181–190 of 213 posts
Towards the end of the article the author mentions not wanting to pursue this as a business as there are so many cheap programmable signs out there already. As someone who would love to buy one of these and customize it for myself does anyone have experience or recommendations with any of these?
Very interesting read. Based on our experience developing and manufactoring air quality monitors, making a customized PCB should be done as early as possible in the developing process. With easy to use editors (e.g. easyEDA) and cheap and fast PCB production/assembly (even for small quantities), there is no reason to use overized MCUs/mini computers like the Pi and expensive modules e.g. from Adafruit. Also, BOM comp…
> there is no reason to use overized MCUs/mini computers like the Pi and expensive modules There is if you don't have the expertise. Of course, arguably if that's the case, you shouldn't be developing such a product anyway. But as the post detailed, by switching to a Pi Zero and removing the Adafruit HAT, the BOM costs would already drop significantly. I think if you're smart about it, you absolutely can build a viab…
Eventually I switched some things up and it got much easier.
Get some digital picture frame out of Shenzhen, like this one, that wholesales for $30 - $50.[1] That thing has WiFi, a 4-core CPU, and runs Android. Reprogram it to just run your application. Sell for maybe $75-$100. The manufacturer will add your logo and do custom packaging if you order at least 50.
There are even cheaper discrete LED signs that talk WiFi, but those would be kind of intense for home use. Those you sell to shops near stations, so people can shop or eat while watching the train arrival info.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/IPS-Display-7-8-10-13...?
$600? That's way overpriced. Get some digital picture frame out of Shenzhen, like this one, that wholesales for $30 - $50.[1] That thing has WiFi, a 4-core CPU, and runs Android. Reprogram it to just run your application. Sell for maybe $75-$100. The manufacturer will add your logo and do custom packaging if you order at least 50. There are even cheaper discrete LED signs that talk WiFi, but those would be kind of in…
Towards the end of the article the author mentions not wanting to pursue this as a business as there are so many cheap programmable signs out there already. As someone who would love to buy one of these and customize it for myself does anyone have experience or recommendations with any of these?
Some experience. The cheapest and easiest route is to buy a pre-made sign from AliExpress and just use the serial/usb interface to send data to the sign. That's somewhat limited, as you can't really control each pixel in a real time way, and you're limited to sending a series of "screens" as either text (in their limited choices of fonts) or images, defining some linger time, transitions, etc. With some visual disrup…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you intentionally leave out Arduino from the "what to drive with" options?
Assuming largish, multi-color matrixes, and/or chained ones, yes. A ~10Mhz+ pixel clock, double-buffering, or just the size of the pixel map would strain most of those. This sign is 32x128 pixels, with each pixel taking data for RGB (on/off), with the PWM rate controlling brightness for each of the three colors. Though there are examples of using something beefier/faster like an ESP32. There's also in this case, the…
Wait, you are open sourcing code that you did not write but reverse engineered? It that legal?
Nice analysis. I think the author really hit on the key problem: expensive BOM due to poor engineering choices.
The entire project looks like the result of a high school student's first Instructables. It's hilariously under-engineered and it's clear that these folks had absolutely no idea of how to build a product, IoT or otherwise. Hint: if your product plans involve a raspberry pi, you probably fucked up.
Very interesting read. Based on our experience developing and manufactoring air quality monitors, making a customized PCB should be done as early as possible in the developing process. With easy to use editors (e.g. easyEDA) and cheap and fast PCB production/assembly (even for small quantities), there is no reason to use overized MCUs/mini computers like the Pi and expensive modules e.g. from Adafruit. Also, BOM comp…
Definitely not for scaling, but for deploying prototypes this approach is awesome! Eg use the Pi to create some prototypes, get user feedback, launch a kickstarter, do what you said. I worked at robotics startup that did this, worked super well for our first robots. Podcast about it: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/erik-schluntz-cobalt-robotics/id1649845905?i=1000584727151