3 ms·

So if I understand you correctly, it's the R&D that makes up the majority of the price, not the components? Not saying that's bad, just that my question is wha

by Aachen 6y ago

So if I understand you correctly, it's the R&D that makes up the majority of the price, not the components? Not saying that's bad, just that my question is what makes this cost what it does. If it weren't justified, there'd be competitors doing it way cheaper (the field is accessible and large enough for that), so it's just a question out of curiosity.

trishmapow2 6y ago
Not quite - if they priced in all of the dev effort required to make the mount software compatible (ASCOM, etc) it would be much higher I think. From what I see, ensuring the 3D printed parts are up to spec and look good cosmetically requires a lot of time, not to mention manually wiring and flashing all the electronics.
polack 6y ago
Have you seen how many parts there are? It would probably take most people with a normal day job a week to print all parts in the evenings and weekend. And that's if they do have a printer. Add another 20 parts that you need to order from different place, make sure they meet the specifications, pay for shipping for a lot of different packages and that many things must be bought in bulk and not single pieces. USD 200 is a bargain for this kit. Sure, you might be able to save a couple of dollars if you do the work yourself. But is that worth many hours of work, and the risk of ordering wrong stuff?
dylan604 6y ago
Of course the R&D makes upt the majority of the price. When is that ever not the case? The version that is available now is not the only version that was made. This is something that has been thought about, made, revised, made again, etc. Things like this often go through multiple iterations. Hell, there will probably be a OpenAstroTracker 2.0 in a year.
- Aachen 6y ago
  > Of course the R&D makes upt the majority of the price. When is that ever not the case? Like, pretty much every other product that wasn't an entirely new concept in the last few years? Looking around me, I think the thing with the highest R&D price component is probably the chips in computers (desktop, laptop, smartphones), everything else is just mass production and low markup with hardly any research recuperation in the price (keyboard, lamp, paper, desk, floor, beanbag, fridge, IR thermometer, picture frames, a spoon, a computer display...). Unless you meant "when is that not the case for astro trackers", I don't get what you meant because it's rather exceptional to still be paying off R&D if you're buying regular mass-produced consumer products. > This is something that has been thought about, Obviously, but if it's open source (with a free, commercial-use license and no big call for donations other than a coffee) then apparently recuperation that design time is not a goal, they're actively giving it away for free and encouraging people to make it themselves. That suggested to me that the price must be for an expensive component or two. Or perhaps the printing time, but since it's mostly unattended and filament is cheap, I didn't expect it to be that. And the tracking calculations have been long done by people decades ago, so it's just buying parts and putting them together, where the "putting together" part is done by the customer since it's a kit. So yeah I expected the price to be mostly an expensive precise motor or something.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Great, Apple's new M1 based systems now exist on the market. Go make one for me for less than what Apple sells theirs. Should be easy according you since someone else is already doing it. R&D is everything in making of something. Just because someone else made it doesn't mean you get to start exactly where they left off (except in cases of open source where you get their literal plans). Even in wood working or any shop type of work, you often spend more time setting up things like jigs or other custom tooling than it takes to do the actual work. Is that supposed to be a sunk cost to the builder? No, it is part of how the builder arrives at the price of the final thing being built.
    - sink 6y ago
      I'm not sure why you're so hostile to the GP. Their questions are sincere. Your comparison to the M1 is not appropriate, and you're not actually paying attention to what they wrote. They wrote that they are surprised that R&D makes up the majority of the cost, since this is an open source project. This is a fairly non-obvious feature of open source company business models. They give away the product, and its designs, for free, and solicit community collaboration. But it's usually complex or cumbersome to operationalize or build, so they then sell a set of services or pre-builds around it. Datastax and Confluent are two examples of this in the OSS domain. Woodworkers don't market their plans as open source, put them on Github, and accept pull requests. Don't create arrogant, sarcastic responses to sincere questions. It devalues this forum, and it's a bad look.

by Aachen 6y ago

trishmapow2 6y ago

Not quite - if they priced in all of the dev effort required to make the mount software compatible (ASCOM, etc) it would be much higher I think. From what I see, ensuring the 3D printed parts are up to spec and look good cosmetically requires a lot of time, not to mention manually wiring and flashing all the electronics.

polack 6y ago

Have you seen how many parts there are? It would probably take most people with a normal day job a week to print all parts in the evenings and weekend. And that's if they do have a printer. Add another 20 parts that you need to order from different place, make sure they meet the specifications, pay for shipping for a lot of different packages and that many things must be bought in bulk and not single pieces. USD 200 is a bargain for this kit. Sure, you might be able to save a couple of dollars if you do the work yourself. But is that worth many hours of work, and the risk of ordering wrong stuff?

dylan604 6y ago

Of course the R&D makes upt the majority of the price. When is that ever not the case? The version that is available now is not the only version that was made. This is something that has been thought about, made, revised, made again, etc. Things like this often go through multiple iterations. Hell, there will probably be a OpenAstroTracker 2.0 in a year.

Aachen 6y ago
> Of course the R&D makes upt the majority of the price. When is that ever not the case? Like, pretty much every other product that wasn't an entirely new concept in the last few years? Looking around me, I think the thing with the highest R&D price component is probably the chips in computers (desktop, laptop, smartphones), everything else is just mass production and low markup with hardly any research recuperation in the price (keyboard, lamp, paper, desk, floor, beanbag, fridge, IR thermometer, picture frames, a spoon, a computer display...). Unless you meant "when is that not the case for astro trackers", I don't get what you meant because it's rather exceptional to still be paying off R&D if you're buying regular mass-produced consumer products. > This is something that has been thought about, Obviously, but if it's open source (with a free, commercial-use license and no big call for donations other than a coffee) then apparently recuperation that design time is not a goal, they're actively giving it away for free and encouraging people to make it themselves. That suggested to me that the price must be for an expensive component or two. Or perhaps the printing time, but since it's mostly unattended and filament is cheap, I didn't expect it to be that. And the tracking calculations have been long done by people decades ago, so it's just buying parts and putting them together, where the "putting together" part is done by the customer since it's a kit. So yeah I expected the price to be mostly an expensive precise motor or something.
- dylan604 6y ago
  Great, Apple's new M1 based systems now exist on the market. Go make one for me for less than what Apple sells theirs. Should be easy according you since someone else is already doing it. R&D is everything in making of something. Just because someone else made it doesn't mean you get to start exactly where they left off (except in cases of open source where you get their literal plans). Even in wood working or any shop type of work, you often spend more time setting up things like jigs or other custom tooling than it takes to do the actual work. Is that supposed to be a sunk cost to the builder? No, it is part of how the builder arrives at the price of the final thing being built.
  - sink 6y ago
    I'm not sure why you're so hostile to the GP. Their questions are sincere. Your comparison to the M1 is not appropriate, and you're not actually paying attention to what they wrote. They wrote that they are surprised that R&D makes up the majority of the cost, since this is an open source project. This is a fairly non-obvious feature of open source company business models. They give away the product, and its designs, for free, and solicit community collaboration. But it's usually complex or cumbersome to operationalize or build, so they then sell a set of services or pre-builds around it. Datastax and Confluent are two examples of this in the OSS domain. Woodworkers don't market their plans as open source, put them on Github, and accept pull requests. Don't create arrogant, sarcastic responses to sincere questions. It devalues this forum, and it's a bad look.