EVENT IDEA: Arduino Hack Night

[Bergo]

well if coops has an AVR dragon, we could get a pile of atmega 168's or 328's and burn them all with the arduino bootloader, and breadboard up some arduino clones? (unless people are really hell bent on using arduino shields, then we'll need to buy or fab PCB's due to the retarded pin spacing)

[Odemia]

Why not order up a small run of boards and parts from digi key and sell them at a small profit as a fundraiser for the group? I would buy one, I am even willing to front the cost of getting a board house to do them and buying enough parts. Could slap a TechWorks logo on the screen print.

I'll price it out report back.

[rsilk]

One thing to note is that the chips on the arduino can often be quite hard to source. Atmel seems to be having trouble keeping up with demand.

[Odemia]

So how many people are interested in a Uno and how many are interested in a Uno + starter bread board etc? How many people just want to bread board some kind of clone?

Personally I just want a Uno.

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One thing to note is that the chips on the arduino can often be quite hard to source. Atmel seems to be having trouble keeping up with demand.

Yeah, haven't looked into building them since Duemivilla had just come out. Sourcing parts for a Uno (current Version) is a bitch. All the chips are on back order for 3 weeks and have ~2000 min quantity purchases to guarantee you get anything. What a pain. The price was looking good too, parts would have been ~$10. Even if the boards cost $20/each from a board shop still would have been competitive with the best of them.

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Could just do a group buy http://ca.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Arduino/A000046/?qs=tbM5a8K56PWjTWNNmbdzWg%3d%3d. Plus get some bread boards, leds, etc. for those that want them. Wouldn't be hard to source the extra stuff in the starter kits for those that want it and if people have projects in mind the starter kits could be customized.

[Bergo]

adafruit and sparkfun (as well as various Ebay sellers) have arduino kits, assembled, for $30. Pretty hard to get boards made, buy components, and assemble them for cheaper with the intent to resale with a profit margin.
I'd be all for it, just to have fun making something, but I don't think it would be a money maker.

[Odemia]

Yeah, if you include a cost to assemble it wouldn't have been <$30 but the parts alone would have been around that mark. I would have payed $35-40 for a board if it had a TechWorks screen print on it. But I don't really want to wait months to buy, ship and assemble one. But there could have been $5-10 for TechWorks if they were sold at a premium for the special build.

Also neither Sparkfun or Adafruit have regular Uno's in stock. They do have some Unos with starter kits and some of the SMD variants in stock but then youhave to get all the extra stuff in a starter kit or with the SMDs you can't swap the micro without a hot air rework station. Mouser was the cheapest regular Uno in stock I could find. If you find another please let me know.

Lastly, what about shipping? If we group buy through Mouser, they ship free on orders >$200 and it is fast; UPS or one of the big logistics companies. From what I remember sparkfun and adafruit charge shipping to the customer so you either pay a lot for UPS or pay less and wait for USPS. Just one more thing to think about.

Back a little more on topic I would be in for an Arduino programming session. No experience in the arduino framework myself so I could definitely take advantage of working through the early learning curve in a group.