nope I don't. Still curious what you mean by waisted space.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
Re "but I need to know how many people would be willing to buy?"
Not at the prices quoted, sorry. But I suspect when you ask this question, a handful of people will say yes, a handful will say no, and the vast majority will quietly sit on the fence. So your survey results are not likely to be a very good guage of interest. There may still be interest out there!
Can you afford to make a batch yourself assuming you don't sell any? Would you be greatly upset every time you saw a pile of unused boards sitting on a shelf in the shed?
@Cluso - $800 for 20 boards? Yikes! I got 30 N8VEM boards made for $300 all up including shipping and those boards are bigger than the triblade. I gave away 23 for free. I'll put some beer in the fridge tonight and we can brainstorm PCB suppliers on Sunday.
Re board size, personally, I like to start big and work down. I spent my youth trying to make everything tiny as many of my projects had to fit in model planes. Now, as the eyesight goes, I hate small! Now, I prefer to build everything with DIP parts. With space between them to fit an IC puller. Only if a design is particularly cool, and particularly stable do I look at trying to shrink it. But I also appreciate that small is a powerful selling point.
See www.musicfromouterspace.com/ and scroll down about 2/3 of the way on the left, where he says: "No offense SOP packages but gentlemen prefer chips with longer legs."
Re memory and pins and the propeller, there simply are not enough pins on a propeller. I want a 64 pin prop!! But meanwhile, heater hus summed up the problem very well. And where heater says "With all this in mind I'd like to think about going the other way. A small RAM, 512K max, operated though an 8 bit multiplexed bus with a couple of control lines. Some ultra simple cheap glue logic to help it along. Yes I know that will be bit slower but we've already accepted that." - I have a propeller board on the way to do that. Due Oct 10. But given my track record making PCBs and sending out 30 N8VEM boards with no power connected to half the pins (D'Oh! But fixable with 1 wirelink), I'm going to keep that under wraps till I solder it up and see if it works *grin*
Hmm - I posted all this and then noticed you now have abandoned the DIP 40 footprint and are adding 1G of RAM. Sweet. Are you using ram modules from a PC or something?
the expansion is not as big as it may seem. when from 8MBytes to 1024MBits So only 16 times more.
i am not using computer ram modules but i am using the same 133MHz chips that are found on laptop RAM.
As for could I make the super prop and aford not to sell any. Yes and no. Could I afford the cash Yes but would have to sell valuable stuff. The bigger question is would my wife let me live. That is a definet no. The super prop pcb where 8 layer with blind VIAs. $1900 got me 1050 PCB but that is a huge start up price and smaller quantities only reduced the price a little.
My new design requires only $480 investment in PCB panel and parts cost is significantly less.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
mctrivia said...
My new design requires only $480 investment in PCB panel and parts cost is significantly less.
Much more palatable price in-case you end up with coffee table coasters.
mctrivia said...
Still curious what you mean by waisted space.
There's a lot of unused real-estate. Also, if you allowed the connectors to overhang by half the mating length, then a user can have 2 male and 2 female right-angle connectors instead of using straight header/female connectors ... and you could trim down the board. We could continue this OT point in the infini-prop thread.
mctrivia, I have to agree with heater that adding heaps of external ram to the prop is not really economical or useful. The memory bandwidth is too low to make good use of it or you end up using too many I/O pins. Even using a CPLD or FPGA to speed things up and reduce pin count does not help all that much. Somewhere in the 64-512KByte range would be the optimum for most purposes.
On the other hand after working with your propmod_us for a while I think that is a great design.
PS - I see by your "The bigger question is would my wife let me live." statement that you are adapting to married life very quickly.
My original plan was to see if I could make something smaller, cheaper, and more powerful then MITs RAM expansion module. The super prop did that but is still not at a price point worth it. My new module is even better.
They offer 16MB for $900
I will be offer $128MB at under $150
And currently the module is still about the size of my propmodule though it will get bigger as i want to add uSD card reader and other goodies. I had to drop the voltage to 1.8V though but I have built in level shifting to 3.3V for communicating with prop.
