Selling and Distributing the Hermes-Lite 2

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Group,

I've been thinking about how to sell and distribute the HL2 and would like to start a discussion on this topic. 

First, here is a little background of my priorities for the HL2 project:

1. Build an inexpensive and experimental DDC/DUC QRP SDR transceiver that I like and enjoy using for digital modes.

2. Foster and grow an opensource and homebrew project around this radio.

3. Make this radio available and accessible to others at low cost.

Notice what is *not* on this list of priorities:

1. Start a business and sell an amateur radio. I want to stay as far away from import paperwork, order fulfillment, payment processing, returns, running a business, etc. as I can. I am fully employed and have limited time for this and would rather spend my time on enjoyable engineering aspects. I would like to make enough money to cover my prototyping costs and pay for my son's labor if he helps.

2. Work as if this is a second job for me. I do this as a leisure activity, and sometimes things do not happen as fast as others would like. If I start feeling stress regarding this project, I will often just take a short break. Since this is a hobby, time spent on it comes after work and family.

3. Always cater to what others want. This is primarily a radio I want and like as that is what keeps me motivated. Satisfying everyone feels like a big job. But I am very thankful for the many great contributions made by others on this list, especially with regards to the analog portions of the design as well as steering me away from making some bad mistakes. 

With that background, here are some possible ways forward to sell the Hermes-Lite2.

1. This is an opensource project and I am not trying to reserve any rights of ownership to be the sole manufacturer. In fact, this may be one of very few projects that actually wants someone in China to clone and start selling the product. As the project becomes more complete, that is exactly what I want places like Elecrow or Makerfabs to do. But until that happens, clubs and groups can organize group buys of PCBs or assembled units. I have started to post all information to make this possible on github. This information includes quotes from 2 places in China for quantities 5, 10, 25 and 50. Even though I don't plan to organize a run or group buy for beta4, I will post a similar set of files for beta4 in a week or two. I would suggest that anyone interested in this option should use the beta4 release as it will fix a handful of issues we found in beta3 and no more. This option assumes the group and group organizer take all the risk of bad assembled units or PCBs. This is the least expensive option with assembled units at ~$165 in quantities of 5. Interested groups, such as the reverse beacon network, can work with me to have a BOM that only supports RX for even more savings. 

2. Some people will not like the risk of option 1. Overtime, I hope to instruct and encourage Elecrow to do more testing, but Elecrow will also not want to take the risk of supporting returned products, bad builds, etc. In the book "The Hardware Hacker", Andrew Huang describes how companies in China prefer to have fixed costs for everything. It is hard to factor in failures and so the price will increase dramatically if they are required to do so. So, until this product is adopted by someone willing to take that risk (there will be no exclusive agreement with any company so as to keep costs down), then my son will organize small group buys which will include a contribution to an insurance pool. The first of these will hopefully happen in November or December. Here is how I see the process happening:

* Ordering

** A group buy is announced on this list. The specifics of the buy (HL2 version, assembled, PCB only, unit price, shipping available, insurance pool size etc.) are included in the announcement.

** Those interested send an email with desired ship to address and shipping method to herme...@gmail.com.

** My son processes these emails in the order they were received. He compiles a list of addresses and sends this information to Elecrow.

** Elecrow responds with the shipping costs per buyer as Elecrow will ship units directly to a buyer, not through me.

** My son then sends a bill with instructions to each customer. The bill includes a portion to be paid directly to Elecrow with payment instructions and a portion to be paid to the insurance fund. The portion to Elecrow includes unit cost plus shipping. The insurance portion is ~10% of the portion paid to Elecrow, plus ~$5 for my son. The bill is split into two pieces to avoid double paying financial transaction fees.

** Once all the orders have been paid for, Elecrow will start the build process and ship directly to customers.

* Returns and Insurance Pool

** Customers should expect to be able to do some small repairs, such as change out a resistor or capacitor. The HL2 project will always have a strong homebrew flavor.

** If someone receives a bad board that they can not repair and wishes to return, they must send it to me within 90 days. I want to root cause failures to make them less likely in the future, and also my son will resell any repaired units. Once I receive the bad unit and 90 days have passed for all in the group buy, my son will send a refund up to the total price they paid Elecrow plus their ~10% portion of the insurance pool. We can cover one bad board out of an order of 10 this way. If there is more than 1 bad board, the current insurance pool is divided up equally and customers only receive a partial refund, so there is still risk. If there are no bad boards, the insurance pool grows and there will be less risk for later customers. Early adopters take the greatest risk.

