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Another manufacturer for BBB

bwelsby

Just seen Embest (a Farnell company ) is producing their own clone of the  BeagleBone Black

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  • Looks like a price increase is happening:

     

    http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.beagleboard.user/64166

     

    Since it seems to be aimed at getting more manufacturers involved in order to increase supply, I'm surprised that e14 isn't using the embest one for this.

     

    Still, a price increase is dubious at best. The BBB is already more expensive than the more capable OLinuXino-LIME and it won't take much to push it into head to head competition with e14's RIoT board.

  • in reply to Former Member

    Looks like we might be getting the Embest one outside China after all, noticed this the other day

     

    image

     

    Mfg is e14, country of origin China and unfortunately includes the previously mentioned price increase image

     

    The RIoT board is £46.55 here in the UK, it has twice the RAM, twice the eMMC, gigabit network, four usb, audio connectors, better CPU, better GPU... the list goes on of ways it offers more than the BBB.  So while I'm sure there will be a certain amount of RPi effect where people will choose the BBB simply because it's a BBB, personally I don't think it'll be quite so simple a choice. 

    The BBB is really good at the original price, but it's competing against a different set of boards at this price.

  • in reply to Former Member

    While it might make financial sense to offer it for this price while supply is still low, I really hope this is not now the permanent price for it for this version. The only people who continue to benefit are those putting the boards to commercial uses, because they would not be able to manufacture it themselves at the higher price anyway, as we saw from that snippet (below) from the link you posted earlier. Individuals and educational users will be heavily impacted. It's a shame, it could have been prevented through better T&C's preventing commercial use for these boards without (say) a license cost.

     

    <ohararp <at> ohararp.com> wrote:

     

    Gerald, I have looked into both producing our own boards and System on Module type platforms with the AM3559 chipset.  The system on module setups are about $125 in quantity with a 12 week leadtime.  To produce our boards it would be a minimum of about $100 pre board to do our own production.  The latter does not factor in parts availibility, capital required, etc.  Finally, if you just look at single chip costs for the AM2559 you are looking at $34 - http://www.ti.com/product/AM3359!  The $45 pricing for the BBB is really unbelieveable and quite possibly unsustainable?  I would have no problem paying $75 for this board if we could guarantee availibility and continued support (ie being able to stay in business).

  • in reply to shabaz

    Somewhere earlier in that rather long thread Gerald had suggested increasing the price to $75  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.beagleboard.user/62794

     

    xe.com today shows $75 = 44.75 GBP

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    So I'd not rule it out until we see something definitive on exactly what they're going to do.

     

    Either way, if we assume this is the Embest built version rather than the CircuitCo one, then it's all up for grabs. Not being an 'official' version I think lets e14 charge what they want, and people will pay if the official one is unobtainable.

    You are of course right that it's the non-commercial users that suffer most, but that's the trade-off for OSHW when priced at a point that commercial users building their own clones can't come close to matching.

    There was a discussion here a few months back talking about SBC's not being the right answer and that a purpose built design should be used instead. While there may be merit in that point of view, it doesn't work out economically when you can buy a pre-built SBC and use it as a module at a third of the cost of your own design.  That appears to be the problem we're seeing, the BBB hardware is just too good to be true at $45 and the people using it commercially know it.

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  • in reply to shabaz

    Somewhere earlier in that rather long thread Gerald had suggested increasing the price to $75  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.hardware.beagleboard.user/62794

     

    xe.com today shows $75 = 44.75 GBP

    Fullscreen contentimage_176599.html Download 
    <html><head><title>Jive SBS</title></head>
<body><font face="arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
<b>Error</b><br><font size="-1">
An general error occurred while processing your request.
</font></font></body></html>

     

    So I'd not rule it out until we see something definitive on exactly what they're going to do.

     

    Either way, if we assume this is the Embest built version rather than the CircuitCo one, then it's all up for grabs. Not being an 'official' version I think lets e14 charge what they want, and people will pay if the official one is unobtainable.

    You are of course right that it's the non-commercial users that suffer most, but that's the trade-off for OSHW when priced at a point that commercial users building their own clones can't come close to matching.

    There was a discussion here a few months back talking about SBC's not being the right answer and that a purpose built design should be used instead. While there may be merit in that point of view, it doesn't work out economically when you can buy a pre-built SBC and use it as a module at a third of the cost of your own design.  That appears to be the problem we're seeing, the BBB hardware is just too good to be true at $45 and the people using it commercially know it.

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