An idea about open source PCBs
This is what I witnessed: People are making various shields and boards, which is expensive ran by someone alone. Not like the code in sourceforge which everybody can download and copy, open source hardwarer often stop to hesitate before PCB making.
However, most of the designs are contributed to the community under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike licenses. So, how about make and share the PCBs in an more effective way?
We are serving open source hardware, including prototype PCB capacity. We would like to host a new pattern to overcome the dilemma. The initial idea is like this ( open for suggestion now):
The initiator make a board (maybe own design or any work under open source license), get 5 pieces PCB for just $30, we share the manufacturing costs and produce extra. The extra PCB will be stock by us and listed on a very affortable price like 7-9$ with minimal shipping cost. (About 2-3$ flat rate). You may share the $30 with other people, end up getting an industrial standard one for less than 10$.
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Thank you for the kind advices!
This service is more like a investment and return pattern. We will judge for the extra stock to hold. Also, if people really enjoy our service, we can have more discount to regain our beneift, good luck to us ; )
I love this idea. Now, maybe you should reconsider something : what is your benefit (apart from contributing to the community) if you stock PCBs for a product no one wants ? This might be tricky to figure which design is worth investing a bulk order and which isn’t. You aim is not to loose money, let’s be frank, so I think this model would work great for projects like Arduinome, but there are a lot of other things that would be a waste of money / time.
This sounds like a great idea. The trick will be making sure that you get past the scraping off traces and adding jumpers bit before you make a bunch of them. Also, some designs, like this one, ours: http://openprosthetics.wikispot.org/Open_Myoelectric_Signal_Processor
http://myopen.googlecode.com/files/MyOpen_EMG_DSP_rev_1.jpg
are kind of a pain to put together yourself, and I’m not sure many folks would want to. I know that as soon as we figure out a way to get someone else to do it, we’re going to.
The value in open source in electronic hardware is in enabling hacking, likely mostly using mass-produced hardware, but taking advantage of the source in order to modify or interface with it.