Canada Shmanada..

Great idea, for a couple reasons:

1) Easy distribution of work.
If sold at a relatively low price it eliminates the need to make one’s own prototype boards from board files on the internet.

2) Judge feedback
If a lot of people are buying the damn thing, it’s a good sign. Make more!

Can’t wait to see what comes out of this.

why is it good to support sparkfun? because they exist?

I have never used their pcb service, mainly cause most everything I read about it talks of slow times and high price

now they are basically asking for you to submit designs so they can resell them on their store for a 1 time fee

meh

Lol, well, I guess I’m a bit of a noob and like being able to get everything from simple components to ICs and, gasp, dare I say it, Arduinos and accessories. Plus, they have a pretty friendly and humorous site, they post schematics and details about most of their products, they don’t take themselves too seriously (which is more than I can say for some people on here), and they have a solid processing and shipping department. Finally, they had a good year and instead of hoarding all the profits for themselves, they have a freaking FREE DAY! Are you kidding me? Find me someone else that does that.

How bout this, you tell why NOT to support them.

no “in Mother Russia..” “BatchPCB Pays You” comments really? cuz thats what i was expecting when i read the title

I’ve used BatchPCB for a number of boards so far, and I can’t complain, really. Sure, it takes a few weeks to get boards made, but for one-off PCBs, the price is awful hard to beat. Once I know a board is good, I go directly to a PCB manufacturer for a small run at a much lower cost per square inch. The site is super easy to use as well.

@David–BatchPCB does offer four-layer boards as well, although it may take a couple extra days, since they don’t have as many people requesting such boards.

@lowlysoundtech–If you read the FAQs at BatchPCB, their instructions tell you exactly how to generate the CAM files and upload them if you’re using EagleCAD.

As someone who is interested in possibly selling some PCB designs and kits, this is a very interesting prospect.

I am interested. Someone plese make a MF/DTMF code/decode board !

I understand they have to pay their employees when they are charging thirty five cents for a tact switch that other companies are making a profit on for eleven cents when they probably paid five cents.

He must be new and slacking off hard core cause I’ve never seen this mythical booze restocker guy.

“they have a guy on staff that does nothing but restock booze

cry me a river for their employees” -osgeld

I think it is a great idea. If I am trying to do something, and a piece exists that will help me, I am willing to pay. Whether it is ‘slow’ or ‘overpriced’ depends on who is buying, and why.

I like the Sparkfun guys, and I like the community that has grown up there (and here, incidentally). And nobody makes anyone buy from them. They surely don’t have the volume and overhead of Digikey, and can’t offer the same prices. But if people are buying, and they seem to be, then they must be willing to pay what is asked, for whatever reasons. It cannot be gouging if there are alternatives, and to say so is silly.

Getting all bitter and chestbumpy misses the point. A thousand flowers can bloom in a free market. Those with the wherewithal and inclination can hop off and buy from anyone they like. Sometimes, I do. But I will keep buying from Sparkfun, too.

I saw it on their website, somewhere in their ever rambling blog

and I am not comparing sparkfun to digikey directly, so lets compare sparkfun to oh lets say seeed studios

a 74hc595 on SF = 1.50$
a 74hc595 on SS = 0.90$

so if other small hobby shops can afford to not screw you the customer why cant they

that’s right kiddies, they are too busy making 5 foot tall Nintendo controllers, buying hooch, making wall sized digital clocks

That is their problem, not mine BUT they are passing the cost onto anyone dumb enough to give them money

its a bad vibe, and its poor business

fine up to you, you continue flushing 2-3x the money funding free ebay day, and cash back pcb fab

and I will get projects done at a reasonable cost

I was going to say, there seemed to be a lot more to the anger than just prices. A lot of companies sell stuff that isn’t the lowest price, and I don’t think their trying to screw me.
I like them because the seem active in the community at the hobby level, making the “5 foot tall Nintendo controllers”. If I pay extra to fund it, so be it, at least they’re giving back, with interesting projects, its my choice, and somethings to me, are worth more than money, especially when it comes down to a few cents difference.

Wow. I think 2-3 times is a bit of an exaggeration, but I’m assuming your “research” is valid.

I,too, will keep completing projects, at minutely less reasonable cost while supporting that community that supports me.

Osgeld, take care and have a good one.

“whatever I dont have time to keep up with your staffs drinking problem”

This much is almost certainly true.

@ dennis booth
http://razorconcepts.net/dtmf.html

I did make it through batchpcb so you may see it up sometime soon

What the fuck is a W-9?

Actually no, the answer was, because I didn’t know they existed, and after I did, its because they don’t sell everything I want to buy. I do realize they can’t compete with the place I normally buy, but they also sell products, like breakout boards and stuff like that, that that big distributor doesn’t, with the price of shipping and handling, its cheaper to pay a little more for stuff I could get cheaper somewhere else, because the extra S & H would make it more expensive over all.

