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Crowdfunding as a group buy for the EEZ H24005

A project log for DIY programmable (SCPI) bench power supply

Bridging the gap between professional and DIY/hobbyist bench power supply

denisDenis 12/11/2016 at 09:204 Comments

I was successfully completed an "experimental" group buy (small qty) for bare PCBs, TFT display and customized metal enclosure. That encourage me to start thinking about another group buy but this time for assembled modules and all other parts. But PCBA service makes sense only for larger quantity that means more people needs to be involved and I decide to run new group buy as a crowdfunding campaign.

The campaign will be conducted on the CrowdSupply and I'd like to hear your opinions about pledge levels. First please note that I'm not going to offer a completed solution. Also please note the campaign is conceived as a group buy to achieve few goals:

Again, this is a group buy, not a new product production kick start, because it's not a profit driven (I have another source of money for living). Therefore prices of all pledges will be set to cover without loss the cost of manufacturing, packaging, transportation and campaign fullfilment cost, crowdfunding platform and payment gateway fees.
I was thinking about the following pledge levels (the final number and contents will be set in accordance with your wishes):

  1. Set of bare PCBs only (4 of them, 2 layer)
  2. As above + metal enclosure (with other metal parts such as TFT display support, AC/DC modules support, channel's heatsinks)
  3. Set of assembled PCBs only
  4. As above + metal enclosure set + wire harness
  5. As above + TFT display + AC/DC modules (2 of them)
  6. As above + Arduino Due

The latest one include all what is needed to assembly a fully functional unit that can be ready to run after firmware is uploaded. In essence you'll need a screwdriver for that operation and PC with Arduino IDE for uploading. Of course, you also need multimeter to calibrate it using built-in calibration wizard.

Thanks in advance for your valuable inputs.

Discussions

pianobri wrote 12/14/2016 at 16:13 point

I am interested in option 6 without the enclosures (I have already 4 enclosures).

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Ben Hartley wrote 12/14/2016 at 04:22 point

I am interested in option 6. I have little interest in the soldering and sourcing 800 parts myself. I'm really just looking for an affordable platform to build myself a universal battery charger. The 'programmable' power supplies on the market seem to require an attatched computer. I want to be able to design my own charging programs and then pick a program like 'NiCd1' from the touch screen and walk away. 

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Denis wrote 12/14/2016 at 16:27 point

Thanks for your input. We are going in that direction: that you can load a program/script that can be called e.g. "battery charger" that could take care not only about type of battery but also keep track of "charging history" for specific battery (battery name, number of charging cycles, charging data logging: current/voltage/time duration/Ah delivered, etc). We have a plenty of space to do that thanks to SDcard that can be inserted and be completely independent of PC. Of course in any moment one could transfer such data to the PC.

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Ben Hartley wrote 12/15/2016 at 00:48 point

Sounds great. I see you also have the potential to add a temperature probe. I'd also be interested in a load bank module for battery capacity measurements. Any idea about costs for option 6? 

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