Thanks Married life is great. Just can't take financial risks like i use to be able to.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
Comments
Do you honestly believe I would try to sell hardware like that ?
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
Not at the prices quoted, sorry. But I suspect when you ask this question, a handful of people will say yes, a handful will say no, and the vast majority will quietly sit on the fence. So your survey results are not likely to be a very good guage of interest. There may still be interest out there!
Can you afford to make a batch yourself assuming you don't sell any? Would you be greatly upset every time you saw a pile of unused boards sitting on a shelf in the shed?
@Cluso - $800 for 20 boards? Yikes! I got 30 N8VEM boards made for $300 all up including shipping and those boards are bigger than the triblade. I gave away 23 for free. I'll put some beer in the fridge tonight and we can brainstorm PCB suppliers on Sunday.
Re board size, personally, I like to start big and work down. I spent my youth trying to make everything tiny as many of my projects had to fit in model planes. Now, as the eyesight goes, I hate small! Now, I prefer to build everything with DIP parts. With space between them to fit an IC puller. Only if a design is particularly cool, and particularly stable do I look at trying to shrink it. But I also appreciate that small is a powerful selling point.
See www.musicfromouterspace.com/ and scroll down about 2/3 of the way on the left, where he says: "No offense SOP packages but gentlemen prefer chips with longer legs."
Re memory and pins and the propeller, there simply are not enough pins on a propeller. I want a 64 pin prop!! But meanwhile, heater hus summed up the problem very well. And where heater says "With all this in mind I'd like to think about going the other way. A small RAM, 512K max, operated though an 8 bit multiplexed bus with a couple of control lines. Some ultra simple cheap glue logic to help it along. Yes I know that will be bit slower but we've already accepted that." - I have a propeller board on the way to do that. Due Oct 10. But given my track record making PCBs and sending out 30 N8VEM boards with no power connected to half the pins (D'Oh! But fixable with 1 wirelink), I'm going to keep that under wraps till I solder it up and see if it works *grin*
Hmm - I posted all this and then noticed you now have abandoned the DIP 40 footprint and are adding 1G of RAM. Sweet. Are you using ram modules from a PC or something?
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
www.smarthome.viviti.com/build
Post Edited (Dr_Acula) : 10/2/2009 3:08:38 AM GMT
i am not using computer ram modules but i am using the same 133MHz chips that are found on laptop RAM.
As for could I make the super prop and aford not to sell any. Yes and no. Could I afford the cash Yes but would have to sell valuable stuff. The bigger question is would my wife let me live. That is a definet no. The super prop pcb where 8 layer with blind VIAs. $1900 got me 1050 PCB but that is a huge start up price and smaller quantities only reduced the price a little.
My new design requires only $480 investment in PCB panel and parts cost is significantly less.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
There's a lot of unused real-estate. Also, if you allowed the connectors to overhang by half the mating length, then a user can have 2 male and 2 female right-angle connectors instead of using straight header/female connectors ... and you could trim down the board. We could continue this OT point in the infini-prop thread.
On the other hand after working with your propmod_us for a while I think that is a great design.
PS - I see by your "The bigger question is would my wife let me live." statement that you are adapting to married life very quickly.
They offer 16MB for $900
I will be offer $128MB at under $150
And currently the module is still about the size of my propmodule though it will get bigger as i want to add uSD card reader and other goodies. I had to drop the voltage to 1.8V though but I have built in level shifting to 3.3V for communicating with prop.
Thanks Married life is great. Just can't take financial risks like i use to be able to.
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
propmod_us and propmod_1x1 are in stock. Only $30. PCB available for $5
Want to make projects and have Gadget Gangster sell them for you? propmod-us_ps_sd and propmod-1x1 are now available for use in your Gadget Gangster Projects.
Need to upload large images or movies for use in the forum. you can do so at uploader.propmodule.com for free.
Post Edited (mctrivia) : 10/2/2009 3:47:25 AM GMT