Sorry to imply you were angry, but the tone of your comments seemed that way. I’ll take into consideration what I already knew about their prices not being the greatest, but like I said, I already figured that out. Nothing against them, I realize its just the level of business their on. As far as being “cool” I don’t get big into brand identity/loyality, I use PICMicros, which I know is the off brand here, because most of the people use arduino. I never considered this place a prison, because I am free not to read it when ever I feel like, which I honestly don’t read the comments much, usually just click the links on projects I find interesting on the page. I am a noobie at this, and I do appreciate any information to make this new hobby better, you just came across a bit angry, and less informative about it.

@Ryan Leach – http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf

And for the record, Tim changes the keg about once every two weeks these days. We must have 70-some odd* people running around now and most of them seem to like beer.

* In both possible senses of the idiom.

To actually add to the topic, and not distract from it, which degrades this sites usefulness, which I apologize for any off topic comments on my part. I do think this incentive for designing PCB’s is a pretty cool idea. Both for designers and people looking for designs, solderbynumbers tried something like this, but that site didn’t seem to take off well. Hopefully this will fair better, and help fuel some innovation and inspiration, the economy sure could use it.

Osgeld, I hope your place of employment makes you bring your own candles (and matches) for lighting, your own chair for sitting, your own blankets for heating, and your own money for leasing your work space. And I would CERTAINLY hope that they don’t do something silly like provide a refrigerator (or the power to run it) for you to keep your sack lunch in (unless they also charge you rent on it).

As a customer, I expect all companies I frequent to sacrifice ALL in the name of efficiency and ultimately, the lowest possible prices. I think we can agree on this.

@ tim, yea Id love a beer at 4pm, that would mean I was goofing off the last hour driving up cost and expenses for our customers

but for some silly reason the managers just dont get that idea

Sounds like you need to get focused Osgeld. Doesn’t seem to effect anything around here.

@brennen you do that

like they do in china?

I can see this getting filled with people trying to cash in on open-source designs, Clever people have been doing it through Chinese manufacturing for a while but this just lets any joe blow do it.
Hopefully they will have some sort of moderation or peer review.

Case in point Ive seen ebay flooded with lcd2usb clones, granted with fancy new SMD boards, but I have no doubt the original designer is seeing none of that money.

Osgeld is right. Sparkfun is massively overpriced.

You can justify it anyway you want but the fact is that you will spend more… lots more when ordering from Sparkfun. If you’re happy with that in order to support them good for you. No need to jump all over someone for pointing out that you are in fact paying more.

Whether they spend it on beer, giant Nintendo controllers or community support doesn’t change the fact that their prices are higher. If you get warm fuzzies from buying from Sparkfun send them all the money you want.

Question: as a buyer, how do I verify I’m buying a WORKING design? One of your caveats is that the buyer must make sure the design works. How do I do that until I’ve purchased the board? Take the submitter’s word for it?

I have the week off

so zero

I should know better than to respond to this, but… in the last place I worked, we had to have a close to 110% markup on the items we sold in order to cover salaries, rent, and be able to have our storefront open 8 to 6 every day. Despite that, pay was pretty awful and we didn’t make it through the recession. I have a friend who works for a large internet apparel retailer, and they have their markups at close to 130%. Unless you sell something like cars, I bet it’s pretty difficult to make ends meet without a significant markup like that.

But apparently you know better than everybody else what’s truly fair. Shame on SparkFun for doing what they do. Every single customer of theirs clearly lacks the braincells necessary to be as successful as you are – a man who’s spending his vacation telling people they are stupid for liking the SparkFun!

Sparkfun has a keg? That is awesome. Is there any chance that there are internships available there?

Seriously though, if I need a lot of something that cost $0.30 I will order it from somewhere that sells it for $0.30. The chances are you are going to have to buy at least 100 anyway. If I only need one or two I don’t mind spending a little more. Sparkfun doesn’t exist to provide cheap components. If I need something that is going to take me a while to make, and I can get it from sparkfun I will choose sparkfun 90% of the time. My time is more valuable to me. I would rather spend the extra cash to get a quality product, as opposed to spending time making the same thing. The fact that they are offering a service that will facilitate the ability to share design’s and ideas is great. Even better if the designer is getting compensated for his/her work.

As for quality of designs, I am sure a user/purchaser rating could be setup that would allow customers to rate/review on products.

People are going to spend money on what they want to spend money on. Who cares whether I want to spend $40 on a $15 part. It is my money.

Osgeld seems to want his tech support to do the actual engineering. SparkFun tends to show people the means to teach themselves. If you can’t wean yourself from the teat of tech support then I am pretty sure you lack the ability to make anything more complicated than a blinking refrigerator magnet.

or ship a fucking order in less than a week after it was placed

only in the states? wtf!

I wanted to see the minimig there too :(

@bobwehadababyitsaboy: the same exact though crossed my mind, i’m surprised no one else commented on that.

as for the service, seems like it could potentially provide the community with some useful resources. personally, i’m not a huge sparkfun fan and order elsewhere but if what they offer suits your needs then by all means go for it.

So, after several months, has anyone made use of this service?

-thanks