5 ms·

I'm curious about price - sure, the speakers were free ($240 value), but I don't think printing up a PCB is cheap, and those are some pretty big capacitors.

stavros 2y ago
A PCB like that would cost around $1 each, if you got 10 or so, so it's not expensive at all. I don't know how much assembly costs, but I'd be surprised if the total was over $20.
jdietrich 2y ago
JLCPCB have changed the game. Five 2-layer PCBs of up to 100x100mm cost just $3.50 including global shipping. Things get more expensive if you stray from their standard specs, but you're still looking at just a few dollars per board. https://jlcpcb.com/ https://jlcpcb.com/ The biggest electrolytic caps in this circuit cost $3.29 each in qty 1, but they're fancy "audio-grade" Nichicon caps; a standard-grade capacitor of that size would cost you $1.68 if you want a Japanese brand, or as little as $0.36 if you can settle for a Chinese brand.
- f1shy 2y ago
  And you can even order all or the SMD components soldered for less money that you can buy solder and other consumables for soldering never mind the time.
  - leoedin 2y ago
    I recently got 20 reasonably complex 4 layer gold plated pcbs assembled for about $10 a piece by JLCPCB. Maybe 20 items on the BOM, 50 parts total. It’s insanely cheap. 5 years ago when I was last regularly getting PCBs built it would cost 10x that. And it would be a really manual process - loads of emails back and forth. PCBway have managed to automate basically the whole process.
beala 2y ago
I think the biggest cost is labor. Dumpster diving for speakers and then spending dozens of hours in high skilled labor to replace the insides is actually hilarious. I wonder how much he'd charge a client for a project this size? Probably many thousands of dollars. But I can't knock a man for having a hobby. Clearly they're optimizing for fun and nerd cred, not cost.

stavros 2y ago

A PCB like that would cost around $1 each, if you got 10 or so, so it's not expensive at all. I don't know how much assembly costs, but I'd be surprised if the total was over $20.

jdietrich 2y ago

JLCPCB have changed the game. Five 2-layer PCBs of up to 100x100mm cost just $3.50 including global shipping. Things get more expensive if you stray from their standard specs, but you're still looking at just a few dollars per board. https://jlcpcb.com/ https://jlcpcb.com/ The biggest electrolytic caps in this circuit cost $3.29 each in qty 1, but they're fancy "audio-grade" Nichicon caps; a standard-grade capacitor of that size would cost you $1.68 if you want a Japanese brand, or as little as $0.36 if you can settle for a Chinese brand.

f1shy 2y ago
And you can even order all or the SMD components soldered for less money that you can buy solder and other consumables for soldering never mind the time.
- leoedin 2y ago
  I recently got 20 reasonably complex 4 layer gold plated pcbs assembled for about $10 a piece by JLCPCB. Maybe 20 items on the BOM, 50 parts total. It’s insanely cheap. 5 years ago when I was last regularly getting PCBs built it would cost 10x that. And it would be a really manual process - loads of emails back and forth. PCBway have managed to automate basically the whole process.

beala 2y ago

I think the biggest cost is labor. Dumpster diving for speakers and then spending dozens of hours in high skilled labor to replace the insides is actually hilarious. I wonder how much he'd charge a client for a project this size? Probably many thousands of dollars. But I can't knock a man for having a hobby. Clearly they're optimizing for fun and nerd cred, not cost.