Cool business! Good luck!
I can't thank you enough for the positive/constructive feedback. It's really hard creating something new and staying positive with all the naysayers!
But anyways for HN purposes, the hints are there -- WiFi Easy Connect Protocol exists as a standard; NFC requirement specified in the text;
It's a wooden wrapper around an NFC sticker that's being set to include the details necessary for WiFi Easy Connect to ... connect to your wifi.
Technically, I don't think this is notable at all really. The fact that its possible, and the imagination of having a simple block to slap your phone against when you enter a random shop/restaurant, are the main notable aspects.
Sitewise, it's ugly with no real color scheme, stupidly large spacing and gaps, and doesn't seem to be well tested (can't scroll the example images on mobile, they're entirely missing on desktop)
But content wise, this is pretty much ideal from an HN complaint perspective -- it's extremely clear about what they're selling you -- the only thing missing is that there's no pricing information on the front-page, for what I imagine is a single-price object
edit: Actually this site is pretty annoyingly broken, with clear bugs all over the place. And for god knows what reason, the chosen font (non-changeable?) is some kind of abomination of comic sans? The Peach Pit font on the front page is clearly cleaner and more professional -- why not just keep using that? For what was a pretty reasonably simple and pretty neat little product, the site has really turned me off of it.
Seems like phones have an easy way to make your own DIY stickers, but I'm sure it's just a standard format that you could write with any username/pw/ap that you wanted.
We hope that others will find a custom designed Wifi Block sitting on their shelf a lot more appealing than a printed QR code with a sticker on it, but only time will tell!
Maybe other people would find better use for this, but for the past years I've just set my WiFi password to something I remember and in the rare cases people want to connect, I just tell them the password.
The WiFi block looks nice though!
I have a couple of them, one for guests, one for the kids network, and they're in use almost daily. Still need a couple for my vacation house, so maybe this will fit :)
So far it works well, and makes a nice conversation piece with new guests :)
iPhone's from iPhone 7 and up are supported in setting up the Wifi block, and iPhone X's and above support the guest functionality of tapping to connect to Wifi.
Most Android devices created from 2018 and after are supported. A good way to know if your device would be supported or not is whether or not you use Android or Apple pay.
Thanks again for taking a look and your feedback!
Combining tech, with oldie wood, with I assume tech to cut it.
Need more of this in the world.
I hope it does well for you.
I worked with a salesman in Sweden. We sold very expensive mainframe software. One of his things was, when someone signed up, to present them their copies of the contracts in a beautiful slimline rosewood briefcase that the customer got to keep. So beautiful it made your eyes water to look at it.
Of course he brought one to meetings so the customer could form a longing for it. It seemed like he may have buffed it with furniture wax as well, perhaps there was an olfactory element at work too.
Without doubt this object of desire moved the needle significantly in getting people over the line on a sale, they wanted the wooden briefcase so badly. He was extremely successful.
How does that work? Does the user have to open the Wifi settings page on their phone, tap on the correct SSID, and then tap their phone on this NFC device?
I could not find any android documentation on building wifi nfc tags that are automatically connected to by the system.
Can someone explain how this is working? Hidden apis? A NFC spec, or something else?
Is this for only connecting NFC-enabled smartphones?
I had an NFC sticker in my kitchen and for many it didn't work. QR worked much better.
If you’re at my house but not in my or my wife’s contacts (and thus it can’t request access to our wifi automatically) I doubt I want you to have wifi access anyway.
