Cost of an Arduino Board for a poor student

Arduino Boards have the spirit of cheap cost of development.

But finally some hardware has to be bought.

A poor student (as ME) will save money if he can build and mount the board, instead of buying it finished.

As the Arduino Serial Single Sided seems to be the more close board for this purpose:

Any one who has build one by himself :slight_smile: , can give me an aproach of how much did it cost to him ?

Dollars or Euro will be easily undestood in the answer.

I haven't built the Arduino Single-Sided Serial board, but if you're buying all the parts new, you'd be looking at at least $10 plus shipping depending on where you shop, not counting the cost of the actual board.

Keep in mind you can get serial arduino boards fairly cheaply, it's the USB version that hikes up the price quite a bit.

A serial kit is $17 here

And that version uses a MAX232 so it should be more reliable than the single-sided board.

To some extent, how cheap you can build an arduino depends on what sort of "stuff" you already have. For instance, the low cost of a single-sided serial arduino assumes that you already have the materials on hand for making PCBs yourself. If you have to go out and buy blank copper clad, etchant, drills, and so on, you'd probably get away for less buying one of the complete kits. Or you can build an arduino on a protoboard with little more than a $4 chip, but you have to have the protoboard already... The prices are low enough, even for fully assembled official arduninos, that postage costs will be a significant factor...

Thanks to both.

Undoubdtedly I think 17 dollar is a very attractive price.

If the person has almost null equipment (except a solder) , he probably will save money buying the kit, instead of buying all the neccessary equipment to make it.

I recognize I should have said a poor "electronics" student.

So let us suppose that the poor guy lives close to a Radio Shack, and has at home the basic equipment, I mean:

  • He has the acid.
  • He uses a cheap 2U saving lamp with glass reflector to insolate.
  • He uses NaOH and hot water to eliminate the insolated paint.
  • He has the adequate drill and bit to make the holes.
  • He can buy a virgin single side 6*8 inch board ready to insolate at a price of 6$ at Radio Shack.

If he did not break :frowning: any bit drilling , and thinking only in the cost of the piece he would cut from the big virgin board:

How much would it cost to him to make 1 Arduino Serial Board ?

Real world, real question. ::slight_smile:

TenacityFran

The most important question is : where in the world are you?

massimo

Admittedly you put a different value on your time as a "poor student", but you're looking at paying $6 for the 6x8" board and you can buy premade arduino boards alone in the $6 range. I didn't realize you were factoring fabbing the board so strongly in your question. In my experience on DIY, it always costs much more than I estimate. I'm not sure what you mean by"insolate" or "insolated paint". Are you talking about photofabrication or a toner transfer method?

If cost is a primary concern, it makes no sense to me to fab a board, either buy a blank PCB or take Bill's advice and use breadboard or perfboard, both options will be cheaper in the long run.

Unless you have an Atmel programmer, you won't be able to save the shipping because you'll need to order an ATmega168 with the Arduino bootloader pre-programmed. Besides that, last time I checked a Radio Shack, their parts selection was pathetic not to mention overpriced. I doubt you'll be able to find the headers and capacitors there much-less something so esotaric as a 28-pin socket and 16MHz crystal ;). And if you could, it would cost you more than an official Diecimila to buy the parts there.

Huh. I suppose it does raise the interesting question of just who the single-sided serial arduino designs are aimed at in the first place. I guess that part of the issue is that the official channels do not offer kits or bare PCBs; the vendors that DO have such things fill an important niche in keeping the entry level price lower...

I designed and made my own SSSA, but I bought a "bare bones board" from MDC as my first arduino experience; For one thing, I wasn't confident enough in my design abilities to be sure my board would work, and I really hate debugging situations where there are several major sections that could be broken...

In a way, I think it's a nice ecology: we (Arduino) provide a central source for open-source hardware designs and fully assembled boards, with a distributed network of designers and manufacturers of kits. The kits seem harder to centralize, as they depend heavily on local availability and prices of parts.

TenacityFran,

If you have all the basic equipment you listed, and the soldering iron too, all you have to do to know the exact value is to make a quotation, based on the part list. This will bring you the exact value, for the place you live in.
Here in São Paulo, Brazil, from U$12.00 to U$18.00 (depending on store) you can buy the components.

I think the SSSA is nice for someone who already has a working Arduino (or clone), and wants the fun of building their own from scratch.

My first Arduino was the Diecimila and then I got an iDuino. Since then I've built Arduino-based projects around the MCU and core parts, but nothing you'd call an Arduino.

In getting started with a new platform, I certainly don't want to have to try and figure out if I've got a problem with the software, firmware, bootloader or any of the things that can go wrong with the PCB from holes in the trace to bad solder joints. It's just too many points of failure and too many things to learn all at once. It could turn into a debugging nightmare if it doesn't work the first time.

Adilson, even in that price range, add the PCB materials and you're in the range of a freeduino serial kit from a number of vendors, which is what I was getting at.

Oracle,
for someone that can easily buy on internet, your price is correct, and I agree that it can be more interesting, considering only the money, to buy a kit instead of make yourself a board.

