[hxii]

I understand the rationale, but it looks like they decided to go the Sisyphean route on this.

ESP32-C5 ~$10

ESP32-P4 ~$5

Display ~$10

Case is maybe 90 cents (let's round to $1) if you print out of ABS.

The rest of the components? Let's say another $15 worst case.

~$41 or around that much? Sure, but definitely not ~$193.

[notarobot123]

What about design, build, marketing etc.?

I don't get why the maker market complains so much about the idea of businesses selling products at a healthy markup. Just because you know how the sausage was made doesn't mean that the logic of operating a business is any different to how it works in the consumer world.

If you're skilled and motivated enough to make it yourself, you might save some money. You'd loose a lot of time though and that's worth something too (perhaps a lot more).

[mghackerlady]

Roughly $200 is simply far too expensive though. If it were $100-$150, then I could wince at the price that ultimately is necessary for the product to exist. But $200? I just feel like I'm being ripped off. For that price, I'd recommend people buy a raspberry pi and some parts from adafruit and make their own ultimately better version

[hxii]

The cost of design, build and marketing do not triple the final price by themselves.

The kickstarter was successfully funded, yielding in over $3.3M. The device back then was $149 at 20% off, with $169 being the full price. That's still not $193.

Again, this is just my personal opinion, but even taking everything into account and factoring in a nice profit margin, being OVER $100 is very, very hard to justify.

[ninalanyon]

Surely an Android or other mobile and a USB GPIO device can do much the same. For most the outlay is then just the USB to GPIO. 15 USD from Adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2264