We would be willing to pay more. We have a lot of applications for the board.
Same here. A cheap board that is not available is valueless, so a
higher price would be the better solution IMHO.
and then the boards would not be available for it’s intended market.
-david
And then three board arrived me!!!
Yahooo!
Hm...where is the difference to current situation? While reading this
thread from the beginning it seems for me the produced boards got lost
and nobody knows where...
There in people’s products.
Gerald
You get them by ordering them and waiting. That’s how I got mine.
-david
In two months I have been able to get 3. 2 off this list when someone announces when some suppliers have them in stock.
Eric
I’ve just got a product update from Seeed Studio. They sell Chinese clones of BBB. For $69 apiece.
j.
I’m guessing the capes Seeed Studio seels are Chinese clones too? I was thinking of buying their LCD7 cape for their $89 price.
Just to say…
My three boards arrived… after just six week not so orrible as I feared…
Gerald, I have looked into both producing our own boards and System on Module type platforms with the AM3559 chipset. The system on module setups are about $125 in quantity with a 12 week leadtime. To produce our boards it would be a minimum of about $100 pre board to do our own production. The latter does not factor in parts availibility, capital required, etc. Finally, if you just look at single chip costs for the AM2559 you are looking at $34 - http://www.ti.com/product/AM3359! The $45 pricing for the BBB is really unbelieveable and quite possibly unsustainable? I would have no problem paying $75 for this board if we could guarantee availibility and continued support (ie being able to stay in business).
Thank you for confirming what I have been saying all along. We are going to raise the price so we can get more capacity. How much we are not sure as of yet, but it will be as little as possible to allow us to bring more CMs on line and to make sure we can handle future cost issues in components. The DDR and eMMC markets for example are very volatile.
Gerald
On a side note, we've moved to the AM3354 version of the processor for our custom board. We don't use or have a need for the PRU's on the chip and the cost savings is significant. Not that this is a solution for the BBB, but for those companies which are building custom boards, it is an option which can provide an immediate cost reduction (36% in our case) of the processor board alone. We've done all work in house, including assembly, and have complete control over all our costs and scheduling. This has worked out well for us and are committed to the AM335x part for several years (Thanks Gerald!!).
Ross
This is a great point. I am not sure if we want to drop the PRU support, but that is definitely an option I suppose. For those doing your own products and do not need PRU it is a definite option to consider. There is no difference in the board design to support this version of the processor.
Gerald
My team has looked at many alternatives… which do exist and more are likely to show up. Beaglebone Black will be competitive if price is raised to $50. It certainly won’t be at $75 and its demand would plummet at that price. While BBB is a better fit for many applications: if its price goes above $55, we will see a market for add-on products with Raspberry Pi which is available in quantity for $35.
I think Gerlad’s approach is a good one: raise the price, but only enough to get more capacity.
If you drop the PRU, the BeagleBoard becomes close to useless for motion
control, breaking LinuxCNC I'm working on, as well as the software being
done by Elias (for Replicape) and Bas (for the BeBoPr).
The PRU is the single largest differentiating factor of the BeagleBone
over the assorted other ARM boards available. Well, that and the fact
that most of the other boards running Linux support full HD video output
and have working GPU acceleration, while the AM3359 has "modest" video
output capability.
I _really_ hope you keep the PRUs!
Couldn't have said it better. The PRUSS makes the board special, drop the PRUs
and there are many alternatives.
-- Bas
This is a great point. I am not sure if we want to drop the PRU support,
but that is definitely an option I suppose. For those doing your
own products and do not need PRU it is a definite option to consider. There
is no difference in the board design to support this version of the
processor.If you drop the PRU, the BeagleBoard becomes close to useless for motion
control, breaking LinuxCNC I'm working on, as well as the software being
done by Elias (for Replicape) and Bas (for the BeBoPr).The PRU is the single largest differentiating factor of the BeagleBone
over the assorted other ARM boards available.
Well, it's clear that it depends on your final application. For me, as
an example, that factor is the embedded MMC, because we don't need the
SD card, which is a very common error source. I don't need PRU at all
but I want the MMC. I also don't care about the video output because
I'm using at as remote data logger.
Now this version would be less expensive to build for sure.
Gerald