[Vexs]

Figure 3 from the report- that's an Adafruit sensor module on a 3d printed bit of plastic with a teensy-brand microcontroller just sitting in there! Actually, the entire electronics enclosure appears printed.

Very funny to see in what I assume is a million-dollar product.

[MengerSponge]

On-brand, though. And speak some respect to Adafruit's name! Lady Ada's product isn't what failed.

[hinkley]

What was the water condensation situation like in this submarine? Semi bare electronics sounds very very bad.

[progbits]

This is a camera outside the sub, and the electronics are inside sealed enclosure. If that had any leak for water to get in some conformal coating isn't going to save you, it will get pancaked.

Of course random arduino module and teensy used for product is amateur hour, even for low volume production. They must have crazy margins on that camera and producing custom board is very cheap.

[thereisnospork]

>They must have crazy margins on that camera and producing custom board is very cheap.

It's expensive in time and expertise to do a custom board, and to debug a custom board. All to what, save 20$ on a bom which might not even be 1% of the profit per unit?

Far more efficient to just ship the dev board. They could have perhaps picked a better dev setup to start with, but if it looks stupid and it works...

[progbits]

Point isn't to save BOM cost, margins are high already and they can eat into them.

Unless they are making literally less than 10 of those, custom board will be easier to manufacture than that mess of dev boards and more reliable than random wires and headers all over the place. Plus they can spend money where it makes sense, using better regulators etc.

[thereisnospork]

Only if you happen to have the relevant skill set.

Speaking as someone capable of designing the mechanical hardware and who is broadly electrically savvy but who is most definitely not an embedded engineer: I could bang out a few hundred hacked together dev boards in week, but doing a custom board would take me a few months. Starting with reading 'Prototyping PCBs for Dummies'.

[mrheosuper]

or just hire a guy that knows how to do their job.

[MengerSponge]

Any money spent coating those semi-bare electronics would have been wasted. There's an engineering lesson to be taught here, I'm sure.

[blueflow]

Lol, and the censored controller is a teensy 3.2