No headder sounds like a good option. That’s how I'd like to buy something like this. I seem to always be unsoldering things and redoing them to make my own connection points anyway.

That is what I am thinking. Also, it would allow someone to direct solder wire to the board if they wanted too.

For those in Europe, I chose all RoHS components.

I will have to sell these for about $5.00 each to make it worth my time to put them together to sell to others. The original order will be for 160 board. I will put them up for sale to see what happens.

Given the total cost of a Sabertooth/Roo/Encoder combo, another $5+shipping to make it effective is certainly money well spent. I think you could easily charge double that and sell as many as you are going to sell. I think the challenge may be finding 160 people with this need. It seems to be a fairly small part of our community that needs them, although maybe the Astromech and BB8 builders clubs have a need that we aren't seeing here as well. I am not even sure I am buying a roo to go with my sabertooth, but I will order one when they are available just to be sure I have it if I need it.

Alan

Where I see the potential is more in the Arduino world. There are people building these for themselves, but there isn't anything that is available to purchase built and ready to use. Digital (logic) /2 circuits (especially with the 74HC chip) seem to be in demand a bit. I need to sell about 50 of these at this price to break even. I think that is doable and still leaves me with a good stock to start on Rafiki's.

The encoder/sabertooth/roo issue is really just one of the issues that can be resolved with this. I think it could be used for clocks or many other projects that I have seen while researching flip flop circuits.

The other benefit I do see is with this motor specifically. I can find the motors without the encoders for $200 each. I then can find encoders for about $40 each that will work on these motors. The motor+encoder+flip flop runs about $144 if the motors+encoders are bought from Zagros.

This all excludes shipping of course. So, you end up saving about $96.00 with this option if you wanted this motor with a smaller count encoder. 65K per rev is crazy ridiculous.

If you are looking at producing quite a few robots using these motors, a cost savings of $192.00 per robot is huge. This along with the time to put these encoders on the motors as opposed to putting these on the encoders really helps.

Also, the pull up resistors for the encoder are in the circuit so, this is an added benefit for manufacturing.

DIP Socket or solder the chip to the board? It doubles the price to have the DIP socket. Thoughts?

it is safer to do the socket so I think I will go that route. Alan, we are now at that $10.00 mark you mentioned... Ugh

Trying to keep it to where if I sell 50 of these, I break even.

[edit] I will use sockets on the first 10 that I make. From there I will go to soldering the chips on the board.

The first 160 of these I am going to assemble myself. If they sell good, I will start having the board manufacturer handle the build and test process.

I will get a sheet that will need to be cut (40 or so per sheet). I plan on trying a scroll saw to cut these apart. If that doesn't work well or if I am breathing too much fiberglass, I will go to a wet saw.

Doing it this way should allow the cost to be more at the $6.00 range for the first run.

When it goes beyond this 160, I will receive completed boards ready to be sold.