[IAEP] Humane Reader is a $20 8-bit PC for TVs

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr.
<jecel at merlintec.com> wrote:
> C. Scott Ananian wrote on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:25:55 -0400
>> I suspect the inventors added up some prices and reduced by some
>> arbitrary factor to include "volume".  My guesstimate says $20 for the
>> electronics BOM alone, not including all the other costs of
>> manufacturing.
>
> There are details in some slides in the presentation linked at the end
> of http://humaneinfo.com/

Which confirm my suspicions, thanks.

The cost to make a PCB does not equal the cost of a finished product.

Not even going into the "intangibles" (cost of money, packaging,
shipping, distribution, overhead, support), the quoted cost doesn't
include an SD card, a PS/2 keyboard, a 5V mini-USB power supply, or an
AV cable.  It also seems to assume that you can just dip the thing in
epoxy in lieu of a case.  The price also doesn't include the TV, but I
think the idea is that the recipient already has one of those.

The cost could be further improved by ditching the Atmel AVRs, which
are very nice to program, but quite pricey -- especially if you need
to use three (!).  Using a single more powerful chip would reduce
cost.

(For that matter -- he's using a PS/2 or USB keyboard, which already
contain processors roughly comparable to the AVR.  A better hack would
be to just reprogram that.)
 --scott

ps. The presentation also disses PCB, whose autorouter I wrote, as
unsophisticated. ;-)

-- 
                         ( http://cscott.net/ )