Hello Everyone,

I've ordered PCBs for the first revision of the circuit board. At this point I have a pretty good estimate for the total cost of the project. I've broken it down at the bottom of this post. The mouser order for this revision of the project can be found here. The battery can be ordered from adafruit, but a larger battery with more capacity and higher discharge rating can be had elsewhere. The adafruit order includes the following (each linked individually): joysticks, LCD, Raspberry Pi 2, replacement USB jacks.

The costs are as follows (in USD):

• Mouser order $47.19
• Adafruit order $78.40 (battery is extra $12.50)
• Battery $16.68
• Both microcontrollers pre-programmed $2.94
• Estimated about $4 for audio circuitry

In total, the parts come to $149.21 with the better battery before shipping. The PCB price is intentionally not included because the prices vary, and often come in multiples. For this revision I ordered 5 boards for $30 before shipping. That works out to $6 per board. I also left out the cost of 3D printing the case because I don't have any experience with 3D printers.

With everything added up, I feel like the project is a good value. There is about $115 in big ticket items (RPI, LCD, battery, LCD driver, switches, and joysticks). Most of these items don't have readily available alternate sources, so it would be hard to bring the cost down by trying to replace them. After that there are a bunch of small items like voltage regulators, microcontrollers, other IC's, and passives which begin to add up. At this point I'm fairly pleased with the total, so reducing the cost is something that will go far into the background.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment if you have any questions or anything else you'd like to say.

-Stephen