We are considering making the hardware design documentation available for download, modification, production, etc. How about some feedback please?

R&B :-)

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Great idea !

It's a rare chance to understand a system completely down to the hardware level.

What I think would be great is offer the ability eg. to have a potential buyer somehow suggest features on the board -since it would be open, he could also suggest real changes -in the form of patches perhaps?- and Genesi might provide the ability to manufacture -at a cost of course- the resulting board -which would be available to anyone, since the design would be open. That way, the cost of design would not fall on a single buyer, and everyone -incl. Genesi- could produce the board. So Genesi could provide the board design/manufacture as an open service. Or sth like that, I think you get the idea :)

Something like Open Source only for hardware

Of course all you save by having an open source design, is being able to make the changes yourself.

Design review, prototyping, commissioning an ODM, parts buying and quality control etc. is still very expensive and is beyond most hobbyist's budget. Even a small production run of Efikas could hit 20000 EUR.

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Matt Sealey

20k is not that big an amount and a couple of small companies could eg. work on modifying efika eg. for surveilance systems -remove a few ports, add a tv chip plus a couple of bnc connectors, I actually had a client who was very interesting in such a solution a couple of years ago and would order hundreds of units, but I lost him to some intel/via rival- or a some weird gadget device with strange ports that I can't think of :)

Of course, it's not that easy, I understand that, but perhaps it would pave the way for more ideas even. And still Genesi would benefit as it has the advantage and could offer consulting services on board design/development. Either way, I think it's a good thing.

That's my estimated cost of putting a *couple hundred* Efikas into production assuming there are no part overheads (for instance if you make 100 boards you still need to buy certain parts in qty. >1000). That's based on a BOM I have. I didn't add the cost of the ODM (DCE or some Taiwan company). Without a redesign. No extras.. no design reviews.. no prototyping and test runs.. and remember, lead time on components can be 14-16 weeks, and before you can sell it, it must be CE, FCC and RoHS certified which probably costs as much as the production run I guessed above - and you need to make about 1000 to make it worthwhile certifying a design and getting part economy anyway.
Indeed it shows the competence and efficiency of the design, if only as a marketing exercise :D

The same was true of the Pegasos II; we have a RoHS BOM for it but the economy of reproducing the board with all new parts, it was just not worth it. Nobody would buy a $450 motherboard with those chips anymore. The same is true of the Efika now.. you can't possibly sell it at $99 based on the economies above.

Having the schematic and the Gerber files and pick-and-place data, makes for one hell of a reference guide though!

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Matt Sealey

with these documents we could add more memory to existing efika boards

No you couldn't.

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Matt Sealey