Having worked in this space, the failures usually come from lopsided teams. Too many startups try to treat these products as technology products with a side of building materials, assuming that the technology is the hardest part.
In reality, the technology part is easy. The most difficult part is manufacturing and shipping reliable mechanisms at low cost. It can be done, but the mechanisms and mechanical parts need to be treated as the primary product, not an afterthought.
A mass market automated pill dispenser you can just dump your prescriptions in seems like an obviously viable product. But, building something that’s easy enough to use, reliable enough to be safe, and cheap enough to be affordable is a pipe dream.
However, pills are of wildly different shapes and sizes, which invalidates most of the seemingly obvious sorting solutions. Prescriptions can also call for multiple pills in the same day.
I think the main weakness is that for a few folks, medicine changes would be difficult because they often are mid-week or mid-month and for some, they would really need their medicines re-packaged. I'm not sure this is as big of a problem in nursing homes and whatnot because the nurse is dispensing the meds, while some folks at home have bad memories or the beginnings of undiagnosed dementia and just won't remember.
Though the number of old folks is getting larger, so maybe that's a market by itself.
I know for a fact that my parents and my wife's parents would all love this.
My mother was a nurse, so she handles it better than most, but she still spends an hour a week on it.
Never mind that an internet connected, custom-engineered juice press was a bad idea in the first place. It was still out-manufactured by simple tools like a garlic press, or a little metal thing you twist your fruit on top of. Or a blender.
You have to look in the manual to add or remove a code, but it remembers at least a dozen codes. It doesn't talk to a smartphone. It doesn't have a network connection. It doesn't store a log of openings, and it doesn't violate your privacy.
What it does is solve the two biggest problems with door locks: not having your key, and getting a key to a friend so that they can get into your house.
But I wonder how it’d fare if someone like the lockpicking lawyer reviewed it’s mechanical lock design? Is it actually a good lock?
I'm not convinced it matters as long as it seems, to the layperson, to be a lock of average quality. No one really wants a lock to feel insecure if it is held in the hand, for example. And sure, if tests say you can just hit it and open it, you'll pass. But as long as it doesn't have obvious defaults... It is good.
Most locks really just keep out crimes of opportunity. Few folks have locks that will keep out folks that would destroy your front door or break your windows and few are real challenges to lockpicks. And the shouldn't be challenges to lockpicks! Otherwise, how would a locksmith do their work? It doesn't matter, though. Most folks simply aren't lockpicks - and a good number of folks that can* pick locks well do not have desires to break into homes.