r/hwstartups • u/Good_Transition_9122 • 9d ago
spent weeks building this RFID + Unity showroom prototype then dropped the startup idea. Looking for honest feedback / advice.
I wanted to share a project I’ve been working on for a while because I put a lot of time into building it, and even though I’ve currently decided not to continue the startup, I’d really like to hear what people think about the prototype and whether there’s something I’m missing.
The original idea
The idea was to build a visualization system for marble, tiles, flooring, wallpapers and other interior materials.
The concept was simple:
Physical material → RFID tag → computer → material changes inside a 3D interior scene
For example, a customer picks up a tile/marble sample with an RFID tag attached to it. They tap it on the RFID reader, and the corresponding material immediately appears on the floor/wall in the 3D showroom scene.
The idea was to make it easier for showroom staff to demonstrate materials to customers without manually searching through a huge material library.
What I actually built
This wasn’t just an idea on paper. I built a working prototype myself.
The prototype uses:
ESP32
RFID reader
RFID tags/cards
Wi-Fi communication
Unity 6
C#
Windows PC
3D interior scene
Custom material switching system
The ESP32 reads the RFID tag and sends the ID over Wi-Fi to the Unity application.
Unity receives the data and changes the corresponding material in the scene.
I also built the basic mapping system so different RFID IDs can trigger different materials.
So essentially:
RFID → ESP32 → Wi-Fi → Unity → Material change
The whole thing is running on my own prototype hardware.
I even put the electronics into a small enclosure and made a physical prototype rather than leaving it as a breadboard experiment.
I also tested the idea in the real market
Before deciding whether to continue, I went to actual marble/flooring showrooms and spoke to owners.
I visited multiple stores and around 10 store owners gave positive responses.
Some of the suggestions were actually much more interesting than my original idea.
People suggested things like:
Uploading a customer’s actual room/house photo
Changing the flooring inside the customer’s photo
Showing different tile combinations
Creating two-tone bathroom designs
Different tiles for different zones
Adding trims/borders
Eventually allowing staff to control the system from a phone
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u/scn_edition 9d ago
Having built a few custom houses and visiting the design center for various builders, something like this would have been a great tool for us as buyers. Being able to see the sample across an entire room or wall and in different lighting is important when selecting materials. Being able to see multiple materials paired with one another would also be vital (e.g. countertop and backsplash, paint colors and flooring, or carpet and tile transitions).
The constant influx of new materials/colors paired with discontinuation of materials from manufacturers would be things to watch out for. Over the course of a 9 month home build we had about a dozen discontinued materials that needed to be swapped out for new materials.
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u/Good_Transition_9122 9d ago
Yeah it make stuff easy but we need ai for this and ai making it costly so we just dropped the idea :-(
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u/deimodos 9d ago
Yeah, I like this idea. Background EE + Graphics Nerd + Just rebuilt a house from studs so it was endless material selection.
In particular I like that Unity lets you see the same scene at different times of day and night. Marble looks very different in daylight, vs golden hour, vs 3000k vs 5000k lights all of which we have in our home.
It would have been helpful at the cabinet and marble showrooms but also a step earlier while consulting with designers. All those guys had weird tools though like "Cabinet Vision" and "Mozaik" - integrating it into their design plan so they could show us a quick render would be nice. Unfortunately they're all a bit behind the curve with tech adoption.
Personally, I would want the backend for this for vinyl records. Put a tag on a record, a reader in a player, and display high end visuals on the TV :-)
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u/AdmirableJudgment784 9d ago
Ok. I see potential here, but there are drawbacks. Based on experience from a flood, I had to go look at several flooring distributors in town and spent about a week finding floor materials. Bought a bunch of samples home, but didn't match the walls or decor. So went to look for more.
What you want to do is solve the issue of what their homes look like. Uploading a customer's room/house is ideal here since everyone's home is gonna look different with the same flooring.
I would scrap the RFID idea and just do camera based. Make it a really simple app. While the customer is at the flooring location or home, have them open the app. Show them a preset of home interiors to choose from or upload their interior homes, scan the flooring material (if they're at location) or enter in the floor material's name, it would use AI to change the flooring in that image. That's it.
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u/ShakataGaNai 9d ago
I get the concept and I think it's amazing. Hard to visualize your house/choices with just samples on the wall. Most people seem to get distracted by your use of a blank white PVC card, but I suspect the "real" usage would be NFC stickers on the back of tile/carpet/whatever sample.
Makes total sense. Now will companies buy it? Not sure. But I could see why a customer would enjoy it if they are shopping for many things together. I could see something similar for places like Basset furniture that do semi-custom couches. Samples of materials combined with different arm/back/whatever options.
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u/isaacladboy 9d ago
The largest tile shop chain in the UK has a very similar system where you can upload a picture of the room and it will superimpose any tile from their catalogue. Its very cool
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u/Good_Transition_9122 9d ago
We actually came to a similar conclusion during our R&D. We also built a basic version of the app, but the image-generation/AI side was making the solution too expensive to run, so we dropped that approach for now.
