Is there a market for a Teensy 3.1 48 pin ARM stamp?

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I'm still reading this thread, too. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. There's a vocal minority of approximately one that thinks "Teensy" would be better if only it weren't so teensy and that every view or comment is evidence of interest in derailing Paul into making a breakout board.

To be fair, there have been some interesting ideas here and some good reminders of old threads.
 
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There's a vocal minority of approximately one

Some people must have flunked basic math 101 and can't count pass the 1 digit.:) These same people cannot be trusted to do any type of marketing study for electronic products.:rolleyes:

To do a un-bias study, there should be a separate thread for each forum user to vote and show his/hers preferences for a 48 pin Teensy 3.1 ARM stamp.
:cool:
 
If the concept was to keep the Teensy3.1 CPU and libraries but target people wanting a proven module that could be fabricated into small runs of boards how Teensy could you make it? I know there have been requests for castellated edges but if you are going to do that I'm assuming you can get a finer pitch than 0.1 while still allowing reliable hand assembly for prototyping?

Suspecting routing may in fact define the size minimum if you are trying to keep something close to the existing pin numbering.
 
Some people must have flunked basic math 101 and can't count pass the 1 digit.:) These same people cannot be trusted to do any type of marketing study for electronic products.:rolleyes:

To do a un-bias study, there should be a separate thread for each forum user to vote and show his/hers preferences for a 48 pin Teensy 3.1 ARM stamp.
:cool:
1) I am not sure it can qualify as stamp if it hits 48 pins at 0.1" pitch being 24 per side - I've never seen a stamp quite that shape and both my sisters collected stamps for years.

2) From sublime to ridiculous is your idea of an un-biased study imho.

3) I too must have flunked basic mathematics, just going by my current take on your thread here.

4) I am still reading the thread as well but the urge to unsubscribe grows with certain kinds of posts here, yours (I've quoted) and this one (of my own) may as well be counted as more of those.
 
To do a un-bias study, there should be a separate thread for each forum user to vote and show his/hers preferences for a 48 pin Teensy 3.1 ARM stamp.
:cool:

My first thought is please, for the love of god and kittens, no poll. But if someone wants to take this project on themselves, with no expectation from PJRC to do anything, and post a poll about it, them I'm won't stop it, ban it, or delete it.
 
I feel like t3andy is... overvaluing his own views on this. I am currently in the process of bringing a T3.1 based device (custom PCB using PJRC Mini54's) to market, and while it is a lot larger than what is being proposed here (my PCB is 280mm x 220mm), a lot of this stuff applies no matter what.

For one, everything Potatotron has said is spot on. Having no concept of what your user base might be - and I'm pretty sure a poll on this site will bias your numbers quite a bit - a SMALL run is your best bet at first. Here's the rub with that, though. Let's say, best (worst?) case scenario, your device takes off! Suddenly you have thousands of orders coming in. But you only made 100 initial units, and you didn't even give yourself enough of a margin that you could use the profits from those to build another run of 100. And you've got like, 1256 orders that are just trying to give you money. Well, now you have to rework your workflow a good deal - hopefully things are scaleable when you set it up the first time.

But oh shit, there's a problem when you went to manufacture your next run of 1400 units. The assembly house put the wrong resistor/crystal/capacitor/whatever (I had an assembly house put a 'stock' digikey MINI54 on a small run of my boards... partially my own fault, but I thought I'd documented it well that I NEEDED the PJRC ones).

So now what, you've got 1400 bad PCBs. You could spend a bunch more money, cutting into your margins, and send them aaaallll back to the assembly house to be fixed (maybe you'll be lucky and they'll give you a deal on the rework, especially if it was your own fault the mistake happened). Or you can try and do them yourself, which takes time - and you've got 1200 customers waiting and pestering you for the product they ordered, at this point, months ago. Or you hire people (money money money) to help with the rework.

My point is, even just sticking to 100 units, and hell let's be bold and say that you're REAL good with a hot air gun, so you're doing them by hand. What if you ballsed up an order of boards? What if the fab didn't understand your notes, and didn't castellate/copper the edge pins? We're talking a $33 device in the *best* case scenario. Thankfully, I think you'd be comfortably outside the purview of the FCC (kit parts aren't covered), which is what I'm dealing with right now (EMI shielding and design is both wonderfully fun and also a nightmare).

My real point is, if you really need a 'board' that you can surface mount, assumedly because you have other components you'll be surface mounting... Why not just build the T3.1 section direct on to your board? I've done a few by hand. It's not easy but it is doable. Hell, it's not that much extra trouble (all you need is a heat gun) to drop a SMD header pin section on the T3.1 itself, for the SMD pins, and design your PCB with those extra socket holes in mind. It's all of what, 2 extra minutes per unit and maybe $100 for the heat gun. Definitely not worth the extra $12 (at minimum) per unit to get this custom 'stamp' board made for a small run. And for anything over 50-100 units it's not that terrible a cost to just have the SMD components put directly on your boards at an assembly house.
 
with no expectation from PJRC to do anything

Anyone who has purchased a product from PJRC is a customer of PJRC. The last time I have checked PJRC is a commercial enterprise.
Most commercial enterprises will go out of business if they don't listen to their customer's needs/wishes.

