

SparkFun MicroView Review - unwind
http://rheingoldheavy.com/sparkfun-microview-review/

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userbinator
It's $40 for a tiny OLED screen with a microcontroller attached to it, in a
moulded plastic case...? I wonder if there's a specific name for this
apparently recent trend of products that are ostensibly for people wanting to
learn electronics, but are really more consumer-focused toys and priced far
beyond what they actually cost.

0.66" OLEDs are in the <$3 range, the MCU used in there is <$4, and I don't
think any of the other components are any more expensive than that. PCBs are
extremely cheap too.

When one can buy a fully-functioning GSM phone (complete with OLED display)
for a fraction of the price, no wonder it makes electronics look like an
expensive hobby...

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schappim
@userbinator I'm Marcus from Geek Ammo (the designers of the MicroView). Our
mission, like SparkFun’s is to make electronics accessible to anyone.

I carefully chose the price.

I previously founded Ninja Blocks (ninjablocks.com) and one of the things I
learned was that when you price a product too low it is impossible to get
distributors. This is what happened with the original Ninja Block.

This time round I wanted the MicroView to be available through SparkFun’s
amazing distributor channel, so anyone around the world could get a MicroView
locally.

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rheingoldheavy
Hey Marcus... I'm Dan of Rheingold Heavy, the guy who wrote the review. I just
wanted to thank you for taking the time to come out here and engage with us.

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lukedubber
I am excited to get my hands on one of these, in the video they showed on
Kickstarter, they seemed to have some demos on how to program it for kids
running on what looked like a Surface Pro.

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grouma
Great write up! I'll have to get my hands on one in the near future.

