Connecting UART0 RTS and CTS to J1 for new BBB

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21

There is no resentment. We just don’t support commercial users of the boards with the BeagleBoard LOGO on it as we have stated.

I don’t know if the boards I would buy from CircuitCo will have the BeagleBoard logo or not. I assume not, but it hasn’t been discussed yet.

Will you support commercial use of the same board without the logo? :slight_smile:

Everything is there for you to build it yourself. Go for it. No strings attached.

Not quite everything is there. The key missing piece is the production volume which is the one of the principal determining factors in the cost. You, and others, are being disingenuous when you say “go build your own”. You know that will not be economically viable for most users, commercial or otherwise. The BBB is what it is because of the production volume. Without that it is nothing more than another nice design.

Dennis Cote

22

Not quite everything is there. The key missing piece is the production
volume which is the one of the principal determining factors in the cost.
You, and others, are being disingenuous when you say "go build your own".
You know that will not be economically viable for most users, commercial or
otherwise. The BBB is what it is because of the production volume. Without
that it is nothing more than another nice design.

Just a thought: Throw your updated design on Kickstarter?

23

If you get boards from anyone without the logo, they are in fact at that point your board. So you can do whatever you like. Make whatever changes you want. And, you can build the board as long as you want.

Once we change a board, we no longer make the old revision. If I start making changes for commercial users, then I am faced with the task of making sure none of the other commercial users are upset with these changes,I end up being a free product engineering department for all these commercial users. I choose not to go down that path. I can’t win no matter what I do.

In addition, the change you want means I have to add a bigger buffer. More cost. PCB layout charges. New stencils.Change the P&P program. Scrap the current buffer and order new buffers and try to get them in here fast enough not to shutdown my production line. Multiply this by say 500 commercial users.

Gerald

24

If you get boards from anyone without the logo, they are in fact at that point your board. So you can do whatever you like. Make whatever changes you want. And, you can build the board as long as you want.

I am aware of the many benefits of making our own board, as well as the associated costs.

I was actually asking a facetious question about support for a board without the logo, but that got me thinking about what you mean by support. The BBB SRM says: “These design materials referred to in this document are NOT SUPPORTED and DO NOT constitute a reference design. Only “community” support is allowed via resources at BeagleBoard.org/discuss.”

So it seems like the boards with a logo are not supported either. In fact the first five pages of the SRM are full of disclaimers of various sorts. I understand that this is required in this day and age of lawyers with itchy trigger fingers. So what is it really that you are providing to the community users that you don’t provide to commercial users?

Once we change a board, we no longer make the old revision. If I start making changes for commercial users, then I am faced with the task of making sure none of the other commercial users are upset with these changes,I end up being a free product engineering department for all these commercial users. I choose not to go down that path. I can’t win no matter what I do.

This is where I think you show that you believe that commercial users have different expectations that your community users. If you simply remove the word commercial from your statement above, you have an equally true statement. You shouldn’t be making changes simply because users, commercial or not, request them. Rather, you should be making changes only when you believe they will improve the product. Commercial users should not expect any preferential treatment for their suggestions, but at the same time their suggestions should not be discarded for no other reason that the source is a commercial user. The good ideas should and will stand on their own merit.

Also, all commercial users are well aware of the potential problems that could result from a BBB design change that adversely effects their use of the board. That is where the open design becomes a life saver. If you do make a breaking change we can always make our own boards using the prevoius design, though it will undoubtedly cost more.

In addition, the change you want means I have to add a bigger buffer. More cost. PCB layout charges. New stencils.Change the P&P program. Scrap the current buffer and order new buffers and try to get them in here fast enough not to shutdown my production line. Multiply this by say 500 commercial users.

I don’t want you to make a change, I have merely suggested what I believe is an improvement that could be made. Furthermore, I would not suggest scrapping any parts.

You said you 80,000 PCB to use up with the current design. You can use up your stock building those boards, and then depending upon how you implement the change (you could use a different 4 channel buffer, or place two of the same 2 channel buffer parts) you may not have to waste any parts even if you currently have more than 80K in stock. At your current production rate of about 12K per month you should have about 6 months to revise the board and order the new stencils and new parts (if required). As I said before there would be some NRE costs, but those are spread thin over the 100K quantities you are ordering boards in.

I don’t understand your multiply by 500 concept. Just because you have 500 commercial users doesn’t mean that all of them have suggestions for design improvements. Furthermore, even if many do have suggestions, that doesn’t mean that all of those are widely applicable improvements, Ultimately, that is up to you to decide. Finally, if you do decide to implement an improvement, that does not preclude you from making multiple change in one revision. You can spread the NRE costs over multiple change done in parallel. You have already made seven revisions from A4 to C, and you will probably make some more along the way. You can surely pool the good ideas into the next release and continue on.