** The insurance pool grows until it contains enough money for 20 fully assembled unit refunds. At that point, group buy participants will still pay the insurance percentage but any overflow of the pool is profit for me and used for future prototyping. Maintaining an insurance pool of this size means we should have no trouble handling group buys of ~50 units every 3 months even with typical failure rates.

 

3. Some people may still prefer a more polished product. That may happen through a www.crowdsupply.com campaign next year where fully assembled units with enclosures, front panels, fully tested, full refunds, etc are sold. But I will let my son charge a premium (50 to 100% overhead) for those given the amount of work required and risk taken. This will not be the least expensive option.

Please let me know what you think. Selling and distributing the HL2 is a part of the project I'd gladly like to have someone else worry about, so please let me know if you are interested or have other ideas.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Pete Smith N4ZR]

Steve, I think I can speak for the organizers of the RBN in saying how much we welcome this addition to the list of possible receivers for the network.  I will look forward to buying one of the first "assembled" units for final acceptance testing, but based on my testing of H-L 1.2 success is almost a foregone conclusion.

73, Pete N4ZR
Download the new N1MM Logger+ at 
<http://N1MM.hamdocs.com>. Check 
out the Reverse Beacon Network at 
<http://reversebeacon.net>, now 
spotting RTTY activity worldwide. 
For spots, please use your favorite 
"retail" DX cluster.

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[Graeme Jury]

Hello Steve,

I think that this is a very fair way of distributing leaving it up to the buyer to decide how much individual work and risk they are prepared to take. The option of having your son facilitate an insured group buy is an excellent option and I thought at $5.00 per pop he wouldn't do too well but on further reflection I thought of the phenomenal uptake of the softrocks where there must be thousands of kits out there and realized that here is a DDC/DUC device for a fairly similar price and can't see why the same thing shouldn't happen here. I would be glad to see sales go to the point where you can recover some of your development cost which I know is substantial as it is for other developers too and I can't thank you all enough.

I do regret not being one of the beta3 participants and if a beta4 group buy goes ahead I will be in. If there is a lot of interest but nobody will do the actual buy and distribution then I will do it but I am not well set up with no Paypal account (which I can fix) and New Zealand is a long way from everywhere else.

Is there going to be any firmware upgrades for HL1.x in the future? I still use this as a testbed and can get limited I2C output with an arduino connected to the J16 pins and translating the signals but obviously not the best scenario for me. It would be a shame to see HL1 languish as it is still a really good radio.

73, Graeme zl2apv

[Sebastien F4GRX]

Hello,

With Marc F6ITU we strongly believe that the foundation of ham Radio is DIY,
home building, and experimentation. Traffic is a big thing, but it is secondary.

So I am in no way acting as a bare consumer and I do NOT expect deadlines and
commercial behaviour as we are well aware of the DIY and home build nature of
this project.

I am not in a hurry, I was just worried to see HL2 "stuck" in eternal beta, and
direct work on HL2.1 :)

I regret not being able to help you in the beta process, but I have zero
instrumentation at home :(

This is also the reason why I am a big believer in this HL2 project and see it
as a VERY useful tool, not only QRP transceiver for contesters and beaconers,
but also as a versatile tool for the hardware hacker: VNA, spectrum analyzer and
baseband for UHF/microwave transverters - digital modes are not restricted to
HF). I understand that its instrumentation capabilities are limited, but it's
better than nothing, and as a low cost project, it is very accessible.

So we would be participants in a PCB group buy. And the first thing to do is
wait for beta4 builders (thanks a LOT to them) for hardware validation!


I am a bit worried (in fact, very surprised) to see you struggling with filters,
i2c, and SPI decisions, when this project should be as versatile as possible.
This all seems that you are trying to restrict a LOT this SDR to ham traffic use
when in fact it can be used for so many things. I am a smart card engineer,
contactless cards are using 13.56 MHz carrier... I let you imagine the
possibilities that a SDR like the hermes lite 2 can do there.

Again I think filters should be separate and modular. How to drive them is a
trivial detail that is, well, software defined...


I am aware that this message is useless in your decision making process since
you have your clear objectives for the HL2, but I wanted to let you know that
the HL2 will not only be used for the weekly CQ session on 40 meters, or wspr
spotting, or <insert a traditional ham activity here> :)


Sebastien

> <https://github.com/softerhardware/Hermes-Lite2/tree/master/hardware/hl/releases/hl2p0beta3>.

