Electrical engineer Star Simpson has introduced a set of new DIY projects that pay tribute to Forrest M. Mims III, author of the classic electronics DIY Radio Shack books, like Getting Started in Electronics.
The three projects feature PCBs, printed with Mims’ original circuit illustrations, and the parts to build the circuits. One of the circuits featured, above, is Mim’s Stepped-Tone Generator, a synth circuit that has gained a life of its own, as the Atari Punk Console.
Here’s a video intro to the projects:
The project is being crowd-funded and the Stepped-Tone Generator is available to project backers for US $44.
Ok.
Cool Forrest gets a cut of this at least.
They’re nicely designed boards and all, but $44? The components on there come to about 50p, and the board’s worth a quid on the outside. $10 would be far more reasonable; $44’s ridiculous. And, incidentally, it’s not the worst value of the bunch; They’re wanting the same for an LED flasher.
But, but….an electrical engineer took Mims designs and….made pcbs of them.
They even have solder pads on the back.
And they’re blue!
Yeah, I’m confused too.
Look at Octapart on the same site.
It’s a resistor color code chart/smt chart for $9.00 by the same woman and it sold 267 copies!
Crazy.
God forbid someone would want to make a profit in exchange for their time…
hmm, time…
I’d say it’d take an hour or two to design one of these PCBs, three at the outside. Factor in testing etc, and you’re talking maybe a couple of days of actual work, tops. The cost of production is, I’d reckon, $2 per unit, at the outside, unless they’re packed in some hellishly fancy packaging; include postage, and I’ll let them ride at $4 per unit for the lot. Working off the fact that there’s about a 150 claimed, that gives you about 6000 profit. Lets say that it takes them a couple of 9-5 days to get stuff packed and shipped (generous, to be honest); that means a total of 4 days work, giving them about $200/hr.
OK, I’m not taking into account the costs of marketing, but it’s just plain not worth it. And, lets face it; If I spent a week making a paperclip out of a piece of plain steel wire, would you give me $44 for it?
If you just want a reasonably priced Atari Punk Console for musical use, you can’t go past Analog Ordnance’s version. Cheap, compact, through hole.
https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/244272416/minitari-punk-console-diy-kit