[wegs]

I'd buy one if:

1) It was prebuilt, plug-and-play.

2) It comes as a kit. I can do it as a project with my kid. Once assembled, it's as above. Kit is consumer-friendly.

Digikey parts list and PCB is a little over my laziness tolerance.

People confuse free-as-in-freedom with free-as-in-not-making-a-profit. I've done free-as-in-freedom businesses, successfully. I wish others did too.

A lot of manufacturers underestimate the power of 100% open. I'm not price-sensitive. I'll pay for it. If my cheap Chinese [tablet/keyboard/mouse/webcam/etc.] comes with a PCB schematic, parts list, and open source firmware, I'll probably pay triple and prefer it to a Logitech/Razor/etc. I'll give nice online reviews too.

And the designs are simple enough no competitive edge is lost.

On the other side, projects like this, lacking a business model, rarely get mature enough for me to use. Make 'em nice and sell 'em, I say.

And yes, there will be cheaper clones, so profit margins can't be insane, but people will pay extra for the original branded version, AND profit margins can't be insane in competitive markets either way.

[bittercynic]

Digikey parts list + pcb can be a reasonably convenient way to put your own kit together - you can upload a csv to digikey and have them fill your shopping cart automatically, and it works pretty well. They even suggest alternatives like if your list had 8x an item, but it is actually cheaper to buy 10x the item it will suggest that.

[wegs]

One big difference is that if I order a parts list and PCB based on your web site, if you've made an error or have a part missing, I'm stuck debugging. If you're putting together a kit, you've (presumably) gone through and made sure it's all there and all works together. That includes the auxiliary stuff, like firmware, or having a case.

Another big difference is if I place three orders, and one comes up out-of-stuck or delayed by months, I get stuck with a useless 2/3 of a kit. I can't return the useless 2/3, since those vendors didn't mess up. If you're selling me a kit, you're doing logistics for me.

Even with things with standard parts, like putting a computer or bicycle together from standardized parts, I've had issues. With DIY, this thing can explode.

[Brian_K_White]

As someone who has several pcb + digikey projects, I don't buy this.

It's literally 2 clicks instead of one click. 3 clicks to add the 3d-printed part fromShapeways.

It IS already exactly, a kit. You get a box in the mail that has everything in it, it just says DigiKey on the box instead of mydumbproject.org

That's 3 fully pre-loaded urls all together in one spot. No uploading a csv. Just click the link and up pops a pre-loaded shopping cart. If anything is out of stock, you see that before buying not after they ship 1/2 of it.

I'm exactly the same amount likely to "forget to include some parts" in my painstakingly crafted digikey cart as in any kit. It takes days sometimes to hunt down and figure out just what all should go in the cart because there are 500 versions of everything. You don't do that much work to leave things out.

I want to share my efforts for whoever wants it, or just for reference, not run a mail order business. I have a day job. The stuff is free, the knowledge and directions are written up into a followable recipe, in a wiki and github which I don't even have to be the only one who can improve over time, and you only have to pay the actual material suppliers, and fill out 3 order forms instead of one. And when I lose interest or die, it's all still there without me to keep providing it.

If you think it makes so much sense to provide that last little bit of service, and charge for it, feel free to start up and run that business. You can take all my stuff and produce and sell those kits. I bet you have no interest in that though because you have better things to do. Yeah, me too, and this ereader guy too. If you want anything more, you want a Kobo or any of the other 50 rootable no-names. Those already exist. You don't need this or a kit version of this for that.

Figuring out what all to put in that digikey cart was the 900x hard part, but clicking 2 links instead of one is just over your laziness threshhold? OK.

You have to buy the pcb from a different link? Well you have to buy batteries from somewhere else even for a complete finished product let alone a kit, and a protective cover, and a memory card, and a car charger, and headphones, any number of extra bits like that. The book reader didn't already come with the books I hate to surprise you with that outrageous ommission. This argument just doesn't wash on so many levels.

[wegs]

I'm not complaining about what you're doing. I'm describing what I want. You can accuse me of being unreasonable, but people said the same thing about remote controls. Who'd be lazy to not just want to walk over and switch a channel on the TV? And countless other conveniences.

I'm also not asking YOU to do anything differently. You have a day job, and with however many kits you've made, no way in heck this would compete with YOUR day job. I also want a blueberry plant in my back yard. Neither you, nor this ereader guy, nor even the local garden store have any obligation to give me that. It's a free market.

But yes, I do think there's a pretty good business in providing that last little bit of service. I'd pay for it, and I suspect many others would as well. You can view this as an integration of Digikey+Shapeways+PCB. Or you can view this as an expansion of AdaFruit/SEEED/etc. to be more open. Or you can view this as moving cheap Chinese manufacturing up-market.

And I'd buy an open source Kobo too, for that matter. There's a world of difference between a rootable device and an open source device too. Most rootable devices I have are now sitting in storage somewhere, unused, when the fun ran out and the maintenance overhead kicked in. One or two were never used, as rooting became a pain-in-the-butt, some feature I needed was missing, or there was some hardware change between the rooted version and the one I bought. Most open source devices I have are in active use, some with a few tweaks.

I'm glad to support open. I value my freedom. I also like having things which keep working, and open mitigates risks (if the manufacturer goes under, the community sometimes takes over). I'm glad to pay for that.

However, I'm busy, and I'm not glad to buy a headache. That goes double for people less technical than you or me, ones who want projects for kids, etc.