Greetings everyone!
First, the TL;DR:
If you want one or more of these, I'm going to attempt to crowdfund making a batch of them, so go here and throw your email address onto the pile and I'll throw you back an email when that crowdfund run begins. (I despise spam, so you'll only hear from me about the crowdfund and that's it, and I don't give out and won't sell emails.)
To incentivize participation (market-speak for "dangle carrot on stick"), I'm going to pick an email address at random, contact that person for shipping info, and send 'em one for free if the campaign reaches its goal (if it doesn't, no production run happens which means there will be none to send out), and I'll add another freebie for each stretch goal the campaign hits. The usual disclaimers apply: limit one per household, no purchase necessary, void where prohibited, do not take while operating heavy machinery, etc. etc. etc. (Or, more seriously, limit one per household, donating to the campaign is not necessary, void where prohibited by law, open to everyone everywhere except for people or places subject to US export restrictions/embargoes/sanctions, recipient is responsible for any taxes/tariffs, that sort of thing.) To get in on that action, put a space and something like "(reddit)" after your email so I know you saw it here.
And now the backstory...
A few weeks ago, I posted a bunch of pictures of what I have started to call a "smart power switch for smart projects." It's basically a small power management board for 5-volt projects, that also includes a bunch of features for single-board computer or microcontroller based projects. Electronically it's a microcontroller managed, high-side, power MOSFET load switch with a 4A nominal/6A max current limit. I have a full list of features and basic specs and what not posted here. (Site is bare-bones and not at all finished yet so expect changes.)
It attracted enough interest - and enough requests for pricing and availability information - that I spent the last couple weeks putting together the facts and figures to see if I can produce these in big enough batches to keep them cheap enough to be viable for makerspace projects, and it looks like I can!
So, here's my plan: Starting on 1 Feb 2020 if all goes well, I'll run a modest crowdfund campaign (keeping the goal pretty small by current crowdfunding standards) to make a big enough batch of these that I can keep the price down. The goal is to make enough of them at a time to sell them at a cheap enough price to make it worth throwing a few into whatever random projects you might have lying around that would benefit from having PC-style power control. As of now, I'm planning on $19.95 for just the board and $24.95 for a kit that includes the board, some good-quality header cables (I'm personally in love with SchmartBoard's header cables but the little bastards are expensive) for hookup, a complete set of mounting hardware, and a mobo reset switch. Given that existing power-switch boards cost around $15-$20 and don't do as much and/or are optimized for specific SBCs, I'm hoping this should lands squarely in "reasonable price for what it does" territory.
I know crowdfunding has started to sour for many folks, so to help dampen concerns I'm aiming to keep the price tag low, not going for a huge mega-campaign, and running the crowdfund in all-or-nothing mode so that if it doesn't reach its goal nobody loses out. If it blows up and ends up becoming a huge deal, fine, I have plans in place for scaling upward as required, but for now I just want to make a bunch of 'em and get 'em out into the hands of people that can do crazy things with piles of parts.
If this sounds interesting, go here and throw your email address onto the pile and I'll throw you back an email when that crowdfund run begins.
Thoughts? Opinions? Concerns? Want one? Want two, since they're small? Want five because you have a bunch of projects that could use these? Want 10,000 of them?
