everything I play, no human-involvement required. And second, after a career in software, I got to build hardware. It was super fun. 2500 units have already been sold, and counting! People genuinely love it! And it’s able to stand on its own feet as a business. In my eyes, that’s a success. For my first blog post, I want to reflect on the biggest surprise I encountered creating Jamcorder. Hardware is not so hard A selection of prototypes, from the first prototype to the first pre-production unit. Coming from a career in software, I expected building hardware to be the hardest part. After all, hardware is hard. That’s the saying, right? Electronics design, plastics, manufacturing, fulfilment, component shortages, etc, etc, etc. I expected these & more to make hardware hard. But, it wasn’t. To refine the process, I hand assembled the first 500 units myself. It took 4 days. Unexpectedly, everything went completely smoothly and I made no changes. Yes, really. I kept waiting for something to get me by surprise. A scrapped production run (my worst nightmare). Or component sourcing issues, perhaps? It never happened. (Though Trump’s tariffs were a close call). The hardest part of building Jamcorder was still, by far, the software -- roughly 200K lines of code spread across the firmware, app, and manufacturing tooling. It took over 3 years and many long nights in a pre-LLM world. When compared to that, the hardware was undeniably smooth sailing. For the record, I don’t think I’m special. It’s just that hardware’s reputation for being difficult is, IMO, overstated. Now, granted, Jamcorder is -- very much intentionally -- a simple device. I get that. The Jamcorder PC...