

Ask HN: Would you purchase Arduino-based products? - ricberw

Think electronic locks, drone planes, RFID-based toys, data collectors, and more - but they'd be in a "project box" built with an Arduino, rather than a custom PCB.<p>I'm contemplating starting to sell some of the things I've been tinkering with, and I can imagine that a number of others would be interested in doing the same.<p>Thoughts?
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chas
I would buy it, if it was something that solved a problem in my life, but
Arduinos are _really_ big and expensive ($30) in comparison to the ATmega16U
($3). Including one really changes the nature of the product, especially for
consumer goods.

I would support instead a board with a surface mount atmega and well labeled
pads connected to all of the unused pins, especially the programming pins. If
you wanted to make it really hobbyist friendly, include a micro-usb connector
and put the arduino bootloader on the chip. Doing this would also eliminate
the huge USB-B connector, DC jack, and header pins leaving you with a
completely SMD board. You most likely would be fabricating an additional board
anyways (as an Arduino shield) so there is no extra cost for this approach and
you can shrink your board thickness by ~0.5" (as well as the other dimensions
if you don't need the extra space)

That said, if you were selling project kits to Arduino owners, it would make
sense to stick with that form factor.

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pewpewlasergun
Couldn't you get the same benefit by just using the Arduino bootloader and
including a USB connection? That way things could be reprogrammed in the
arduino environment and you could still use your custom PCB. If nothing else
it would be much cheaper, and you wouldn't be constrained by the arduino's
size/layout.

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ricberw
Agreed, it would be cheaper, and there wouldn't be size/layout constraints -
but I'd rather let people continue to hack with the products, and for that
reason, it seems to make more sense to me to keep the Arduino in the picture.

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eli_awry
I totally would. I just got a MaKay MaKey because it's a cool thing that lets
me tinker around a little and do some fun stuff, without the commitment of
having to get a ton of soldering stuff etc. But I know that I now have an
Arduino which I can reprogram at will.

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ISL
I would purchase a product I needed or wanted, that satisfied the need/want in
a quality way at a reasonable price.

Arduino under the hood would make the product somewhat more attractive; I can
hack it to do whatever I need it to do.

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windexh8er
I would. Especially the thought of certain products being extensible beyond
purchase. I'm in the process of contemplating doing something similar
leveraging platforms like Pi, BBone, and Arduino for different collaborative
components.

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kux
Is this just about being able to reuse components beyond the original use
case, or also being able to split the product and let hackers drop in existing
Arduinos we have laying around?