But for us, in Brazil (and in other "far" places in the world) the kits we can buy on internet are more expensives, with high import tax. There are industries here that makes arduino clones and freeduinos, and they sell them for almost U$50.00. :o
So, in places far from "first world", or for people that can't buy easily using the internet (people that don't have an international credit card) to make a handmade SSS can be a reasonable alternative to have an Arduino, considering not only the money.
There are many diferent "real worlds" in our planet. :wink:

who are the single-sided serial arduino designs aimed at?

... other "far" places in the world

Ah! Thanks. I knew the homebrew versions had to make more sense than I was seeing at the moment I sent that original post. We Americans have a bad habit of forgetting to remember how different things are in other parts of the world. An area with an established DIY infrastructure and local parts, but obnoxious obstacles to importing kits and finished electronics has a need for something like the SSSA that goes well beyond the "wealth" of the final user...

(I recall during the cisco/Brazil incident last year being rather shocked by the magnitude of the alleged "tax evasion." Reports were something like "800 million in unpaid taxes on 500 million worth of equipment. Sounds like about 160% in taxes. Ouch!)

All posts were helpfull.

Oracle, I think the goal of my cheap method for home making a PCB is that full equipment cost can be under 20$, and the results got are good, expecially if you tend to work only with DIP ics , avoiding SMDs.

Answering you , the virgin PCB I use is this:

http://www.bungard.de/content/view/25/1/lang,english/

The Cu comes fully covered by a thin layer of a special paint that a strong light as sun light makes removable (insolation). So it also comes with the blue-black plastic that you can see rolled in the picture, to protect the paint till the moment you make your circuit PCB.

A 86 inch (150200mm) costs me about 6 dollar.

From this size, you can cut up to 4 pieces of Arduino Serial Single Sided (S3v3) :


This makes 6/4 = 1.5 dollar per board, if you can do it at home. Belive me that chemicals cost would be under 0.25 dollar.

Buying the rest of the S3v3 electronic parts for a price close to 5 dollar, a poor electronic student could make fully by himself a complete Arduino S3v3 at a price close to 7 dollar.

Some times, creative poor people also make good things.

But warning, if he breaks just 1 bit drilling, 2 dollars would fly away.

I've used that kind of PCB in the past, I know it as the photoresist method. $6 is an excellent price for an 8x6 board, it would cost me closer to $20 around here for a 6x9 board. It does work quite well, but I've never had perfect results, I always get perforated errors and fine traces can disappear, which can make debugging a huge headache.

I'm not sure you how you get $5 price tag for the rest of the parts though. The ATmega168 chip alone is around $4 (and more if you need it preprogrammed).

I have to agree with Bill though about taking a North American centric view to a fault. It certainly does make sense in that situation, and for what it's worth, I'd rather have better access to local parts instead of internet ordering everything. What's available around here is a bad joke, and since I'm in Canada, not the US, shipping is usually pretty high too.

Answering more questions I live in Spain, but I expecially admire USA because undoubdtedly it is the land of the oportunities.

I liked the words of the Brazilian member, because my original post was also thinking in Countries with few electronic resources.

My method to make PCBs can be good for those countries because rustic devices as an electric iron for clothing, window glasses, milk tetrabriks, pvc pipes, ... are used, saving the purchase of expensive comercial devices as light insolators, machines for acid or CNC PCB mills.

Chemicals are also easy to find:

  • Acid -> 16% HCL in water. (I think the popular home cleaner "agua fuerte" is very similar)
  • H202 (in Spanish "agua oxigenada") -> added to acid to make faster reaction burning the Cu of the PCB (I think can be easily found in any pharmacy)
  • NaOH -> 14 gram per water litre -> to remove (after insolation) the paint of the zones of the PCB where Cu should be finally removed. Ultracheap chemical that can be also buyed as a cleaning product "sosa caustica".
    NO MORE CHEMICALS. Easily found even in low development countries.

Possibly the Bungard virgin board would be difficult to find there but I have readed (not tested) an alternative solution where ONLY simple virgin PCB with just fiberglass and cooper can be used. The special light paint should be sprayed in dark room by the user from a spray tin called POSITIV-20 of the firm Kontak-Chemie.

If I learn to "really" insert images in this posts, I could try to show a step by step method to make an Arduino S3v3 with my rustic way, and ovbiously if you are interested.

And Oracle, I might have been too optimist in the overall S3v3 parts price, but remember, the S3v3 USES the ATMEGA8, NOT THE ATMEGA16.

The ATMega8 is a ultrapowerfull chip. Forgetting usefull pins, it is more powerfull than a PIC16F877 (the Rolls Royce of the 16 PICS), and I personally think the ATMega8 is even better than a PIC18F452.

The ATMega16 is ovbiouly more powerfull, but also more expensive. Remember this post sequence is thought for POOR people.

I think 5 ATMega8 can be received at home for just 9 dollar through eBay -> 9/5=1.8 dollar. You have still 3.2 dollar for the rest of the S3v3.

