Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit • Hacker News Board

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#41

Post by mouhtasi » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:03 PM UTC

chazu wrote: post #39

Fantastic - I'll definitely be subscribing. I imagine that having a forum for users to discuss projects would be a good idea, have you considered adding one? I'm having trouble with the order form, however - it doesn't seem to be loading at all, clicking 'Subscribe' does nothing for me. I'd give you more diagnostic info but I'm occupied at the moment - perhaps later. In any event thanks for sharing and best of luck.

You may have to disable uBlock/AdBlock/Ghostery to see the PayPal/Bitcoin order buttons under the subscribe button.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#42

Post by king7532 » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:11 PM UTC

There is a new Kickstarter project called Hacker Boxes which does this on steroids: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207210015/hackerboxes-t...

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#43

Post by midnightmonster » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:15 PM UTC

skimmas wrote: post #2

Hmmm could find pricing info and the subscribe button does not seem to work.

uBlock killed subscribe for me, too. Didn't occur to me until I saw others mention it.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#44

Post by dave84 » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:25 PM UTC

I signed up.

The link to terms on the subscription confirmation page is broken. There's an extra slash at the end.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#45

Post by jordan0day » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

gergles wrote: post #22

I really really really hate the separate shipping cost. We can't get it without shipping. Don't quote prices that are impossible to achieve. The pricing, BTW, is $20 a month or $18.33 a month if you pay a year in advance.

> We can't get it without shipping. Don't quote prices that are impossible to achieve.

This, exactly.

When I first glanced and thought "Oh, $150 a year? That's not too bad." Then I looked closer and saw the shipping cost was extra.

It's not that the extra shipping cost was necessarily prohibitive, it's just that there's some sort of psychological effect (sticker shock, I guess?) where you think you know what the price of something is, and are disappointed to learn that's not really the price at all.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#46

Post by hga » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:31 PM UTC

Altay- wrote: post #28

I think its safe to say we've reached peak monthly-subscription-startup...

No, no, not at all.

I'm 54 years old, played this sort of game in the early '70s in elementary school with kits from Radio Shack, but it didn't really take (science and later computers was my thing), and I'm seriously considering subscribing. I'm potentially interested in doing the projects, but definitely don't want to spend a lot of time on the net gathering the parts and info, although it would, as others note, be cheaper.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#47

Post by Timsalabim » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:31 PM UTC

king7532 wrote: post #42

There is a new Kickstarter project called Hacker Boxes which does this on steroids: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/207210015/hackerboxes-t...

Only ships to United States. So disappointing steroids :)

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#48

Post by Timsalabim » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:34 PM UTC

empressplay wrote: post #25

batou wrote: post #18

The only killer value here is the material and there's little of that on display at the moment. What appears to be there is stuff you can find for nothing on the web with a little googling ( http://allaboutcircuits.com/ http://electronicsclub.info/ for example) The parts are worth little to nothing; less than $30. You can get bagged kits from bitsbox.co.uk with everything you need for $24. I can't see the value propo…

Given the price of the parts I'd strongly consider offering the first month free, or at most for the cost of shipping. I just don't see too many people parting with $20 based on a landing page + no social proof. I could be wrong though...

Same here.

Especially as it seems to be aimed at novices like myself I'd like to see something a bit more tangible that I'm signing up for.

Almost pulled the trigger and then decided it was simply too vague a proposition to impulse buy a monthly returning cost for.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#49

Post by zokier » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

RALaBarge wrote: post #33

You can purchase the official Arduino starter kit for less than what the yearly price costs, not to mention the shipping fees from Amazon. As someone who works for a SaaS and pays for a Barkbox subscription, I do think the idea is good, but the pricing combined with the lack description on the page is probably going to be a huge road block.

> You can purchase the official Arduino starter kit for less than what the yearly price costs

I would expect Tron-Club to provide far more comprehensive set (in a year) than what the Arduino starter kit is. Of course I have no way of actually knowing that.

Re: Tron-Club, a monthly circuit-building kit

#50

Post by Arnor » Wed, Jul 15, 2015, 3:42 PM UTC

Though I agree with others that the price is a bit high, I want to see where this goes. I hope a strong community can grow around it and folks come up with interesting ways to combine previous kits. It would be really fun if some of the monthly projects consisted of compositions of previous projects. That may break with the model of each kit containing everything necessary for each project so maybe it would work better as a monthly challenge on Reddit or something. Anyway, here goes nothing :)