I made a decision that saved me six months and probably $200,000: I put the AI on the device, not in the cloud.

In this episode, I walk through the architecture of OrbCare—a HIPAA-compliant health monitoring robot I'm building—and show you exactly why edge-first architecture isn't just technically superior for hardware startups, it's the only approach that actually works at scale.

What you'll learn:

• The mental model shift from cloud-centric to edge-centric thinking (this changes everything)
• Why "what needs to happen locally?" beats "what's the minimum to send to cloud?"
• Real technical decisions: NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano, YOLO, MediaPipe, encrypted local storage
• How edge-first architecture makes HIPAA compliance easier, not harder (video never leaves the device)
• The trade-offs nobody talks about: hardware constraints, updates, debugging, cost structure
• Edge vs. Cloud decision framework you can use today

The case study:

• All AI inference on-device (object detection, pose estimation, breathing analysis)
• 20-30 FPS processing with <50ms latency
• Works during internet outages (designed for disconnection, not connection)
• Near-zero cloud costs per device
• Privacy by default—no PHI transmission

Why this matters:

Most hardware startups default to cloud-first because that's what they know from web development. Then they hit Series B and realize they need to rebuild everything. That's $2-5M and 12-18 months you don't get back.

This is the architectural decision that determines whether you scale smoothly or spend 18 months on a rewrite when you should be growing revenue.

For founders building robotics, medical devices, IoT, or edge AI—this episode shows you how to avoid that wall.

Next episode: HIPAA compliance at the edge—how to build medical device systems without sending sensitive data to the cloud

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Primary:#EdgeComputing#EdgeAI#HardwareStartups#RoboticsArchitecture#MedicalDevices#HIPAACompliance#IoTArchitecture

Secondary:#NVIDIAJetson#ComputerVision#StartupCTO#DeepTech#EmbeddedSystems#AIHardware#TechnicalArchitecture

Platform/Ecosystem:#BostonStartups#SeriesA#TechnicalDueDiligence#StartupEngineering

SEO/Discovery:#EdgeVsCloud#LocalProcessing#RealTimeSystems#PrivacyByDesign#AutonomousSystems