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[Tony Fuge]

Hi Steve,

I have been lurking here for a few moths as the beta units have evolved.  I am now excited by the prospect of being able to own one (I was originally set to purchase a Crowd Supply LimeSDR but after 8 months of rolling delays and then a de-emphasis of the 100KHz to 30MHz receiver range I lost interest).  My main interest has always been in the 160m to 10m bands and I have a RTLSDR which does the receive on UHF adequately for my purposes.

I am a keen Ham experimenter and fixer, I have a UHFSDR running on a Linux/Quisk platform with various filters and add-ons, both home-brew and kit bought. So to purchase a board with some mods and fixes required is of great interest. However I would prefer to avoid having to solder large pin-count micro SMD's, so assembled but not tested is great from my perspective!

So I would be happy to sign-up for the beta4 or an early production unit on the above basis.

73, Tony G4DEU

[Heikki Ahola]

Hi Steve,

This is what I have been waiting for ! But, as You emphasized, there should be no hurry as for most of us, this is still pastime activity ...  Among the options You gave, #2 sounds good to me and I am willing to place an order as soon as that can be arranged. Also #1 is possible for me, but only as a secondary option, i.e. if everything else fails.

73 de Heikki (OF2LZI)

[Steve Haynal]

Hi All,

I'm almost done with the schematic and PCB changes for beta4. Hopefully I will finish up and generate the Gerber and BOM files in the next few days.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Group,

People have requested to be added to the Hermes-Lite 2 group buy list in several ways: sending private e-mail to me, posting to this Google group, or sending e-mail to hermeslite (at) gmail.com. I will try to honor all past requests in the order they came in from whatever source, but this is not very manageable. Please, if you are interested in adding your name to the Hermes-Lite 2 group buy list, only send e-mail to hermeslite (at) gmail.com. This e-mail address is only for this purpose. Going forward, I will not honor requests sent to my private e-mail or posted to this Google group.  

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Naidu B N A M]

Hi steve,

I hope I am in your list for HL2 beta 5.

73

VU2ZAZ ( B N A M Naidu)

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Group,

Just a quick update on my planning for the next batch of Hermes-Lite 2.0s. First, we still have to complete distribution of this last batch. I have two boards that are in the process of being repaired. Second, there is still functionality that we need to test: CW/PTT jack, all other IO, SWR,PWR, N2ADR filter board connection. Jim will probably help with the last few items once he receives his unit. Third, there are problems with AD9866 suppliers (3 out of 10 AD9866s were bad in the last batch) and AD9866 heat that I'd like to work out before the next run. A better AD9866 supplier may mean a price increase of $10 to $15 per unit. If everything is worked out in time, I hope we can start the group buy process for a batch of 25 boards in late February, after the Chinese New Year.

I don't plan or expect many changes to the PCB. So far there are just a few minor changes to help with heat dissipation. I'm thinking of referring to this next batch as "build 6" or HL2b6. All future group buys would be labeled with an incremented build number. This way, all the betas and builds can also be referred to as HL2b2, HL2b3, HL2b4, HL2b5 and so on. I don't see much difference between the betas and the builds. As I've said before, I use the term beta very much like Google does, where betas are still very usable and supported, but just may be undergoing less than minor changes. In my mind, the Hermes-Lite 2.0 was released back at the end of 2016 with the HL2b2. For those interested in a specific enhancement, such as Taka's daughter board, you may want to consider an older version such as the HL2b4.

73,

Steve

KF7O

    

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Group,

This week I received a very pointed private e-mail accusing me of colluding with Elecrow. This person had contacted Elecrow directly about purchasing a Hermes-Lite 2.0 but received a reply from Elecrow saying they could not build the HL2b5 for them as they have an NDA with me. In this person's mind, the thought of an NDA for an open source hardware project was not transparent, misleading and truly evil. In fact there is no NDA and there can not be one given the license of the design. Elecrow by default treats all designs they work on as private and having an informal NDA in place, as probably is a best and wise practice in general for them. There were a couple of e-mail exchanges with Elecrow and I think they understand now that they are free to build additional units if they desire. I'm not sure they want to or will, but at least maybe they are thinking in that direction.

I value Elecrow and the relationship with them as this project needs a budget hobby low volume assembly house that is experienced with the Hermes-Lite 2.0 design. One should not underestimate the time it takes to work with an assembly house to have everything assembled correctly, a good set of suppliers, plus some testing in place. In the past, I have encouraged others to organize their own group buys, but I now think that was a mistake. The process is still too complex and error prone. Maybe in the future everything will be smooth enough so that other groups can organize group buys directly from an assembly house.

