Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Out of ideas
EEVblog:
--- Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on April 07, 2019, 05:20:49 am ---You have outlined the essential barrier to the kit business. It simply does not make economic sense to have low experience hobby people clumsily soldering components when you now can have small volume factory made runs of any electronic module. More over those modules can be fully tested and programmed much more efficiently at the assembly time than they can in anyone's home lab. Dave Jones has some experience here and has come to the same conclusion even though people keep on asking him to get back into kit making.
--- End quote ---
Yep, kits are a mugs game, been there, done that. You'll constantly inundated with queries from clueless people, it will eat your life away.
If only work for the like of Adafruit that have a massive staff and a online community that can take care of that support stuff for you.
JustClaire:
--- Quote from: EEVblog on April 07, 2019, 09:31:08 am ---
--- Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on April 07, 2019, 05:20:49 am ---You have outlined the essential barrier to the kit business. It simply does not make economic sense to have low experience hobby people clumsily soldering components when you now can have small volume factory made runs of any electronic module. More over those modules can be fully tested and programmed much more efficiently at the assembly time than they can in anyone's home lab. Dave Jones has some experience here and has come to the same conclusion even though people keep on asking him to get back into kit making.
--- End quote ---
Yep, kits are a mugs game, been there, done that. You'll constantly inundated with queries from clueless people, it will eat your life away.
If only work for the like of Adafruit that have a massive staff and a online community that can take care of that support stuff for you.
--- End quote ---
I see, thanks anyway! :D
tkamiya:
That aren't too many things solution doesn't already exist, either a completed commercial option or another kit.
When I built kits, FUN factor is my motivation. I ignore economic sense. Heathkit went under many years ago. What's avilable today as a kit is often a combination of existing functionality or something but a different approach.
Like right now, I'd love to have a combination buffer board / distribution board that does both 10MHz clock and 1 pps buffer that are expandable. Say if I buy a kit from you, I will get a two channel in and 2 channel out of both. I want to be able to go up to 4 channels each. By populating more, I get more channels.
If you can make a kit like that, I'll buy a few from you. I do not know if there is a general interest.
CatalinaWOW:
If a kit is going to have any kind of a chance it is going to have to go to a market that wants to build things electronic related. For electronics kits that means folks like those on this forum. And as pointed out testing and building just doesn't make economic sense when it competes with a Chinese factory. So it has to have other things going for it. One example is something that has such a small market that the factories don't get involved. Or things that with large amounts of tweaking and adjustment can provide better performance than the mass produced stuff.
So perhaps the kit would be a simple receiver front end with the primary "kit" element being selection of the best low noise component out of a large number of samples in the kit, including finding the low noise operating point in terms of bias etc. The kit would include components to build the evaluation rig and instructions on how to do the selection.
I think if you look at it this way you can find a number of small markets for kits. But to avoid the problems Dave mentioned you might have to devise some sort of quiz to evaluate whether someone would be allowed to buy your quiz. This elitism element might be just the ticket to get your sales up a bit higher while keeping your support costs lower. You can even sell T-shirts: I'm Smart Enough to Build a JustClaire Kit.
james_s:
Seems better to just say you are one person and cannot offer individual support for your kits then direct people to a forum such as this one. If I was presented with a quiz I'd just leave and look elsewhere, I refuse to play games like that. If it said there's no support available you're on your own to build this then no problem.
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