Indiegogo: helix-4: The FPGA Module For Everyone! What do people think.

[wilfred]

I was trawling through Indiegogo today.

[Bored@Work]

Was already discussed here previously. In fact, the campaign owner was spamming it here. It uses Arduino-shit and is advertised by spam. What more reasons do you need to not buy it?

[Corporate666]

I think that nobody should ever contribute money to ANY flexible funding campaign, because there is always a go/no-go level for a project.

Let's say a campaign seeking $100,000 got $500 worth of funding.  Is the creator going to deliver?  Almost certainly not.  And definitely not if they have to put in much work to make the project happen. 

What if they get $99k out of $100k?  Sure, they might well deliver.  But somewhere in the middle is a threshold at which they just won't be able to (or won't care to) deliver.  And since that threshold exists, why would they do a flex funding campaign in the first place? 

[MacAttak]

I strongly dislike the Flex Funding model too (this has been beaten to death).

Brent appears to have heard this feedback loud and clear, and the updated video pitch on the campaign reflects that. He has also added wording to the campaign text to address the concerns:

What if you don't reach your funding goal?

You will still get your product, we want you to take our word for it.

A lot of people have contacted us to say they worried that we are running a 'flexible funding' project. Flexi-funding was clearly a mistake, but it's too late for us to change to 'fixed funding'. If you just don't trust Flexi, you can make a pre-order here for modules, and here for Dev Boards.

Thin Layer is an PL company incorporated in Australia, and you are be protected by statutory consumer protections.

And also:

A lot of people are spooked by Flexi Funding, owing to fraud committed through this method. We chose Flexi because we are prepared to work with what ever the community will give us. We have the ability to make 100pcs, but would prefer a run > 1000 module pcs.

In response we’ve asked IGG to change us to Fixed Funding, but this is not allowed once donations have been made. Because we’ve spent a LOT of effort promoting this campaign, we don’t want to cancel it and start again.

What we will do is take the risk, and guarantee your product, at the price you commit to, and have updated the campaign information accordingly.

And to show that the products are already designed and in manufacture, we’re going to ship some early, before the end of the campaign.

To address the question actually asked by the OP:

There are a very large number of purpose-built Arduino shields. All kinds of things from sensors to LCD panels to motor drivers to networking and storage (plus many others). The benefit is that if you want to test out a concept (i.e. you want to "prototype" an idea), you can simply plug in the appropriate shield(s) to the standard headers and start communicating with them immediately. No need to spin up a custom PCB or wire up a ton of stuff to a breadboard. This can let you make certain projects (or parts of certain projects) far more quickly than otherwise possible - and once you are done, then you can just unplug the shields and easily re-use them again later for other projects.

Those shields are typically somewhat overpriced for the functionality, but in this case you are paying for the convenience and (hopefully) previously tested design.

But even ignoring the Arduino shield pinout compatibility of the dev boards, $41 and $59 are fairly competitive prices for a 10kLE and 22kLE FPGA board. Especially one that is designed for easy soldering directly into a custom PCB.