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Traditionally, dev kits are sold at roughly the cost to produce them, perhaps with a small markup. Arduino is a notable exception, charging at least 10x their
by pclmulqdq 3y ago
Traditionally, dev kits are sold at roughly the cost to produce them, perhaps with a small markup. Arduino is a notable exception, charging at least 10x their production cost for a dev kit. The competition was inevitable.
In the case of the original Arduino, I have a Chinese clone purchased for $3 that has substantially better quality, and has many of the features you would want from a dev kit, like ESD protection on the I/O pins.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoAgreed. I used to produce a custom product that was used an Arduino Nano clone as a component on a PCB because the clone cost less than I could buy its component parts for (yay economies of scale!). I'd generally buy 10 at a time for about $25 total.
- AlexandrB 3y ago> Traditionally, dev kits are sold at roughly the cost to produce them, perhaps with a small markup. Maybe, but pre-arduino dev kits were often hundreds of dollars because doing low-volume PCB manufacturing was expensive. Now that it's cheap, Arduino is kind of obsolete.
- pclmulqdq 3y agoYeah. After Arduino proved that there was a market for low-feature dev kits, TI made their MSP430-based Arduino competitor that they sold for $4.30 and manufactured in volume, just like the Arduino.
- Tildey 3y agoEspressif has also capitalised on this trend with the ESP32, having cheap (~$10) official dev boards available at or before the launch of a new Esp32 model