PSOC 5LP Hat for a Raspberry Pi

What  I really don't understand with a board like this is the poor provision for mounting

Sadly this isn't the only board that falls into that problem.

I've had to resort to those mounts that hold the edges of the board in some cases ... and that was a commercial board as well.

Damn.

I missed that one.

I did try to back the RPIPSOC  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/embeditelectronics/rpisoc-a-development-board-with-raspberry-pi-compa?ref=users

Mark

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.

There are a bunch of factors.

1 - Chicken and egg. You need volume to get offshore assembly and you need offshore assembly to get the prices that get volume.

2 - We don't trust anyone to assemble quality boards. We don't have any returns so far with more than 1000 boards shipped. We like that. Compare that to stuff we get from China with high failure rates.

3 - We like to do a Kickstarter every six weeks or so. But we also like to take off around finals so the kids can do well in school. We do have day jobs/school.

4 - We like to fulfill quickly. Seems like everybody that did high volumes took 6 months to fulfill. We've funded in the middle of the month and shipped all the first month's rewards that month. Realize it takes 2 weeks to get your funds so you have to buy boards and material a month earlier. That's why we have a "smallish" early bird reward the first month.

That's just a handful of the reasons.

Frankly if the RPPSOC was $20 (which is less than the parts and labor) we'd still have people complaining that we are ripping them off since the dev kit is $10. And we'd get nowhere near the volume to get China interested. This is just too narrow a market.

In my opinion - at least this is the approach I follow - when you startup (not to consider in the common meaning) a project you should consider the work cost, including the prototype creation, design time, experiments and so on, just only as cost of investment. If you produce only 50 pieces or less (I usually start with 10) also by a marketing point of view you can't charge on these first small bunch of units your personal work costs. It is your risk, not a cost. Ignore this then make the right price and add a small percentage of your job/ investment cost.

How to calculate the percentage? This can be done before and it is very useful for the future of your product. You evaluate the real effort needed, establish a correct market price and then based on the competitor market price of similar products evaluate the max amount you can charge. For example:

• Hardware components: 10$
• PCB (real price for 10 pieces, this cost will decrease in future with larger productions) : 5$
• Wires and accessory cables : 1$
• Case or support or just the screw parts; 3$

The total cost will be 16$

You can sell it at 25$ covering also the hidden costs (you will discover them going ahead in the project) and cover part of the job costs.

Calculate the hardware costs based on a single unit buying only a set of components (also buying 10 you will pay with a small discount)

Make reviews, presentations, how-to and distribute them on sites like Element14, Hackaday.io, instructables.com etc.

Write articles and tutorials, create interest on the product that will be attractive as it is cheaper for any potential customer / user than creating one by himself.

See what happens.

If you sell 1 or 2, you have a small quantity  of products in your storage for the future. If you sell all 10 you have a base to start a bit larger production.

Take in account two important factors after this considerations:

1. create a shop online (also Kickstarter if you are so aficionado and maybe also on indiegogo.com) before you start the promotion of the project and everywhere - in a very discrete way, don't worry that interested users/customers search for the link - the shop link. I suggest drobott.com and tindie.com but these are just two options.
2. with the costs in mind, you can reasonably calculate the break even point as follow:

Suppose that your job cost will be 500$ (but the real cost is up to you). So:

• Cost of the product: 16$
• Acceptable (respect competitors, possibly excluding China) job cost: 4$

Total production cost: 20$

At this point (this is just a suggestion) stay as low as possible with earning margin: it is better earning 1$ from 1000 customers than 10$ from one. The information and product visibility  (or self-marketing) moves faster with many users... Multiply the cost for 1.5 (max, better if less).

selling cost: 30$

500$ / 4$ = 125 units you should sell at this price.

So, IMHO 125 pieces is not an impossible target worldwide. At least to start. Or to kickstart.

(It is the worth to lower the price to 25$ and try to sell 200 units).

Just an example, I say, that I hope can explain what I mean.

Enrico

Related read:

from EEVBlog: The Economics of Selling a Hardware Project.

It describes what's needed to build a viable business and how not to end with empty - or below empty - pockets (with calculations, rates and traps for young players).