El Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 05:59:04PM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton deia:
On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 7:18 AM, Xavi Drudis Ferran xdrudis@tinet.cat wrote:
El Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 05:34:06AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton deia:
- i'm thinking of putting the "pass through" card on the campaign, approximate pledge amount $40 (because in low-volume expected it'll be about a $20 BOM), that would turn the laptop housing into a battery-operated screen, keyboard and trackpad for any smartphone, USB-HDMI-dongle-PC, laptop or desktop PC. thoughts appreciated on that one.
Go for it !
I'm not aware of the cost you would have to bring it in before the campaign deadline (is it finished, tested, ready?), but if you can do it, don't doubt.
it's been planned for a long time, i can estimate the BOM (not a lot
- about $6 of components) it's the PCB manufacturing that will be a
bit more than usual if the quantities are small, even if it's a single-sided 2-layer PCB
No idea about those calculations. You said around $40 for the backer to get one, that sounds about right. Psicologically it's still more than half the price of a CPU card, and it doesn't carry SOC, RAM or storage. That may be countered with just publishing the BOMs of both the passthrough card and CPU card (if they aren't already). But even without that, $40 it's not so off the mark.
If it can be 30$ or 32$ you may sell more. If it comes to $50 it starts to look too close to $65 (CPU card) or to $55 (desktop, but I'm not sure this is a valid comparison) and people might think twice. I can't calculate the point where the sales volume outweights the lower profit per unit. No idea.
I'd even say ask for more PCBs than pledges to anticipate future sells, but it's not my own money I'm playing with so I'll refrain. I'm sligthly surprised by the small amount of laptop orders so far, and I haven't thought much, but I don't see the passthrough card+ desktop as even remotely as interesting as pasthrough card + laptop.
Other components are unique (like female connectors instead of male or something) or can they be grouped with components for other rewards and so enjoy the price of larger orders ? I don't have an idea of MOQs, price/quantity intervals or anything.
Another factor is time. If it is ready to offer before the deadline it makes sense. If prototypes, testing and so on takes longer, then maybe it'll have to wait to future campaigns...
then again you've probably seen the USB-HDMI dongle PC connected to motorola atrix lapdock "version 1" instructables.... you can't use the version 2 as they DRM-locked it.
I haven't seen that. I don't really imagine what it is right now. Worth looking it up ? I lose interest when reading DRM...
Whatever it is it can't possibly hold the promise to host a EOMA68 cpu card with someone's favorite SOC in the future, can it?