

Kickstarter for scriptable USB RGB LED - djnym
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thingm/blink1-the-usb-rgb-led

======
HeyLaughingBoy
Comments like these are exactly why I will never do consumer products.

Home user/hacker: this thing only cost $0.50 to make, I won't pay more than $5
for it.

Industrial user: I need an indicator that I can hang off the USB port of the
computer and light up when a new work order comes in so the guy at the other
end of the workcell knows to start working on it right away without having to
be sitting at the PC. $150 each? Cool, it'll pay for itself inside a week.
Send me 20!

~~~
st3fan
I would rather sell to a million home users at a realistic price than to a
thousand "industrial" users for some obscene amount for a small part like
that.

Or maybe: please do sell this for $30+ so that we can buy it on deal extreme a
month later for $5 :-)

------
cnvogel
There is a software-only USB stack for AVR microcontrollers, and it has a
example section with LED and Display projects:

<http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/prjdisplay.html>

Especially this project is almost identical, but has a different form-factor:

[http://www.vandenbrande.com/wp/converting-a-led-cube-into-
an...](http://www.vandenbrande.com/wp/converting-a-led-cube-into-an-extreme-
feedback-device/)

(look at the schematics, and keep in mind that the ULN2003 is not needed for
driving lower-power LEDs, and there are microcontrollers running the VUSB
stack that can use their tunable internal RC oscillator, so the XTAL can go
away, too...)

For the cost, it's difficult to say what's a reasonable amount: I like the
idea to retrofit a general purpose notification LEDs to computers, but have no
immediate personal use. For one-off projects every
"maker"/hacker/tinkerer/electronics-enthusiast I know has maybe 10 unused
boards of various kinds laying around where one could retrofit such an
indicator (in a ugly way, I admit) in 10 minutes.

The only way this could be made accessible to the normal non-savy home-user
would be to have an assortment of ready-made plugins for all major email-
clients, instant-messaging, twitter, skype or long-running PC tasks (has this
upload already finished?)... Maybe Outlook notifications? And creating all
those will be a pain in the...

------
rockmeamedee
Yeah, ok. I completely agree with everybody else. The BOM is basically a LED,
a USB connector, and an ATTiny chip. It looks fantastically useful, but at
their price point, just knowing who easy it is to build makes me feel ripped
off.

------
samstave
Super cool but WAY too expensive for what it is.

That thing should be $5

~~~
astrodust
Something like this shouldn't cost more than $0.50 in parts to make, and it
shouldn't cost more than a computer mouse, which already has not only an LED
but a relatively expensive optical recognition system built in.

~~~
joezydeco
It shouldn't cost more than $0.50 when you're building millions of units
monthly overseas. This group is obviously not there yet. Do you understand the
economies of scale and geography at work here?

~~~
true_religion
When people say X should cost Y, what they really mean is that they only
_value_ X at Y.

You can't get them to increase their valuation by arguing that X can't be made
profitably for price Y.

~~~
joezydeco
Good point.

So why is the perceived value dropped so low? Is it the plethora of teardown
sites that show you "oh, SuperWidget Tab4 only has two chips and an LCD in it.
How expensive can _that_ be"? Or is it the deluge of cheap commodity stuff on
Monoprice and NewEgg that has inoculated us as how this stuff needs multiple
generations of devices to cost-reduce the toys down to a price that is finally
acceptable?

~~~
astrodust
The amount of electronics required to connect a commodity LED to a commodity
USB connector is so minimal. The very same sort of component goes into every
single computer mouse sold today, many of these costing less than $1 to
produce.

$30 is extremely expensive for such a toy. Do they think I'm spending $3,000
to make a pretty blinky-light server rack?

Anyone with a credit card can get a custom _anything_ manufactured if they're
resourceful enough and know how to communicate with their suppliers.

I think the makers of this product should do more research in how to cut
costs, find a part that does 95% of what they need and come up with a way to
bridge that gap in software.

~~~
joezydeco
Okay, and I'm paraphrasing Louis CK here, _you_ go make one if it's so sucky
and imperfect.

Seriously, how hard can it be? Get together a BOM for the $5 in parts, send it
through DigiKey and have it in a couple of days. That's like what, an hour of
time?

Then layout a PCB in your favorite schematic capture and send it off to a
board house, quantity one. Two hours, tops. Never mind you're wasting 75% of
the minimum PCB size.

While DigiKey and PCB Express are cooking, time to write some firmware. If you
chose a nice chip like a Cypress part and have some experience, you could be
done in another 2 hours. You _do_ have a development kit on-hand, right?

Then take all the parts, solder them up in your reflow, burn the code, test,
and assemble. Another hour? Sure. (Hope those boards were right the first time
and didn't come in upside-down) Whoops, don't forget the drivers. Let's do a
quick linux one.

So $20 in parts and board, and six to eight hours of your time. What's your
time worth? $2 an hour? Cool, you're golden.

I tend to charge a bit more for my time, so it puts me in the range where $30
is a great deal. But then again, I'm using the old ScrollLock LED trick as my
message indicator. It's free.

~~~
astrodust
The same group is making a very similar product, minus housing, for a $15 unit
cost. Clearly there's some serious slack in this Kickstarter price.

~~~
joezydeco
Probably not as much as you think. Remember that Kickstarter takes 5% and
Amazon Payments takes 2%. Then the group has to pay federal taxes on _that_ ,
which could be another 20%. Now we're close to $20 remaining for the device.

Oh yeah, and I didn't even get into the costs of tooling and shooting a
plastic housing. That's something a little more time-consuming and pricey than
firing off an order to DigiKey and PCBExp on your credit card.

