Hi all & greetings from Finland where the snow is finally gone and Miss Spring is in town
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This is my first post to the forum so i am a noob here, although not otherwise.
The topic really says it, but to fill in some details: I am in the process of designing a small instrumentation system mostly for CNC related stuff, based on Atmel processors and I2C bus. The idea is to distribute the system into measuring / data acquisition units, data processing units and display units. One unit may freely have multiple roles to minimize system cost. The idea is to create units as needed but using a common framework so existing units can be easily mixed and matched. Each individual unit is supposed to be small and low cost.
This brings me to the point: Digikey and Mouser offer heaps of easily applied buck ICs that only need the inductor and a few random components to create a working PSU. This would be ideal only the price in small quantities is, well, disappointing. Paying 4 to 9 $ or € per chip is not in line with the rest of the stuff. A run of the mill ATMega328 for example goes for $ 3 and change. The target is to keep a typical unit definitely below 20 € (we are not competing with the Chinese here) but these chip prices already eat a quarter of that or worse.
So, anyone been in the same situation came up with a brilliant solution?