73

Steve

KF7O

[James Ahlstrom]

Hello Steve,

I am sorry you were subjected to this unpleasantness.  Just remember the old saying, "No good deed goes unpunished."

Jim

N2ADR

[David Jones - KB9GPM]

Sorry to hear about that too.

The first thing that came to mind, was someone wanting to make a bunch and then try to sell them as their design.  I hope I'm wrong.  But you hear of things like that happening.

David

KB9GPM

[Rod Wall]

Hi Steve,

I note all the work you are putting in for us. Doing the basic ground work. Testing and organising batches to be built. You must be putting in many hours doing this.

All I can say is THANKS.

And even putting up with the political side. When someone can't get them made themselves.

I also say thanks to all the others who are also helping with this project. Too many to name , you know who you are. THANKS. This project would go nowhere without your help.

best regards,

Roderick Wall, vk3yc.

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[Steve Haynal]

Hi All,

Thanks for the kind comments. I'd be very happy if this recent exchange involving Elecrow, even though not the most pleasant, leads to a reliable independent HL2 producer and seller.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Naidu B N A M]

Hi Steve,

I think the Homo sapiens are most dangerous animals on the earth. They know only their survival at the cost of every thing else. They can't live in harmony with the nature. I also think some branching has taken place from that group, which knows only good and always live in piece, you are the one in the branched group, a rare find.

73, B N A M Naidu

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[Steve Haynal]

Hi B N A M Naidu,

Thank you for your vote of confidence, but I've made my share of mistakes and sent my own pointed e-mails and posts in the past too...

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Group,

Here is another quick update on the next group buy of Hermes-Lite 2.0s. With the last group buy, we had 3 out of 10 of the AD9866s fail, which is unsustainable. Fortunately, I was able to repair all three with funds from the insurance pool, but it did completely deplete the insurance pool. For the next run, I have ordered 25 AD9866s directly from Analog Devices. They have a first price break at 25 pieces so the cost per piece is $27.30. Depending on final taxes and shipping costs, I expect the final unit price to be just a bit more than what Elecrow would charge but the quality should be higher. I also plan to purchase and ship the FPGAs as this will result in ~$7 savings per unit.

Everything should be in place to go back to the list (herme...@gmail.com) and start sending out offers including a final price in a couple of weeks. I will only extend offers for 20 units. 5 will be sent to me, including any that fail the screening test. Those will be sold later.

I am really happy with my N2ADR filter board. If there is enough interest, we can include a bare filter board with every order. To simplify things, I want to do all orders or no orders this way, no option.

73,

Steve

KF7O

 

     

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 10:44:31 PM UTC-8, Steve Haynal wrote:

[John Williams]

Have the filter board gerbers been released?

John

On 2/15/2018 11:26 PM, Steve Haynal wrote:

Hi Group,

Here is another quick update on the next group buy of Hermes-Lite 2.0s. With the last group buy, we had 3 out of 10 of the AD9866s fail, which is unsustainable. Fortunately, I was able to repair all three with funds from the insurance pool, but it did completely deplete the insurance pool. For the next run, I have ordered 25 AD9866s directly from Analog Devices. They have a first price break at 25 pieces so the cost per piece is $27.30. Depending on final taxes and shipping costs, I expect the final unit price to be just a bit more than what Elecrow would charge but the quality should be higher. I also plan to purchase and ship the FPGAs as this will result in ~$7 savings per unit.

Everything should be in place to go back to the list (herme...@gmail.com) and start sending out offers including a final price in a couple of weeks. I will only extend offers for 20 units. 5 will be sent to me, including any that fail the screening test. Those will be sold later.

I am really happy with my N2ADR filter board. If there is enough interest, we can include a bare filter board with every order. To simplify things, I want to do all orders or no orders this way, no option.

73,

Steve

KF7O

 

     

On Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 10:44:31 PM UTC-8, Steve Haynal wrote:

Hi Group,

Just a quick update on my planning for the next batch of Hermes-Lite 2.0s. First, we still have to complete distribution of this last batch. I have two boards that are in the process of being repaired. Second, there is still functionality that we need to test: CW/PTT jack, all other IO, SWR,PWR, N2ADR filter board connection. Jim will probably help with the last few items once he receives his unit. Third, there are problems with AD9866 suppliers (3 out of 10 AD9866s were bad in the last batch) and AD9866 heat that I'd like to work out before the next run. A better AD9866 supplier may mean a price increase of $10 to $15 per unit. If everything is worked out in time, I hope we can start the group buy process for a batch of 25 boards in late February, after the Chinese New Year.