And finally Mr Adilson Akashi, as I have not found any thread close to "Buy through eBay" in the forum I will start a new one with this title, where I will explain to users from "far" countries, how to buy by internet without the international credit card you mention.

You do have to watch out for that "I can build N boards for only $X each" vs "I have to spend $(N*X) to get close to that first board. You can etch a board with $.25 worth of HCl/H2O2 (and the etchant is reusable!), but there isn't any place where you can but JUST $0.25 worth of etchant!

Continuing to answer my own question, I guess that means that yet another place where DIY-boards make sense: groups, clubs, small classes, and such. (Don't knock your high school; talk to the right people (and get your parents to talk to the right people), and a whole lot equipment and materials may become available for your use.)

All opinions are welcome, but not neccessarily shared.

In my life I should have bought 15, 20 ? pocket lanterns. All were easy, comfortable to buy, stetically nice. But all ended in the rubbish truck.

After learning electronics concepts, and DIY board making I built a DIY lantern with just 1 AA cell and 3 leds of 5 mm. 2 years of perfect, frecuent use and still works as first day. And if it stopped working would be easily repaired.

Sometimes it is true the sentence, "if you want it works, do it yourself".

I think that for a true electronic hobbist, poor or rich, it will be better to have 4 or 5 Arduino S3v3 boards ready to work for 4 or 5 independent projects , that to have just 1 perfect Arduino BlueTooth BT , ready for ANY project, but only 1 project at a time. EXPECIALLY if the 4 or 5 boards were made by himself at a lower price than just 1 BT.

And what happens if in the real world project practice the BT owner drops by accident a resistor contacting any smd device and damaging it in the BT board. Would he try to repair his BT ? Another item for the rubbish truck.

If the previous accident took place in 1 of the 4 or 5 DIY boards, probably only the Mega8 would have been ruined, and could be extracted and replaced in less than 1 minute. If he had not the chip to replace, still 3 or 4 boards would be perfectly working.

May be this concepts are wrong, but the rubbish truck is still waiting for my DIY lantern.

I don't think we're disagreeing... (This is what i've heard of as "violent agreement"!) But if you've only got $20, it's not helpful that you can buy the pieces for 4 arduinos for $40.

Also, note that any arduino that can use an Atmega8 can also use an ATmega168; they're physically identical, and only need slightly different bootloaders and software. In the US, the price difference between 8 and 168 is about $0.50 from reputable dealers (digikey), so the 8 is hardly mentioned any more, but as has been pointed out, your circumstances may be different.

I was going to make the comment on the difference between the 8 and 168. The only reason I can see to use the 8 is if you have some laying around or you can't get the 168 as easily where you're located.

As far as the comment about 4-5 boards to work on 4-5 projects. The Arduino is a development tool. I bought a bunch of ATmega168 chips a while back. I use the Arduino to develop my project and if I want a permanent installation, I use the chip itself integrated into my project. It's smaller, neater, and by far the cheapest solution.

I have only ever once used an Arduino board in a permanent installation and that's because I wanted the USB support.

In the case of the SSSA board, you don't really have any interfacing support, not even a max232, so you don't even have that reason to use the board.

I'm not sure where you're going with pocket lanterns. I always carry a couple of "almost free" ones that that just the battery, one LED, and a bit of plastic. I've also spent around $100 on a single pocket flashlight (see "The Orb"). Each has their purpose. The Arduino BT is certainly very useful, but I wouldn't buy one to built a USB project.

As Bill says, I don't see us as really disagreeing, just getting stuck on points that don't even really matter.

Dear westfw, from your comments I have guessed you are a good person, one of those who care for each others, and I have taken top atention to them.

Dear Oracle, I have tried to show you how easily is to avoid fine traces with my rustic PCB method, making board debugging AND FINAL BOARD VERIFIYING not a headache, but A PLEASSURE.

To show this to you or other users, a image is better than 1000 words. I have to say that I like more the stetic of my rustic boards at the choper side than at the components side.

The problem is that maybe because I am novice, maybe because I have not enough rights in this forum, but INSERT IMAGE has been imposible for me.

I will try to get an account in http://www.4shared.com IN ORDER TO show you the image of one of my rustic boards, UNLESS WITH A PUBLIC LINK TO IT.

Nothing against the Mega16, but the 8K of a Mega8 are much much program space, expecially for some users coming from a Pic12C508 or 509.

Another advantage of using all comments in this thread is that a poor user that can make at home a S3v3, ALSO could make at home almost at the same price, a more reliable version with a MAX232, or ST232. My idea is designing the traces of this last solution with my rustic method, and show here the results to hear your opinions.

But first I will try to get the file share account.

Said and done. Here is a picture of how well 4 future S3v3 fit inside a virgin Bungard Board of 150*200 mm:

http://www.4shared.com/file/64609563/11337a1/Serial_in_Virgin.html

Slow method, rustic method , but better than nothing. Give me a couple of days and I will give a similar link to a real choper side of one of my rustic DIY boards.