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Spockie-Tech
Site Admin
Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 3160
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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The MMC's arent likely to become commercially available unless someone throws lots of money (or equivalent) at me.. or we suddenly see a big need for them in the Australian RoboWars game
There are a total of 7 boards in existance from the first PCB production run..
4 are completely built, 2 are working (The two Gary are running). I have another 2 here that will be repaired without too much more work I hope.
The remaining 3 unbuilt PCB's *could* be assembled, but to release them to anyone else to do so would just ensure a heap of "how do I xx ?" questions to me, which would take up as much of my time as building them myself would have anyway.
Plus, the parts arent the sort of thing you buy from dick-smith or jaycar, so you would have to either harass Jason (which means giving them to people would then take up his time as well as the builder tried to obtain parts for them), or you would have to a pay a fortune to get the parts from places likie DigiKey overseas.
You would then also need to build the seperate "uMOB" brain board, which requires programmed AVR Microprocessors (meaning you need an AVR Programmer), and understand how the whole thing works well enough to debug it.
Sorry to sound negative, but these *aren't* dick smith kits we are talking about here. They are version 0.1 prorotypes constructed with parts uncommon in Australia and requiring greater than average soldering skills (Those heavy 4oz tracks are a bitch to solder properly) and an understanding of power-electronics and switching to get working. Plus, if you make a little mistake, you release a *lot* magic smoke (16-32 fets worth !) and have to start all over again.
Finally, 85%+ of the cost of a speed controller is in the parts, the labour (from an experienced assembler) is only a small part of the price, so you would save very little by "DIY". Thats why we never released kits for the IBC. The price would be so close to the assembled one it wasnt worth it, and it would just create a heap of "warranty" hassles as people send back their "I Assembled the FETs with dads plumbing iron and now it doesnt work, your design sucks" controllers.
With good commerically made controllers like the OSMC, SideWinders etc all available ready-to-roll at reasonable prices, the presence of a few unbuilt circuit boards in my draw should not be looked at as a free ticket to some "cheap" high power controllers - They wouldnt be. _________________ Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people
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Wed Jul 19, 2006 11:44 am |
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