PSOC 5LP Hat for a Raspberry Pi

I am the original designer so I have a biased opinion. Hoping maybe I can answer some of the questions/objections above.

Is it worth the money?

It is a bit pricey at $50 (for early backers). The PSoC chip goes (as noted) for around $7. The PCB costs a few dollars (in the under 100 volume), the connectors and hat EEPROM cost another few dollars. It costs around $10 additional to assemble and test the card. So the selling price of $50 is around 2-3x the costs. That's high if it was made in volume and purchased from China. It's not. We build them in my living room. I am going to build around 50 or so of these cards (maybe 100 of them if the Kickstarter goes well) so there's not all that much economy of scale involved. In the end I might end up with $1000 or so profit which will go into my next project.

Why hook up all of the Raspberry Pi GPIO lines?

Think about this one a bit. If you want an input pin connected just connect it inside the PSoC to one of the I/O pins. Same goes for output pins. Just route them through the PSoC. What about Bi-directional pins? Someone mentioned One Wire. The Pi really stinks at interfaces which have specialized timing. You get a packet in on the Ethernet and all of a sudden you are preempted - ouch. That's where the beauty of the PSOC comes in handy. The ARM processor inside the part does a great job in those situations. Try handling the timing of a chain of NeoPixels with the Pi. It's not a great bit-banger. The ARM CPU in the PSOC is great at bit-banging.

Is this just a Marketing Ploy?

Hardly, I'm horrible at Marketing. I just put up projects that I do for myself. If someone else made the card for $30 or $35, I'd buy it and not build it. I think an entire University class could be built around this card. Can you imagine the possibilities of breadboarding a fairly complex design with minimal breadboarding?

But I can just buy the $10 Dev Kit from Cypress!

Of course you can. We did too. That's what got us interested in the part to begin with. Is it a Raspberry Pi Hat or is it a breadboarding tool? If you want to do breadboards, it is just fine. If you want to build something beyond a breadboard that's another story.

Where's the innovation in this project?

That was a real challenge. Took me a couple of weeks of solid Engineering time to figure out just how to program a PSOC from a Raspberry Pi. You see the limitations of the Pi are the unpredictable timing. The Pi doesn't make a great bit-banging programmer. If someone else had already figured out how to program the part, I would have just used their code. Nobody did, though. Took pouring through the Application notes and the answer was there. But not easy to figure out. And what did we do with the answer? We put it up on our github site for all to see. Some clever stuff there? Surely someone else will come along and say that they would have done it better/differently. But they didn't do it. We did.

Doug at Land Boards, LLC (just a guy and his sons who do stuff together).

(commenting on the pricing alone)

I think it's fair for Dough to ask a price that makes the operation viable. We shouldn't have to work for virtually nothing per hour.

The ones that can make kits, shield, hats, boosterpacks, capes, wings for $10 typically have marketing budget poured into the mix to make the prices that low.

Cypress DevKit , Gecko board, LaunchPad, ST Nucleo: can you build them for that price? Why then ask someone else without a marketing machine to do that?

A person that uses his brains and hands deserves a return.

For what it's worth. ..

I agree it is good to ask a fair price, but I still feel this is relying on backers not realizing they can get near-equivalent functionality (actually a higher performance part) for 1/5th of the cost.

The value-add appears to be HAT form-factor, is that worth the additional $45 is what feels uncomfortable.

Hobbyists benefit from the ultra-low cost dev-boards that Cypress have made available. I'm sure Cypress have no issue losing a bit of money on 54 backers purchasing their dev-boards.

I feel uncomfortable ripping off fellow hobbyists.

I get that everyone has different perception of value so of course this is just a personal opinion.

In good spirit:

>  I'm sure Cypress have no issue losing a bit of money on 54 backers purchasing their dev-boards.

They'd be happy. I think their goal is to sell PSoCs, not to sell devboards (those, I believe, are marketing material, not a commercial product).

> I feel uncomfortable ripping off fellow hobbyists.

There I beg to differ. I think the asking price is in line with what the components + pcb + mail charge cost, and a little for the time spent designing and building the boards at home.

I guess if we would calculate what's left in Dough's hand per hour worked - if we divide his gain by the time spent designing, softwareing, ordering parts, soldering, testing, packing and mailing,

it's close to $0.0 / hour.

Whether this is a hat worth purchasing, that's a different discussion. I'd say no on that. That doesn't make it a rip-off though.

The subtle difference doesn't seem any more different than the artificially created jobs in some countries, such as the button-push guy in lifts.

They work hard, but is the end result actually needed?

If people knew there was a lower priced alternative, would they still buy this board?

While the actual cost charged might be in line with the work effort, it is the unfair advantage through people not having done their research to know they can get near-equivalent functionality for far less, that makes it a rip-off - just my opinion.

Doug himself has stated he could reduce the price and attract 2-3 times as many backers. But it looks like he may prefer to sit on the price curve where he will still pick up enough backers (fellow hobbyists) but not have to try too hard to reduce COG and manufacturing costs. I don't see why that should be rewarded.

Again, just a personal opinion.

I could reduce costs by doing the manufacturing overseas. That would drop the shipping costs dramatically as well. Not my thing.

Why not, if I may ask?

Do you actually put the SMT PSOC in yourself or do that with the PCB?

Clem

Yes, we bought a nice optical microscope to assemble fine pitch parts and we hand solder them. Two of my sons assemble cards. They are both J-STD-01 certified for soldering. We test all of our cards as well. Having that sort of equipment is part of the cost of being in this business even in a small way.

Yes, we bought a nice optical microscope to assemble fine pitch parts and we hand solder them. Two of my sons assemble cards. They are both J-STD-01 certified for soldering. We test all of our cards as well. Having that sort of equipment is part of the cost of being in this business even in a small way.