Very pretty. When will these be for sale?
Phil
It is available for pre-order. Order now and get 10% off; boards will ship on the 16th of June.
www.gravitech.us
I'm guessing MSRP is $49.99?
Those look awesome, but why are they $50? What's so expensive on the board? If they were $25 I would get half a dozen... I guess the BBB will have to do for now...
Just a bunch of small things that build up, especially to make the board so small. It has components on both sides, which adds to assembly costs, it has a four layer PCB which costs more, etc. We're hoping the prices will come down if we can reduce the costs in future production runs.
I haven't got that pages up yet but I'm having a Nano sale.
5 RBBB kits for the price of one Nano. (The price goes up when the Nano does too).
3 Assembled RBBB's for the price of one Nano.
2 Assembled RBBB's and one cable for the price of a Nano.
And I'm working on a hack to put a gratuitous surface mount blue LED on the bottom of the board. An indispensable feature, no? I know I have a couple dozen beautiful aqua LED's left over from a project, for the first twenty customers.
Look for the pages soon at moderndevice.com
Paulb! Where do I sign? The aqua LED is the clincher 
Har har...
But seriously, where do I sign?
Here it is:
http://moderndevice.com/RBBB_revB.shtml
Spread the word, hope I'm not creating a monster.
Paul
I'm trying to decide whether it means "something is wrong" when adding USB multiplies the price of the thing by five.
In retrospect, I think probably NOT. The parts cost for USB is close to 2x that of a non-USB version (ie USB chip costs the same as as the ATmega chip, the connector is relatively expensive, and there are support components comparable to the rest of arduino), and then there is another factor of 2.5x that you save by having to build it yourself (and it's sort of nice to see that sort of benefit for "sweat equity.")
OTOH, it's a bit sad that newer version arduino board prices are creeping upward with increasing complexity, rather than downward with volume...
Paulb, were you serious about the gratuitous LED addition? If so, did my order make it in the first 20?
I'm trying to decide whether it means "something is wrong" when adding USB multiplies the price of the thing by five.
its a little more complex than that. first off its a double-sided pre-assembled PCB. that adds quite a bit of cost. secondly, its a 4-layer board, which is more expensive to fab & test than a 2-layer. the nano (like the lilypad) is an Arduino, and so they both have to pay a licensing fee (5%-10%). and lastly, paul doesn't factor in a retailers margin. when you consider -all- of the costs, it is clear how the price ends up at $50!
the nano is good design.
Sure its an interesting design but I dont know if its a good design. One of the attractive things about the Arduino concept is that it made embedded electronics democratically accessible by ease of design, ease of interface (ie usb and mac compatibility), and affordability.
How many times has there been a comparison to the Basic Stamp that IIRC is priced at $50 and has always been railed for being too expensive. I ultimately feel that cramming the full functionality of the arduino into a longer-than-Stamp-sized form factor at the trade off of having to have dual-side components and 4 -layer pcb resulting in a costly board with ground effects is not a very good tradeoff and might be heading in the wrong direction.
I assume the forthcoming second big announcement the Arduino team will be making is that of a 128 or similarly based arduino and Im sure that will be placed in a similar price point. Im just saying that it should be possible to gain almost full diecimila functionality in a small form factor fully assembled for $30 or under and to do it while embracing the tenants of a community driven open source hardware initiative. Whew.
Cheers,
Brian
[Edit: I realize this may be taken as a rant but please dont read into it in that way.]
[Edit: I realize this may be taken as a rant but please dont read into it in that way.]
I could rant a bit too, but as I see it there's not much point. I've come to accept the reality that the official Arduino hardware designs are developed in a closed way- i.e. active community participation isn't a part of it. I don't think this is going to change anytime soon.
Now on the other hand, We have lots of options for making our own designs, whether it's Freeduino, iDuino, Boarduino...
This seems to be the state of things, and actually it is not such a bad state to be in. If Gravitech wants to sell their (excellent) 4-layer Nano design for $50, why not? At the same time, others can sell an almost identical two-layer design for $25 or $30.
D
Considering you have basically all of the Diecimila's components on a four layer board with double-layered assembly, I can see there's a noticeable cost increase.
Assuming parts costs are the same (which based on the volume of Diecimilas compared to Nanos, I think it's safe to say they aren't). You've basically doubled the PCB and assembly cost (two runs through the pick-n-place, two runs through the oven).
If Gravitech wants to sell their (excellent) 4-layer Nano design for $50, why not? At the same time, others can sell an almost identical two-layer design for $25 or $30.
I think this is exactly the right way to look at things, there are a whole host of options, depending on what you want to buy.
Gravitech sells a pre-assembled, stamp-sized, official, Arduino for $50, that's one option and a pretty good option at that. Other than (possibly) price, it's a win on all aspects.
Ladyada sells Boarduino USBs for $25, they're bigger, kitted, and unofficial.
