Hello FC community, I have some good news: the anonymous off-list people who did the PCB design for our FreeCalypso development board (FCDEV3B) have now completed this design to my satisfaction (and to the satisfaction of the PCB fab and the SMT assembly shop whose review it just passed), and we are now ready to physically build these boards. As usual, the design files are on our FTP site:
ftp://ftp.freecalypso.org/pub/GSM/FreeCalypso/fcdev3b/ Look for PcbDoc and gerber files with 20160423 in the filenames; the netlist and BOM information has not changed since 20160127. I am now talking to the anonymous off-list people who did the design to see if they would also take care of physically fabricating the first batch of PCBs. For a board of this complexity, PCB fabrication becomes economical only in large quantities, whereas small-volume prototype orders are hideously expensive. As a point of reference, the one fab I checked with gave me a quote of about $6,000 USD to make 10 boards or about $11,000 USD to make 100 boards. As you can see, the cost of making 100 boards (10x the quantity) is less than 2x the cost of making 10 boards; the per-piece cost at 100 pcs is quite reasonable, but very pricey at 10 pcs. I have not even asked about making fewer than 10 boards - it would certainly be cost-prohibitive. [Before anyone makes a smart-alec comment about one of the cheap PCB fabs, keep in mind that our PCB has 8 layers, blind & buried vias with controlled-depth laser drilling, two levels of stacked laser microvias in the outer layers, high density interconnect, and a very precisely defined stack-up for controlled impedance in GHz RF signal paths.] Considering the very narrow potential market niche for our board (a platform for developers or those aspiring to be developers, not useful at all for end users seeking a phone to carry in their pockets or purses), I don't think we can realistically expect to find 100 people who would preorder one board each so we can make an initial run of 100 boards. However, unless my anonymous off-list contacts step forward to produce the first batch of PCBs at their expense and send a few pieces to us, it will be a very long time (as in a year or two) before I will be able to foot the bill for producing even 10 PCBs entirely on my own - 6 kUSD is a big chunk-o-change, and I have a bunch of other things (family stuff) I'm already committed to cover first. Therefore, unless our anonymous friends take care of it for us - I am hoping to get some answers one way or the other in the next week or two - I am thinking of the following approach: let's see if we can find 15 people who would be willing to preorder one board each at $650 USD apiece - I would set up a page on gofundme.com to handle the collection of donations serving as board preorders/prepayments. Once 15 people have put down $650 each, there would be enough money (after gofundme's fees are deducted) to make a total of 20 boards, including PCB fabrication, parts, assembly and other costs. Out of those 20 boards 15 would go to those who have prepaid for theirs with crowdfunding donations, and the remaining 5 would be left for the FreeCalypso core team's internal needs. How does this plan sound to the community? Do you think that $650 USD is a reasonable price for a very unique GSM development board that is specifically designed to enable you to tinker with the GSM firmware, or do you think it is totally unreasonable? Do we have 15 people who would be willing to put down $650 for a board each, or nowhere close? Hasta la Victoria, Siempre, Mychaela P.S. If we end up going down the path I suggested, I plan on using gofundme.com as the platform, rather than Indiegogo or Kickstarter, because they have no time limit. _______________________________________________ Community mailing list [email protected] https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community
