Parallax Semiconductor backs Gadget Gangster as a standard platform
Ken Gracey
Posts: 7,401
Hey there,
As a follow-up to this thread http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?131496-A-disturbing-trend... I would like to state the position of Parallax Semiconductor. Parallax Semiconductor endorses the Gadget Gangster Propeller Platform as a solid form factor around which Parallax's hobby customers could design, exactly as we are seeing accomplished today. We are thankful to have the community support in this way. Outside adoption can't be accomplished inside, and if inside adoption is the goal then you are spending too much time in front of a mirror.
The QuickStart is the Parallax Semiconductor P8X32A reference design. The purpose of the this board is to provide product developers with a basic reference design they could use as their own. The header is for reference design boards that will be supported by our AppNotes. Some AppNotes will be coupled with hardware to properly demonstrate the system. Overlap with the Gadget Gangster effort is likely very low in terms of target customer and actual hardware.
Parallax Semiconductor gives us something new to consider in this regard - if our customers are already doing something effectively with our microcontroller (such as Gadget Gangster) you can count on us not being their competition. It just makes sense for us to throw our effort behind Gadget Gangster. I recognize the forum has made a few grumblings in the past when a new Parallax board seems to squish their efforts.
Parallax Semiconductor's business is designed around selling chips.
Thank you -
Ken Gracey
As a follow-up to this thread http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?131496-A-disturbing-trend... I would like to state the position of Parallax Semiconductor. Parallax Semiconductor endorses the Gadget Gangster Propeller Platform as a solid form factor around which Parallax's hobby customers could design, exactly as we are seeing accomplished today. We are thankful to have the community support in this way. Outside adoption can't be accomplished inside, and if inside adoption is the goal then you are spending too much time in front of a mirror.
The QuickStart is the Parallax Semiconductor P8X32A reference design. The purpose of the this board is to provide product developers with a basic reference design they could use as their own. The header is for reference design boards that will be supported by our AppNotes. Some AppNotes will be coupled with hardware to properly demonstrate the system. Overlap with the Gadget Gangster effort is likely very low in terms of target customer and actual hardware.
Parallax Semiconductor gives us something new to consider in this regard - if our customers are already doing something effectively with our microcontroller (such as Gadget Gangster) you can count on us not being their competition. It just makes sense for us to throw our effort behind Gadget Gangster. I recognize the forum has made a few grumblings in the past when a new Parallax board seems to squish their efforts.
Parallax Semiconductor's business is designed around selling chips.
Thank you -
Ken Gracey
Comments
I think that Parallax has been pretty generous when it comes to people competing against them on their own forums.
Some margin for working hard to put a good product out there is perfectly acceptable. Pretty easy to clone the work, stripping it down to just hardware and a bubble pack, but the value is more than that. We've got somebody stocking kits, adding value with tutorials and such, providing sales, service, support, and that's worth some bucks.
Rather than devalue that here, why not just go and make the thing and see where it leads? If one values their own personal time, the investment required to get business processes up and running, stock kit, get exposure, deal with delivery and quality issues, all while continuing to extend the product line isn't free.
Devaluing that just does not sit well with me.
@Ken, that's great news. Nick has worked hard to get a good thing up and running. Very excited to hear this news.
@Nick: Congrats man! Mouser, now this? Sweet.
All the Propeller Platform stuff has been done under the MIT license - I've put together a design considerations document with templates in Eagle, Diptrace & ExpressPCB right here. Schematics & layouts for all the modules we've done can be downloaded from their project pages, too.
@Kevin - Well noted. There are a few feature requests in the hopper right now, including power over USB.
@David - Clones are fine with me
I get a warm fuzzy feeling reading the Parallax forums. Quite the opposite of most other forums I try to put up with.
cheers
tubular
I am going to jump in here defending GG...
