John has dispatched one of his SWAMP 0.5 "test" DAC carrier boards to me. I am hopeful that a couple of weeks after receiving it, we will have an ALSA driver and be looking to move forward with a limited production run of CSP1 boards. CSP1 is effectively going to be the public beta board and was always intended to be a limited run, the chance to shake out any bugs or make any last minute changes before moving forward to a full production run, of perhaps 200 boards.
>From a financing perspective, the expectation is that for such a small run of CSP1, we are potentially going to be looking at 4x the cost per board, compared to the cost per board of a much larger production run. My expectation is that to get these into the hands of beta testers we will need to subsidise the costs, as I doubt people will want to pay $400 for the privilege of beta testing. ;) At least 10 of the CSP1 boards will be spoken for, (myself, Adrian, John, and to get them into the hands of what will be our US and UK distributors), leaving perhaps 10 or 15 boards to be allocated to "public" beta testers. I suspect that we will need to pass on some of the cost of these boards to the "public" beta testers that will receive them. I also suspect some of you guys, that have already jumped on board by purchasing Wandboard's, will want to join in with the CSP1 beta testing. What I would like to try and do, is come up with a compromise, whereby we part-subsidise the beta boards, perhaps asking the early adopters, (a.k.a. beta testers), to contribute $200 to the CSP1 board cost, on the understanding that when we reach the CSP2 production run, that they will receive also receive a "free" board from that run. Best case scenario, there won't be any major changes, (if any at all), between CSP1 and CSP2, so you'll end up with 2 boards for your $200, but if for some reason CSP1 does have "issues" and they need to be rectified with hardware or PCB changes before CSP2 goes into production, you'll at least be guaranteed to get a board from the CSP2 run without having to pay again. The $200 figure I have used above, is just a number I have plucked out of thin air, so it is not a fixed and final figure. But on the basis that it is the number, my question would be, how many of you, (if any), would be prepared to pay $200 for a CSP1 "beta" board, which will also include a "complimentary" CSP2 board when they are produced. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JackOfAll's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3069 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=98544 _______________________________________________ unix mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/unix
