General > General Technical Chat
Asking for advice from the community
nctnico:
IMHO RS232 is still a good interface to use. However, having a USB port with a microcontroller behind it that can run a USB stack, you can create all kinds of devices. One of my sons is into race games. Together with his friends he builds all kinds of gadgets based on an Arduino and some sensors. They use the USB stack to turn the Arduino into -I think- a HID device that can interface with the games through a standarised interface that can input/output game related data. There is whole ecosystem out their for this niche application alone which is basically enabled by having a USB stack on the Arduino.
As for the functions of your Terminus device, there is nothing that can't be done using an Arduino or Rpi which can be bought extremely cheap. I don't believe that the tax on top of an Arduino that is sold for a couple of dollars, will be higher than the price of your board. There are tons of Arduino pattern generator projects out there so it is not like you have to spend a huge amount of time to cobble something together. And don't rule out the vast number of cheap development boards that have Arduino style pin-headers like ST's Nucleo boards which benefit from the large range of shields out there. For a software project I'm working on, my development hardware consists of a bunch of Nucleo boards and shields.
Bottom line: who and where are the customers for the Terminus board? If there are customers, do they actually care about low cost? Maybe you can sell them for more and offer local service. Not all products get sold by competing just on price. You might be able to enter into the educational realm with the book you have written for use with the Terminus but in that case, customers are buying an electronics course; not just a board. You can add a paid service on top to help people out.
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