350% - 400% is quite normal over raw parts costs, as businesses have quite a few more costs than just raw parts costs:
- shipping costs for getting the parts
- brokerage costs for parts from overseas
- PCB production costs
- recouping R&D costs (prototyping costs etc)
- providing support
- writing documentation, tutorials etc
- business overhead costs (space, power, internet, heating, salaries, etc)
- time spent doing all of the above also costs money
- time spent packaging
- etc etc etc
At a guess, Nick probably nets only about $10-$15 profit for the boards he sells directly, and much less for those going through distribution
Distributors want 35%-55% discount from MSRP
Of course if someone does it as a hobby, and does not have to count time as a cost, the product can be sold for less.
MSRP at 5x parts cost (wholesale at 3x) is pretty standard. There are a ton of up-front, support, and overhead costs that need to be amortized, including but not necessarily limited to the ones Bill mentioned. So the GG prices are not at all out of line. Nick works very hard at his business. He's to be congratulated for garnering Parallax Semiconductor's support and for the success that will follow from it.
-Phil
I also concurr with Bill, having built commercial products for almost all of my working life. There is a difference in price when you make something for a hobby - you do not expect to be paid for your effort.
The problem with everything being free and open is that there is absolutely no incentive for anyone to do anything except from a hobby point of view. Imagine if Parallax opened up the prop design. We would see the big companies copy the Prop chip and sell it for less until Parallax is no more. Then the fantastic support we all receive from Parallax is gone. There has to be IP incentives for things to continue commercially.
By necessity the intellectual property of the Propellers will remain closed else some Chineese FAB night just copy and print them by the million for 50 cents. The original Props don't sell and all the great work Parallax does becomes impossible.
After that it's a free for all in the world of Prop software and Prop board designs. It's in Parallax's interest to open source all of that and encourage more companies an individulas to use more chips. It's in Parallax's interest not have to devote resources to doing all of that.
Davidsaunders,
I find the pricing of products from companies like GadgetGangster quite fascinating. They design basically simple things that everyone looks at and thinks "there's not much there, I could do that, I could do that cheaper, what a rip off"
BUT wait, they also publish all the design files, bill of materials, software etc along with their products.
So, potentially they immediately have 6 billion potential competitors in building and supplying that product. They are even quite happy, or at least not worried, that there might be cloners. After all cloners can grow the market by making a design popular or in some sense a standard.
That means they have to pitch their pricing rather carefully. To much and people will build their own, or a competitor will pop up to build it. To little and they are losing money.
This also means that we out here can never complain about the price. If we can get it cheaper elsewhere then we will do so. If we can't we might build it ourselves for less. Finally if we can't do that we buy it from GG. They have no means of price gouging. It's the ultimate in free market economy.
Looking at some of their prices I see that it's probably impossible to get the parts for less locally. Ordering from abroad will be cheaper but the shipping costs will cancel that out. Then actually building the thing costs in time and effort and equipment.
So David, if you think they are expensive there you have a good business opportunity to prove them wrong and start selling the thing yourself:)
I have spent a little time looking at the GG range and in particular looking at what is available and what is not available.
I can see some exciting extra boards/shields that could be useful and which I couldn't see after a quick look through the list:
1) a board with a VGA connector. This one will be a little tricky as I have found (after 10 revisions of boards) that the signal path from the prop chip to the VGA connector needs to be under 1 inch, otherwise noise starts appearing on the screen. So that might mean a new board with the prop chip rotated and placed nearer the edge.
2) A board with 6 pin mini din mouse and keyboard
3) A board with two or more D9 serial connectors
4) Boards with different external memory chips (encompassing the range of compromises of speed vs pins that have been worked out over the last 2 years)
5) A board with a 20x4 text LCD display, and maybe also one of the smaller white on blue graphical LCD displays.
6) A board that uses power more efficiently (particularly battery power) by using switch mode regulators instead of linear ones.
I see two different sized boards - the "propeller platform" and the slightly smaller "propeller platform usb"
I am wondering if the dimensions of these boards are available - the board size, the centres for the 4 holes and the location of the SIL connectors?
