Apologies if this turns out to be a stupid suggestion.
Calculations for prototypes have so far been based on runs of O(100) fully assembled boards. Would there be any possibility of paying for a handful of PCBs, a couple of sets of components (farnell, RS, digikey) and finding a volunteer with some equipment to assemble by hand (paste, oven, ...)?
I'm no expert (it probably shows), but the board doesn't seem hyper dense in terms of components. Of course, there would be no econmoies of scale at all, but it might provide an affordable way of inching past the all-important debugging and validation stages.
Best wishes
On 20/05/14 18:12, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
we need money, it's quite simple. i can then send the design off to a prototyping house, get one made up and tested, and we can carry on.