To settle this topic, once and for all, take an informal survey which does NOTobligate PJRC to do absolutely nothing! It might show a marketing need for a Teensy product in which customers would like to purchase and keep you in business and gainfully employed.

BTW ... The trolls and the topic hijackers on this board, for this topic, did their best and failed.
 
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Most companies would also go out of business if they listened to every harebrained scheme from every single customer and tried to act on all of them. PJRC has been very clear that they're not interested in doing this - what they've been doing is working well for them, and it's not in their best interests to devote time and money to something that, so far, only a very small number of customers have requested. There are other possible solutions to the problem you're having. I don't speak for PJRC, but as a business owner myself sometimes you HAVE to ignore that small part of your customer base that wants you to do the impossible/impractical. You lose a few customers (MAYBE) or you lose a lot of time and money working on something that MOST of your customer base doesn't give a rat's ass about, when you could be working on something that the majority of your base is actually interested in.

If you want it so badly, make it yourself.
 
Ahhh MuShoo, I know all about the manufacturing issues you speak of. Plus a few more war stories - like a contract manufacturer using a bad soldering profile on your job and pretty much ruining an entire build.

As Paul has said many, many times - if only there were more hours in the day... We wish we could do everything our customers wanted, heck even take on some of the many consulting jobs that people ask us to do, but we can't.

We have a pretty good list of some awesome stuff in development. Will we make everyone happy, nope. Do any of these projects include a 48-pin Teensy 3.1, unfortunately nope. But I do think we will make a lot of people happy and impressed when some of these projects are released.
 
But I do think we will make a lot of people happy and impressed when some of these projects are released.

Good, I hope the software is finished at the same time as the hardware. We waited 1.5 - 2 years for the Teensy 3.1 software libraries to be in decent shape so we could finish our projects.
 
Thank you Robin, I look forward to the release of the awesome stuff tho I do not mean to prod Paul into hurrying any of it along.

@t3andy: Sorry to hear your finances are that poor that you feel the price PJRC asks for the pre-programmed ARM bootloader is high; for what it provides I find it more than reasonably priced.
 
+1 more detail about product would help me either shut up or make better suggestions.

@t3andy: I can't help but feel that perhaps you are 'doing it wrong' then, of course I don't know every last detail you are dealing with so the chances I am wrong have to be pretty good BUT:

If you are making a product which has Teensy functionality (in terms your customers can treat it like a Teensy and reprogram it just the same) then the Bootloader cost simply must be a given in the final price of your product (and, a bargain it remains; to me, at least).

If your product has no intention of providing the end user with a 'Teensy' experience then there is no need to leave the bootloader connected, once you have programmed it - this is easily achieved, PM me for details if you are really at a loss how to do this; thousands of end units and really only one pre-programmed bootloader required (best to have couple spares tho, if really doing thousands...)

Sorry if this is just offensive really; it is my sincere wish to help.
 
Good, I hope the software is finished at the same time as the hardware. We waited 1.5 - 2 years for the Teensy 3.1 software libraries to be in decent shape so we could finish our projects.
Tried to hold my fingers on this one but the urge overwhelms: If Paul releases hardware before completing all software requirements then he can at least hope for some community help/contrib to help finish the software rather than just having to sit there and write every last bit himself.
 
Release the hardware and wait for others to finish the software?

Wow ... sounds like uncompensated forum members are helping a commercial enterprise make $$$$ money on their FREE software help/contributions BUT don't ask for a 48 pin ARM Stamp!
:rolleyes:
 
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You know that PJRC do it on tight margins and contribute to the success of other entities, both commercial and pure hobbyist, right?

I will contribute merrily, if I ever come up with something worth contributing again; others have contributed lots - we are all compensated quite nicely imho.
 
I'd like to urge everyone participating in this thread, myself included, to perhaps slow down a bit and ease some of the tension that's been building up.
 
Release the hardware and wait for others to finish the software?

Wow ... sounds like uncompensated forum members are helping a commercial enterprise make $$$$ money on their FREE software help/contributions BUT don't ask for a 48 pin ARM Stamp!
:rolleyes:

Welcome to open-source.
Perhaps take a look at the massive code contributions that have been made by PJRC to the Arduino project (also uncompensated of course).

I'm in the same boat, I'd like a bigger footprint teensy for soldering directly to a PCB for a commercial product, but I've accepted that at this point that isn't going to happen. My solution was to design an adapter board which brings out all the pins to 2mm headers; this way future teensy variants can be used instead via a different adapter board. At the end of the day, PJRC does not have the resources to do this, so the bottom line is, design it yourself (all of the hardware designs and tonnes of layout advice are available on here) or find another way.
 
I'm in the same boat, I'd like a bigger footprint teensy for soldering directly to a PCB for a commercial product

There are two of us? I wager that there are many more due to the number of views on this topic! Totally amazing!
:D
 
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