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These are listed $24 (Canadian) on aliexpress, with free shipping. How is that possible? I just can't get my head around how these can be so inexpensive. Wouldn

These are listed $24 (Canadian) on aliexpress, with free shipping. How is that possible? I just can't get my head around how these can be so inexpensive. Wouldn't the materials cost more? Like really, can someone help explain the economics of how this works?

chpatrick 3y ago
Electronics are actually really cheap.
AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
There are basically two main chips in there, one handles most of the RF chain, the other drives the display and handles button pushes. Both likely cost under a dollar each at volume. The vast majority of the other components are tiny passives that cost less than a cent each and are just for filtering and impedance matching. In terms of development costs, there is definitely skill in component selection and packaging, but generally speaking the main PCB could have been designed by a lot of EE grads. If you spend some time looking at it, in terms of sophistication it's barely a couple steps above a happy meal toy, but since nobody wants to make quality flexible use radios, this is what everyone ends up buying to experiment with.
jhoechtl 3y ago
Is Chinese software required? It might be just a booster rocket for Chinese spyware.
- squarefoot 3y ago
  According to the article, the radio can be reflashed using a browser, but if any suspicious software was needed for reflashing, it could anyway be run in a VM after setting the USB/serial port as pass through. To program frequencies and modes then one can use Chirp, which is Open source. https://chirpmyradio.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home https://chirpmyradio.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home
rasz 3y ago
You have been conditioned by US corporations. Apple consumer electronic prices, TI microcontroller prices, Qualcomm/TI radio chip prices, Intel FPGA prices etc.
- hasty_pudding 3y ago
  don't know what you're getting downvoted it is true
bwv848 3y ago
In China, the retail price is 90 yuan, which is 12.5 dollars and 17.2 Canadian dollars according to current exchange rate. Sometimes people can get them cheaper.
augusto-moura 3y ago
Radio hardware is not that expensive actually. The tech behind it is very basic and has existed for more than a century now. Hells, you can build an AM radio with just a bunch of cable and an amplifier [1]. Of course, these new radios are a bit more complicated than that, but basic SoCs are also very inexpensive nowadays, and when you get to economies of scale, things get even cheaper. It was not a long time ago, low power radios were even children's toys [1]: https://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Simple-AM-Radio https://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Simple-AM-Radio

chpatrick 3y ago

Electronics are actually really cheap.

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago

There are basically two main chips in there, one handles most of the RF chain, the other drives the display and handles button pushes. Both likely cost under a dollar each at volume. The vast majority of the other components are tiny passives that cost less than a cent each and are just for filtering and impedance matching. In terms of development costs, there is definitely skill in component selection and packaging, but generally speaking the main PCB could have been designed by a lot of EE grads. If you spend some time looking at it, in terms of sophistication it's barely a couple steps above a happy meal toy, but since nobody wants to make quality flexible use radios, this is what everyone ends up buying to experiment with.

jhoechtl 3y ago

Is Chinese software required? It might be just a booster rocket for Chinese spyware.

squarefoot 3y ago
According to the article, the radio can be reflashed using a browser, but if any suspicious software was needed for reflashing, it could anyway be run in a VM after setting the USB/serial port as pass through. To program frequencies and modes then one can use Chirp, which is Open source. https://chirpmyradio.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home https://chirpmyradio.com/projects/chirp/wiki/Home

rasz 3y ago

You have been conditioned by US corporations. Apple consumer electronic prices, TI microcontroller prices, Qualcomm/TI radio chip prices, Intel FPGA prices etc.

hasty_pudding 3y ago
don't know what you're getting downvoted it is true

bwv848 3y ago

In China, the retail price is 90 yuan, which is 12.5 dollars and 17.2 Canadian dollars according to current exchange rate. Sometimes people can get them cheaper.

augusto-moura 3y ago

Radio hardware is not that expensive actually. The tech behind it is very basic and has existed for more than a century now. Hells, you can build an AM radio with just a bunch of cable and an amplifier [1]. Of course, these new radios are a bit more complicated than that, but basic SoCs are also very inexpensive nowadays, and when you get to economies of scale, things get even cheaper. It was not a long time ago, low power radios were even children's toys [1]: https://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Simple-AM-Radio https://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Simple-AM-Radio