Addit: scratch that last bit - found the specs here http://gadgetgangster.com/find-a-project/261 Woot! - Eagle files are there - thanks++
Cool, my predictions usually do not come true so quickly. That was from a post I made the day before Ken's announcement. Great minds think alike? Or did I simply predict the obvious?
For the next revision of the Platform I would like to see USB power as well as some user leds.
Excellent, just what I was looking for for a project at work.
Are all your Spinvent modules designed to fit the Propeller Platform? I have to check what you have there ...
@ Holly,
One of your tag lines is a bit too close for comfort, given my pseudonym.
I got boards and add on modules from Nick's web site, and they are great board. I agree a USB powered board would be nice.
Anyway thanks to all the stuff on the site I created a couple of custom boards for my projects, using switching regulators, and with an Xbee interface.
In order to use an add on board (in one case) and to be on the safe side (on the other) I added the 16+4 pins interface on the board, which by the way works well also with stripboards. So in my case the board is becoming a standard.
Massimo
@Nick - Congrats!
@Ken - I wish Parallax Semiconductor all the best.
You could not stay in business with your business model.
GG prop platform is open source, you can copy it if you like.
Only way to get cost down would be to make 1000 units,
the prop market is not that big and you will sit on these for years.
Hmmm, now isn't that creative......
Wouldn't it be more rewarding to come up with something that ENHANCES the platform that is now a "standard" than to immediately decide to copy it with the only intention of cutting the price to something that YOU want it to be?
This looks like a tremendous opportunity to be creative without the burden of having to design (copy / reinvent) the core processing and I/O portion.
If the platform is "open", how is he doing anything wrong? If he wants to bring something to market and undercut the competition, isn't that his prerogative? If he can sustain the business model, he prospers. If not, he folds. If he does prosper, his competition adjusts to the new market demands, or they suffer for it.
Anyways, I'm not starting a debate about capitalism, economics, etc. I just don't think that he should be flamed because he suggested this. If you don't like what he's suggesting, just vote with your wallet.
@David - If you want to give $.50 to Nick, that's your call. However... if the platform is "open", and there is no licensing costs involved, then I don't think you should take on any false sense of obligation. It kind of defeats the point of the openness.
FWIW, I wouldn't have a problem buying the GGPP @ $50. The only reason I never bought one is because of lack of power over USB. I honestly don't understand why this feature is so unavailable in Propeller/BS2 related boards. Every board requires a different power adapter, and it gets old quickly having to buy them.
-Phil
Ok I wish only to help the community, I do agree that working together to improve on that available for the GG is a good thing. It appears that I will not be doing a Clone any way, as Nick has not got back to me saying if he will accept my money or not. This is OK I guess, it may be that the price ends up coming down in direct response to the increase in sales, thus the reduced production cost in volume. I really like the GG even though at present I have to bread board it (do to limited money). I have nothing other than the best wishes for Nick or GG he is a great engineer and it is a well thought out platform.
And to any that may think that I am being competitive, NO. I want to see Nick continue to succeed (why else would I offer him half of all profit for a clone).
David:
You seem to be issuing ultimatums (ultimata?). Why would you only give Nick a few hours to respond? Or do I misunderstand the timeframe here?
In your other post about your new board design, you seem to be saying that if nobody responds within a few hours you are going to give up. Is your design going to be open. Why don't you go ahead and design/make it and offer it to the community?
The intent of my previous post was to simply apologize to the community for the misunderstanding and withdraw the offer of a clone (as it appears to be causing discord).
I am going to maintain that until the board is produced. The dual Prop board I am working on is going to be (already partially is). That thread is only a request for suggestions.
Yes the design is going to be open.
I am going to make it. It will be produced as a first run during UPEW. I would like it to be as friendly to the needs of all as possible, so I request input.
I don't read the other posts that way. I read them as people questioning your business model (I can't believe I actually typed that), not your right to produce the boards.
I understand your desire to produce a cheaper kit. Although I can afford the kits that are offered (and have purchased quite a few), the first thing I asked Nick when I saw the first board was if I could buy a bare board without the parts since I already had the parts and could save some money that way.