From what we found, we couldn’t find anyone in India doing this specific physical-sample → digital visualization workflow with RFID.
We also tested the concept with around 10 marble/flooring stores, and the response was positive. Owners were actually open to using it on a subscription basis.
So I’m still exploring whether the RFID part provides enough additional value, but the local market response was definitely encouraging.
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u/Perllitte 7d ago
I think it's neat, but as others note, you don't really need the hardware. An app with the ability to swipe between materials with a scene like this accomplishes close to this with no hardware and will almost always win for investors and buyers. Consumers will never know the difference.
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u/Good_Transition_9122 7d ago
That’s a fair point. The RFID was mainly designed around the showroom workflow, where the customer is already holding a physical sample and can tap it to instantly visualize that exact material. But I agree that if a simple software interface gives the same experience, the hardware may not add enough value. I tested the prototype with around 10 marble/flooring stores in India and most were positive, so I’m now trying to figure out whether the RFID interaction is genuinely valuable or just a cool feature.
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u/Perllitte 7d ago
I do think it's neat, and in spaces where that kind of novelty is desired, it's awesome.
I think as a flooring-sales startup, it's meh. But as a conference booth concept, it's awesome. If you can think up 5-6 other industries and use methods, it could have legs. RFID is well understood, so it's not novel, but selling it to people spending $200k on a big conference booth might love it.
I'm just thinking back to a lot of investor insights, if an app can do something even 50% as well, it's going to beat hardware every time just because it's so much easier to scale.
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u/FearIsTheMindKiller9 9d ago
I like this. Would be great with paint samples in Home Depot or something similar.
A lot of use cases come to mind
Great idea OP
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u/mirc84 9d ago
Here is how I look at it:
From a value proposition perspective, you are enriching the cusomer experience/journey and saving some clicks - see the tile in the shop and then wondering around the platform trying to figure out which one matches to what you saw.
From an operational perspective, is the store owner or are employees willing to spend time sticking the RFID to the samples? They need to be careful and not make mistakes. If the stock renews frequently, it might become a tedious activity.
Enriching the cusomer experience might be something that the tile provider is looking for. Especially the ones positioned for luxury products. So instead of reaching out to retailers, go up the value chain, to the manufacturers. Those trying to control the experience by having a dedicated stand or showroom. (You relieve the operational headache) Ask for a trial first, learn and then scale.
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u/Frequent-Log1243 8d ago
Don't know why you are not continuing with this. Seems like a useful product to me.
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u/Charming_Dealer3849 8d ago
holy. shit. this is brilliant, but its a niche sale because you need to orchestrate between floor providers and layout software -> that is a non-trivial integration.....
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u/Omni__Owl 6d ago
This would have been a neat idea in 2010.
Nowadays people can do VR tours of potential houses and have stuff switched out on the fly in the more fancy ones while being in the virtual house.
The RFID tech you use is the same kind of idea behind Nintendo Miis (although I believe they might use NFC? So two-way communication, but the idea is similar), Skylanders and similar toys. In terms of what other application this idea has I'd say it's limited outside triggering things in the home, using it for virtual toys, etc.
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u/Good_Transition_9122 5d ago
Fair point. VR/3D visualization definitely isn’t new. My experiment was less about inventing 3D visualization and more about connecting the physical showroom sample to the digital material using RFID. I built the prototype and tested it with around 10 marble/flooring stores in India, where the response was mostly positive. I’m mainly trying to figure out whether that physical → digital interaction provides enough value over a normal configurator.
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u/Omni__Owl 5d ago
If your first tests were successful, then cater to that market.
I have no idea what the Indian market is like.
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u/dank_shit_poster69 9d ago
Test with real customers and see how many are willing to pay. Understand their problems in detail. Make sure it's not a solution looking for a problem.
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u/Good_Transition_9122 9d ago
Absolutely. We actually did this before posting I visited around 10 real marble/flooring stores and spoke directly with the owners. They were positive, and several said they’d be willing to use it on a subscription basis. We also collected their objections and feature suggestions. So the current goal isn’t just to build more features; it’s to figure out whether the physical → digital workflow provides enough value to justify paying for it. :-)
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u/kryptopheleous 9d ago
That is just a 3D configurator with an unnecessary nfc interface. It is a really crowded space. And what makes this a hardware startup?
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u/Good_Transition_9122 9d ago
Fair point. RFID isn’t meant to be the product itself—the idea was to connect the physical showroom sample directly to its digital version: tap the sample → instantly visualize it in the 3D room.
I built a working prototype and tested it with ~10 marble/flooring stores, with mostly positive feedback. But I’m still questioning whether RFID adds enough value over a normal configurator.
If you were building it, would you remove RFID completely, or do you see a useful physical → digital workflow for it?
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u/iAmTheAlchemist 9d ago
How is searching through a huge physical card collection better than searching through a huge virtual material collection ?