Chief Delphi - CAN to PWM converter?

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Re: CAN to PWM converter?

Quote:

Originally Posted by asid61 (Post 1602417)

Forgive me, but I don't know enough about CAN to see where $20 to $30 came from. I was looking up general-purpose CAN controllers and microcontrollers and found options in the $1-3 range, and PCBs should only cost $1-2 tops. What would drive up the cost?

That's pretty fair. But if you could do it for cheap or wanted to try out CAN in general, a cheap converter would be useful. Plus, it would be easy to go from converter to SRX without changing much code.

Not all of the profit in the per item reference frame goes to the overall business profit... Most of it is eaten up by salaries of engineers, warehouse, quality control, support etc...

I know nothing about the COTS FRC Market, but I wouldn't be surprised if the per item cost on a Talon SRX is in the $20-40 range.They need to sell it at $90 to cover all the overhead and still make a profit.

Re: CAN to PWM converter?

Quote:

Originally Posted by asid61 (Post 1602417)

PCB fabrication is cheap, populating it? Less so. Add in a case, quality control, development costs... I've got a hunch COTS would be in that range if not a little higher.

Re: CAN to PWM converter?

Not to mention programing & design time. If you are doing it as a hobby or have students do as a project that might not be much of an issue. If you have to actually pay your programmers and engineers, it starts to add up. Quite expensive for a prototype or small production run. Obviously the per unit costs come down with the more you make.