I don't plan or expect many changes to the PCB. So far there are just a few minor changes to help with heat dissipation. I'm thinking of referring to this next batch as "build 6" or HL2b6. All future group buys would be labeled with an incremented build number. This way, all the betas and builds can also be referred to as HL2b2, HL2b3, HL2b4, HL2b5 and so on. I don't see much difference between the betas and the builds. As I've said before, I use the term beta very much like Google does, where betas are still very usable and supported, but just may be undergoing less than minor changes. In my mind, the Hermes-Lite 2.0 was released back at the end of 2016 with the HL2b2. For those interested in a specific enhancement, such as Taka's daughter board, you may want to consider an older version such as the HL2b4.

73,

Steve

KF7O

    

--

[RHQQ2YXRKT]

 

Steve,

 

What did Elecrow have to say about the 3 failed AD9866s ?

 

John

G3UGY

 

 

[Steve Haynal]

Hi John,

I believe Jim plans to post the gerber files once he tests and is satisfied with the design. He just received his hl2b5 today. 

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Steve Haynal]

Hi John,

I did inform Elecrow that we had to replace 3 of the AD9866s. They didn't provide much feedback. I'm not sure what they can say as the parts probably appeared good to them and the screening test does not identify a particular faulty component. Their assembly actually looked very good in my opinion. Perhaps they shorted something and then fixed it? In the future we can just pick a better supplier and provide clearer instructions to Elecrow. For example, I am reviewing the screening test in case something could have happened then to damage the AD9866s. I will probably add some short tests at the beginning of the screening tests.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Roger Jamieson ZL1AMI]

Hi Steve,

I am the person who ended up with the HL2B5 that Graeme ZL2APV got. Before I powered it up I did a close inspection of the board with a PC microscope and found two little solder balls between pins on the AD9866. I removed them with a needle and the board works fine but the IC does run hot so a heatsink will go on today.  It was hard to tell if they were shorting or not but they were better removed. I did have a problem getting it going on Quisk ( Linux ) but removing the fixed IP address from the config sorted that out. It ran up on SPARK SDR first time, no problem so I knew the board was working. I cannot get Quisk on Windows 10 to talk to it yet but will try again soon.
I am very happy with the RX performance so far and will put T3 in and try the TX. Congratulations on a nice radio design and many thanks for your efforts.

73 de Roger

[James Ahlstrom]

Hello Group,

It is Friday 9 PM and I just got back from a ski vacation. My HL2 is indeed here (thanks Steve) and I am finally able to test my filter board with a real HL2.  As soon as it checks out, I will release the design to the group.

The bad news is that on Monday (in 3 days) I leave for another 2 week ski trip to Alta Utah, USA. So there will be a delay. I can answer short emails, but I won't have my design files.

I sent filter boards to Steve and Claudio and they have been testing them. I think the best plan is for them to discuss the performance with the group while I am gone and highlight any problems. I can then fix the problems when I get back. I am totally committed to making the filter board work to everyone's satisfaction, and to fixing any issues with Quisk so that it fully supports HL2. Sorry to be a bother, but winter only comes once a year.

I think this project is going to be great and it has been an honor to work on it.

Jim

N2ADR

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for the update. I will add "check near the AD9866 pins for solder balls before power on" to Elecrow's checklist. I think Elecrow actually has a larger facility do the assembly, so can probably press them on this. Some people have reported Quisk issues with virtual network adapters and Windows 10. You may try disabling any unused network adapters. I think Jim is also looking at this. Please convey best wishes to Graeme.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Jim,

I think this is the first time I've heard "leaving for a 2 week ski trip to Alta" as bad news!

Claudio and I did have some private exchanges regarding the filter board. Once we made sure the HPF was disengaged during transmit, the low band results were much better. We had similar test results although Claudio's are more trustworthy. I think the worst harmonic he found was -52 dBc. Hopefully he will share his results here or on his blog.

Thanks again for all your contributions to this project. Quisk support, the RF preamp and the filter board have all been very appreciated.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Heikki Ahola]

Steve,

Do we have the N2ADR LPF passband curves anywhere in this site ? 

73 de Heikki (OH2LZI)

[James Ahlstrom]

Hello Roger,

If you have problems with Quisk and Windows 10, try turning off Windows Firewall.  It may not like the UDP broadcast for discovery.