I sell iDuinos for $18, they're bigger, kitted, unofficial, and not listed on the Arduino.cc 'Hardware' page.
Paul sells RBBBs for $11, they don't contain USB, they're kitted, and unofficial.
There was a post recently about a clone stamp sized board with onboard USB.
How many times has there been a comparison to the Basic Stamp that IIRC is priced at $50 and has always been railed for being too expensive.
And now, you can actually make the comparison properly. I don't see anyone rushing to replace the Diecimila with the Nano as the 'lead Arduino' board. If anything, this is a replacement for the Mini, in which case it's far more of an upgrade than a dramatic change.
Depending on what you want, you do have a range of options. The Nano is an excellent option if you need/want any of it's aspects and I think once you start imagining they're costs, you can see how $50 is a reasonable price point.
the nano is good design.
There are lots of ways to regard "good design". Let's just be as simple as possible and regard two common ways of evaluating good design.
- Works well for intended function
- Looks good
The two are often more intertwined than this simple formula, but you get the idea. Here's my current favorite example of dysfunctional design
2008 Lexus LS 600h L Hybrid
Engine / Horsepower 5L V8 438 hp
Fuel Economy 22 / 24
Price $104,000
Other examples – Apple computer one button mouse, apple computer round mouse, Apple computer G3-4 case. Most small cell phones.
It turns out to be impossible to evaluate a design without a design brief. The Arduino team and I probably don't disagree too much on what constitutes good design. We probably disagree more on the design brief (design specs).
I think the Freeduino should be a commodity design, with utility and function as the foremost qualitites. The real utility in a Freeduino is in the Atmega chip, which costs $2.30 or so in quantity. There are no designer Atmega chips with mother of pearl tops, or blue blinking LED's because it is a commodity. It works superbly, virtually without fail, and anyone in the world can buy it for around $2.30.
My idea is that the microcontroller board should just be a commodity representation of the Atmega chip. Works flawlessly, cheap as hell. With engineering and art of course, it's never that easy and there are always lots of trade offs.
The Arduino team seems to want to make brand name products. I mostly like their engineering, although the much-noticed pin 7-8 gap jumps out. I even like and use some Apple products. This doesn't mean I like the fetishized and aggressive industrial design so typical of Apple products. The term designer water is a pejorative for good reason. Some things are just more honest (and better designed) as commodities.
I would argue that Brian's design is better than the Nano because it's easier to produce, as small, and avoids needless complexity such as 4-layer boards (not to mention LED's you know where). Then again he doesn't have all the functionality in there such as a voltage regulator. Even if his board was 20% bigger it would be a more useful board to most people because it costs $30 instead of $50.
For a small subset of Freeduino applications, the Nano might be more appropriate. It looks sexy. So does the Lexus – to someone. Call me puritanical.
As to Lady Ada's comments about my products not having a retail margin built in, of course she is correct. In reality my business model is not sustainable and eventually (probably sooner) I'll have to raise prices and concentrate on other things, which have more profit in them. Although the team may not appreciate it, the real purpose of my commodity Freeduino's, is the promotion of the greater Freeduino project.
Paul Badger
Footnote: Freeduino is used here as the set of all Arduino and Arduino-compatible hardware.
I could rant a bit too, but as I see it there's not much point. I've come to accept the reality that the official Arduino hardware designs are developed in a closed way- i.e. active community participation isn't a part of it. I don't think this is going to change anytime soon.
Yeah, it's just a pity that it seems to give the project a "begrudgingly open source" feel to it.
But, hey, at least now as a community we now know to expect it. The official Arduino team has the right to develop their product as they see fit. And we're allowed to like the product but not necessarily the manner in which it's developed. 
Personally, I think the Arduino eco-system would grow more with a more open approach. [Snip extended commentary.]
--Phil.
Those look awesome, but why are they $50? What's so expensive on the board? If they were $25 I would get half a dozen... I guess the BBB will have to do for now...
I went to the webpage and looked down at the other items offered ....
"Mini I2C Real Time Clock (RTC)" is list priced at $18.99. It is the ETT DS1307 Mini-Board which can be bought multiple places for $6.90 to $10.00" I sell it here at Wulfden for $8.00:
http://www.wulfden.org/DataLogger/index.shtml
More power to you if you can get people to pay that much ... but still .....
Cheers ... BBR
I went to the webpage and looked down at the other items offered ....
"Mini I2C Real Time Clock (RTC)" is list priced at $18.99. It is the ETT DS1307 Mini-Board ...
Please beware of the discrepancy per brianbr on this post. The “Mini I2C Real Time Clock (RTC)” we are selling is base on Philips (NXP) PCF8583 NOT DS1307 as Wulfden is selling. The reason why we must response to this post, we don't want people to misuse our English manual on brianbr's board (it would help if his board comes with English manual).
Note: We're the authorize distributor for ETT so every board from us come with manufacture warrantee and support.
ok everyone take a deep breath.... breath out and hold it out.
Feel the good vibes.
D