Modern Device has increased the price of the RBBB from $12.50 U.S. to $15. I used to buy 5 for $50, now it's 5 for 67.50. They used to be just cheap enough for me to not buy all the components and build Arduinos from scratch, but it looks like I'm in the manufacturing business now.
Update:
Shipping details:
"The total value of products in your cart is $9.95. There is a $5.00 handling fee applied to all orders in which the total value of products is below $30.00.
This fee will be removed if the total value of your products exceeds $30.00, otherwise it will be applied to your order when you checkout. "
WIth 4 & 5, the message above goes away. Minimum shipping is $9.90 for 2 week delivery.
Free expedited shipping (8 days) once get over $75. Solarbotics has a bunch of other neat stuff too.
Typical E-bay, some yahoo will run the price up over the list price before the time runs out.
Price not much different now:
1 Narduino Arduino clone $11.00
Subtotal $11.00
Shipping (First-Class Mail®) & Handling $1.22
Tax $0.00
Order Total $12.22
and no savings on multiple qtys for shipping, $1.22 each one
3 Narduino Arduino clone $33.00
Subtotal $33.00
Shipping (First-Class Mail®) & Handling $3.66
Tax $0.00
Order Total $36.66
vs $9.50 + $2.28 for shipping = $11.78 on e-bay, if that price is still good tomorrow afternoon ...
I just purchased 5 RBBB PCBs. Looks decent. If you get parts separate, you may save some money. One PCB is $2.4 if you buy 5. Then you have to separately buy the ATMEGA328 from sparkfun (hopefully more will become available later this year), then separately buy the other components. I normally buy my parts from dipmicro.com. From what I just tried, all parts together (1 full set for one RBBB), I spent $2.15 at dipmicro.com
So:
RBBB PCB $2.4 (buy 5)
ATMEGA328 $4.3 (out of stock) or $5.5 with bootloader (I bought 10 w/o bootloader and bootloaded them within 20 minutes)
Other parts $2.15
Total: $8.85
You're happy now?
The Ardweeny looks nice for breadboarding, but the RBBB has that power supply (option) that's very handy for a lot of projects.
Yeah, it sucks that the price went up, but it's probably the government's fault: Paul's profit margins are so thin that the Labor Department probably nailed him for paying himself less than minimum wage ]
One idea I had recently was to make a bare bones Pro Mini style board. Since 328's are in short supply at the moment and SM 168's are about £1.80, I was thinking MCU, crystal, reset button and a few caps, same footprint as Mini Pro but with ADC6 and ADC7 brought out as well. No regulator for minimum cost. Probably could be made for £5 ($8) or so I guess (more for a 328). Plausible??
So something like this but with the quad flatpack or the leadless part instead?
I got all the traces & Vcc on the top layer here, the bottom is all ground plane.
I see thousands of DIP 168 parts available at Digikey.com. Where are you that you can't get them?
No DIP 328s tho. Will have a shot at laying one of those out ... give the leadless part shot, see if can't fit in the DIP 3/10 wide footprint ...
We have put prices back to almost where they were. We needed to get a little price rise to accommodate chip price rises and other cost increases for our business. (We have a new space in an art space near downtown Providence - google the Steelyard, Providence).
We were sort of shocked (and very heartened) at how much people care about the RBBB. Let me say that we're very glad to see all the Arduino clones and that they all have the copulative effect of enforcing commodity pricing. I believe this is a good thing in general for the Freeduino / Arduino community.
The recent ATmega supply-chain nonsense also has us looking at a surface mount version to keep costs down.
Not called that in Massachussetts
The highway number is used in multiple places.
If you look at the east coast, I-95 goes from Woodstock, CA thru Maine all way Florida, with I-195, 295, 395, 495, (didn't see 595 while browsing) 695, 795 repeated in different places as it goes around cities & stuff.
Looks like a quirk, am sure there is an explanation behind it.
All I know about the interstate numbering system is ones ending in odd numbers run nominally north and south and even ones run east and west. Also many state highways can have several names if they connect to other highways that then share a segment. Classic case the Golden Gate bridge is both correctly named highway 101 and highway 1.
Providence, RI? Can I stop in & say Hi sometime? I'm off I-495 in MA, not far away.
Sure we love to talk to customers and don't mind doing retail (so far anyway) - but you should call first to make sure someone will be here. We both teach and are out and about a bit.
retrolefty:
All I know about the interstate numbering system is ones ending in odd numbers run nominally north and south and even ones run east and west. Also many state highways can have several names if they connect to other highways that then share a segment. Classic case the Golden Gate bridge is both correctly named highway 101 and highway 1.
I watched a history program about US highways. I think tens are east-west, while fives are north-south. Now I remember there's probably an I-295 in NYC. I spent some time on the Long Island. The I-495 has 55 speed limit but everybody was going at 75-85. Back where I live they do 60-65 on 55 highways.
BTW, digikey in not far from my place, only about 4 hours drive!
The 3-digit Interstates are "loop" and "branch" routes that encircle big cities (like I-465 around Indianapolis), or bypass them to interconnect inter-city freeways (like the x80 series in the SF Bay Area).
The numbers are formed by prefixing a digit to the number of the main Interstate route they connect to.
The GG bridge carries both state route 1 and US route 101.
And "route" is an important word: in many cases (especially non-freeway ones), a state/federal "route" can be just a designation for a "logical" path over a series of local highways, and even city streets. I remember being in a small town in Maine where there were no freeways, and driving down a street with a signpost the size of a medium tree showing it was designated state routes 117 North, 92 South, 84 and 77 East, and US route 52 East (I'm sure those numbers are all wrong, but you get the idea).