In any case I think I have beaten this horse to death. I probably won’t be able to wait 6 months for a new release with this feature, so I will have to find a different way to do what I need, but I still think it is an improvement worth considering.

Dennis Cote

25

You are not alone, we also are finding the people at beaglebone (beagleboard?) or shall we say Texas Instruments uncooperative, surly, uncaring and unsupporting to other professional people who want to join their team and use their own money to get behind their processor products with third party hardware and software applications. I must say this has really been off putting to me. I am use to professional courtesy - at least engineer to engineer at my level. For someone like me who has been in the biz as long as they have, done development projects far more complex and worked for IBM, Celestica and Maxtor, Murata (C&D Technology), etc. building and designing complex server systems for Digital, HP, Intel, and many others. I expected at least an email with an actual answer to reverent business questions rather than 'go away you are bothering me, and short arms-length-push-away reply’s from the only contact they provide. Or no reply at all from Jason, it appears he wont even have a conversation with us despite multiple attempts to contact him. But I do remember what TI did to Jack Tramiel. I was around at the time. Why would beagleboard be any different? (go look it (him) up on wiki if you dont believe me, same thing different day).

Based on TI’s (Jack Tramiel style) strategy, you are correct TI controls the chips and controls the build anywhere in the world that way and you can bet they give special pricing to circuitco on the materials. I worked for Celestica (one of the largest contract manufacturers in the world) and there were all kinds of tricks they would play with ‘published’ material pricing and actual material price. Sometimes there was even year end ‘kickbacks’ to hide the price paid on the books. You or anyone else can not actually source materials and build beaglebone boards so you must redesign the board with a different chip set (like the offshore clones do) which renders the beagleboard artwork gerbers useless. That is why the gerbers are so ‘free’, you cant actually use them to build anything because you cant even get the parts. I did the exercise of looking at the gerbers, costing the beaglebone bill of materials and looked at sourcing the parts at different qty levels. Not possible. So I found that to make the comment “go build it yourself”, is more like "go f yourself " Yes I know the tricks too.

We have also been running marketing tests using twitter ads and different key words and organizations each day to look at the actual numbers everything generates, beaglebone, beagleboard are always the lowest click thru’s of anything else the list. I mean really low like single digits out of thousands of other click thru’s. and we have had an extremely significant sample size, like 200K impressions. So something doesn’t seem to ring true here, is Ti fibbing about the actual popularity of BB?

So at the end of the day I feel like a welcome part of the beaglebone development community and welcomed by TI to use their parts in my own products. -Not
I think these boys are just a little too full of themselves, after all they are rock stars right? And us little people are just in the way it would seem. We are not wanted on the team obviously. And of course after I complain about how bad they are to work with, they will just get worse, tell their TI managers I am totally wrong and off base, and pat themselves on the back. I have worked with engineers like this before, never got anything done. I may be ready to give up… in so many words.

Anyone feel free to contact me or Amy, I am not interested in talking to Gerald however, waste of time. He seems burnt out and overworked. Just like me.
Here is my web site and our email addresses:
www.aplusmobile.com
timf@aplusmobile.com
amyc@aplusmobile.com

26

Dennis, and Timothy,

Out of curiosity, what does all of this conversation get the two of you ? Does it get you what you want, despite you being told that if you want something a certain way you’re going to have to have it made yourself ?

From the outside looking in, this seems like a children throwing a tantrum when these children do not get their way.

Here is a more reasonable question in my own mind. Why don’t the both of you contribute back to the community that has made the hardware you seem to want so bad, the way you want it. Then offer all schematics, documentation, and hardware back to US at cost ? No ?

If you’ve been told how things are going to be, and you do not like this, why are you still here ? Do you think this is how “professionals” are supposed to behave ? Well sure, maybe. But professional what ?

So who is full of themselves?

Now what I really see short and concise. Two people MAYBE working in the industry trying to take advantage of a non profit company to try and make money for themselves. Don’t like what I see ? Tough.

27

[ suggestions that people associated with BBB are not helpful and engage in backroom deals]

You make extraordinary claims, so you are expected to back them with
extraordinary evidence. Please retract if you don't have it.

hide the price paid on the books. You or anyone else can not actually
source materials and build beaglebone boards so you must redesign the board
with a different chip set (like the offshore clones do) which renders the
beagleboard artwork gerbers useless. That is why the gerbers are so 'free',
you cant actually use them to build anything because you cant even get the
parts. I did the exercise of looking at the gerbers, costing the beaglebone
bill of materials and looked at sourcing the parts at different qty levels.
Not possible.

So you actually have hard data---what did you discover?

Surely you don't mean that literally you say "can't ... build
anything" with the provided design files--- you just can't build a BBB
for $45.

What was the actual price quote you got?