It has WiFi, which requires FCC testing for the US market as well as compliance certificates for the European area. These certifications and checks are f...ing costly.
RPi/Arduino in contrast only have wired or no networking, thus eliminating a huge part of the upfront costs (e.g. in Europe you then only need a CE certificate, which you can either issue without testing and be liable if your module doesn't meet the standards, or you get an ESD/EMR test for a couple thousand bucks).
You only need to undergo FCC testing if the module you use is not already certified. You can buy "FCC-approved" modules that are "ready to sell".
I ran into something similar with BT4.0 modules - had to convince the client that a $3 module, while cheap up front, couldn't be sold without spending $$$ on certification. Eventually they went with a $7 one.
Good point on the Wi-Fi. I guess that explains the cost, but it doesn't explain why you'd choose it over a Raspberry Pi. You can buy a Wi-Fi USB dongle for like 5 bucks on Amazon.
The base Arduino doesn't have networking. However, there are models, like the Yun, that do have wifi and/or ethernet and are less than the cost of the Tessel.
Tessel is marketed as a "micro-controller" while the PI as a "micro-computer".
Javascript marketing aside,it would be interesting to know if one can reproduce all Tessel capabilites with a Pi + extensions.
I dont think the "but it runs nodejs modules!" matter that much,if you're going to write for embedded devices,you need to go low level and seek optimizations like crazy.The stuff has like 32MB of ram,you cant do much in javascript+nodejs with that.AFAIK it doesnt even run a javascript engine,but translate the code to LUA.
> it would be interesting to know if one can reproduce all Tessel capabilites with a Pi + extensions.
You can, I've had a Node-on-Pi based home automation system running for a few months now. It looks like Tessel's main advantage is the plug & play nature of their modules.
It currently consists of a bunch of single purpose modules, some output (light switch and door lock via GPIO, music player, notification sender, etc.), some input (SMS via Twilio, Github webhooks, web interface, etc.), and a central broker. They're all communicating by sending JSON messages over ZeroMQ sockets. Each module connects to and registers with the broker, which keeps track of module health with heartbeats, and routes and schedules commands based on the modules' registered handlers.
It's less complicated than it might sound, I've got some (unorganized, undocumented) code up at https://github.com/spro/drsproboto if you want to take a peek.
Lower barrier of entry for people interested in playing around with hardware development. No breadboards and wires, only pluggable modules. Javascript instead of C.
I think for many people cost is the most important factor. People who bought the RPi did so because it was so cheap that it was practically an impulse purchase.
Disregarding the actual device price, the other issue here is the expensive module pricing. Let's face it, if you're buying this because you want to do things the simple way then you're going to be buying modules. Ambient light + MicroSD card? That'll be $50 please. Too many electronics outfits shaft consumers like this and too many electronics hobbyists put up with it.
Taking into account the value of one's time, maybe paying $50 for a pair of modules rather than taking the time to discover how to build them from scratch is a worthwhile spend? Enough hobbyists seem to think so, based on the success of these businesses.
The volume cost of parts that make smartphones, remote controls, wifi dongles, etc so darn cheap for the average consumer do not scale downward when you're only making 100 or 1000 of something.
It contains a grand total of three components, the only one costs anything is the SD slot. At 100 units, they're about 50c each. The other components cost nothing, relatively, you can buy a thousand resistors for a dollar. The board itself would cost under a dollar to make at anything above 10 units. Total cost is about $2 if we're stretching.
I ran a quote for an assembly house, and for 100 boards it would cost around $200 or $2 a board - so now it's $4. Standard markup is 3 times the build cost or about $12-15. Yet it costs $25. That doesn't include international shipping, by the way.
Economy of scale certainly works when you're making 100.
Even Seeed Studio do assembly nowadays, and you don't even need to carry the stock as the components are in their Open Part Library.
So...people who want to play around with hardware development without actually learning anything about hardware development? How is that helpful? Why not just learn what you need to learn and do it right the first time?
I assume you're using a computer you made yourself from materials you mined out of the Earth? Running software you programmed in hardware of your own design?
Higher level abstractions in computing are of obvious value. Many more people know Javascript than know HDL, an assembly variant or even C. It's pretty obvious why this would be helpful. If you know a little bit of Javascript you can get out of the browser and have physical stuff happen. Pretty neat hack if you ask me.
Yiur first paragraph is simply absurd, so I'll ignore it.
So what is one to do once they have designed a system using this platform? Do you want to turn it into a product? Great! Go redesign the entire thing from the ground up because what you made is a toy.
It can't be manufactured at a reasonable cost. The code will have to be completely rewritten. The hardware has to be completely re-specced. What a waste of time.
There are plenty of micro platforms our there these days that require relatively little knowledge of hardware,yet at least resemble something you may actually see in the real world. Use those.
That said, I could see myself being proven wrong here,which is fine. It would only take some enthusiastic person who already knows JavaScript and has some revolutionary idea to-do do so.
My opinion is that you don't need to sit on mountains of abstraction at all times. No abstraction I'd perfect and we already have enough people in this industry who don't really understand what the hell they're doing. Learning something new isn't a bad thing.
Fine; it's the paint by numbers of the hardware world. Oh, and it's really expensive to boot. Raspberry Pi's and Arduinos are for hobbyists; this is a child's toy.
Probably, they don't want to turn it into a product. Probably, they just want to use it themselves. In this case it makes total sense to improve speed of development despite increasing unit cost.
Because hardware is hard. There's a learning curve that requires a time investment before you can do anything cool. Anything that starts to tear down that learning curve is a step in the right direction.
Do you honestly think that there is anyone out there who bought a Tessel instead of an Arduino/Raspberry/etc.? Every single person I know who ordered a Tessel is someone who wasn't interested in hardware originally AT ALL. The premise of the Tessel got them interested in playing around with hardware.
Edit: I answered this seriously because I assumed OP was a serious comment. After re-reading, I'm not certain, so I apologize if it wasn't.
RPi/Arduino in contrast only have wired or no networking, thus eliminating a huge part of the upfront costs (e.g. in Europe you then only need a CE certificate, which you can either issue without testing and be liable if your module doesn't meet the standards, or you get an ESD/EMR test for a couple thousand bucks).