Quote:
Originally Posted by slibert
Thanks! It's been quite a journey....
I've got two thoughts on the assembly/cost:
1) I've got a quote for fully-assembled units for about $35 each at a quantity of 100. I'm willing to front the money for this, but want to make sure there's enough interest out there for it.
There would still be additional cost on top of that for boxing/shipping (est. $7).
In exchange for the support we'd also be giving to people, I think a fair return would be a markup that would be a fundraiser for the team.
So to me this means a price somewhere around $70 ea, fully assembled and shipped. That's a lower price than similar units on Sparkfun, and it'd include the code and RS-232 IC to simplify integration w/the CRio.
If we couldn't get demand for 100 units, that'd cause the price to go up a bit.
2) Your idea for a kit is interesting. Here's the challenge I see: surface-mount soldering skills are required. Two of the ICs (the MPU-6050, and the Honeywell Magnetometer) are Quad-Flat-No-lead and this can be very challenging. There are no through-hole variants for these ICs available on the market.
Now, we could redesign the board to make most of the parts through-hole thus requiring a lower soldering skill, but that would mean a month of redesign, and even so some there'd still need to be some assembly by a third party for the through-hole parts.
Could you give me an idea of the soldering skill and the cost per board that makes sense to you?
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I'd recommend not selling them as kits. Surface mount parts (especially the QFN ones) are pretty tough to solder. This is actually really cool, and I'm pretty certain that there will be teams willing to pay more for a fully assembled board that they can easily interface with the cRIO. The compatibility and support that teams will be able to get with this will make it really cool.