Jim

N2ADR

[James Ahlstrom]

Hello Steve and Group,

I looked at the underside of the AD9866 on my new HL2 with a microscope. I see that the hole for hand soldering the center pad has solder in it, but it is hard to see whether the pad is wetted with solder or the hole is just filled. There is solder in most of the small vias under the pad, so that is a good sign.

Hand soldering through this hole is tricky, and bad soldering will result in a poor AD9866 heat sink or a destroyed IC.  I think we need to remove the hole and use solder paste and the stencil.

Jim

N2ADR

[Wolfgang DL9UFB]

Hello Group,

I think the hole below the AD9866 should be maintained.
It can be soldered very well with a soldering iron of approx. 80 watts with a cone butt tip and solder paste.
It's also a very good way non-destructive desoldering  the IC.


73 de Wolfgang, DL9UFB

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Wolfgang,

I hope to keep both. I have two versions of each footprint in the KiCAD library. I can swap the footprint with the large hole out for the normal footprint, hopefully with an automated script, when I make a release. The large hole is nice for those who wish to build their own, but it can confuse the assembly house. In the ideal case, you don't want the large hole as it reduces the copper that the thermal pad can dissipate heat to.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Sebastien F4GRX]

But you were right!

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/apache-labs/conversations/messages/34016

Apache Labs Tried to sell some "old" Hermes lite for 500 bucks. The good news is that they still have unsold units, probably because potential customers were finally thinking "are you f... kidding me?"

Possibly unrelated to the request made to elecrow... but the fact is still there:

To me this looks like someone is trying to get HUGE profits while benefiting for perfectly free Research and Design made by Steve on his free time...

Doing business is not bad! but a 100% benefit there is... wow! Lack of ethics and respect for others IMHO!

Now we just dont have to protect open hardware from chinese cloners and cheap arduinos... some local players are playing the same game, but in reverse!

Sebastien

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Sebastien,

Thanks for the link. I hadn't heard that Apache Labs tried to sell Hermes-Lite. I'm actually impressed that they sold a couple at that price.

I actually am not trying to protect this open hardware form Chinese cloners or companies like Apache Labs. In fact, I'm willing to provide some helpful pointers to anyone interested. I'd love to see the day when I can search for "Hermes-Lite" on Ali Express or Google and see several "for sale" hits. 

Elecrow has said they may build some of their own Hermes-Lite 2.0 units for sale. I think they may be piggy backing on the latest group buy. They sent me some feelers regarding a price and I suggested ~$250. This allows them to make some profit (30% to 50% range). With the group buy price, I am not making or losing any money. If Elecrow does sell units, I'd encourage people to buy from them. They are a company that can build small batches of many various designs and sell them in small quantities but still stay in business. DIY small batch electronics needs places like that.

73,

Steve

KF7O

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[Freeman Pascal]

Wish I could thumbs up this post. 

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[John Marvin]

All,

I think there is some confusion here.  I'm pretty sure Abhi was not trying to sell the Hermes Lite boards that Steve has developed.  I think it is just a naming collision.  I believe, but am not sure, that the Hermes-Lite Abhi was referring to was a Hermes with a 14 bit A/D rather than the 16 bit A/D and also a smaller FPGA.

73,
John
AC0ZG

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[Glenn P]

Steve
I guess that's just for the base H-L 'smarts' pcb.   And is very generous of you to allow that to happen if it comes to pass. I fully understand though that trying to take on selling H-L yourself would be a very time consuming project. Both in having boards made, to parts procurement, shipping, support etc.

How do the peripheral boards though, fit into this idea? ie various filters, power supplies or whatever else is required to get a completed H-L on air. Is there a best guess cost for these. And would Elecrow also get involved.

glenn

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[Steve Haynal]

Hi Glenn,

I think Elecrow will at least include a bare board for a filter companion card in future orders. Jim, Taka and B N A M Naidu can estimate the price the best. They may provide boards. 

The HL2 is evolving and we'll have to see how completed a unit we get to. I'm sure there will be more interest the more completed the unit is.

73,

Steve

KF7O

[Freeman Pascal]

Steve, et al;

I would hope that if side projects for H-L2 are marked as open source, the projects take the time to upload their designs to OSHPark. If not, then offer their PCBs at a reasonable cost. 

If projects don't want to contend with the upload to OSHPark, at least make it know that folks are free to do the upload for them. 

I have really appreciated that many of the H-L boards were on OSHPark and ordered them.

-Freeman