Re: Rosetta progress report

["BruceR" <br@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sounds terrific! My preference would be for a populated board as doing
the SMT soldering can be tricky for a lot of people (including me).

From:Dave Houston
nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx

> I've finished the board layout and put together a bill of materials.
> It looks like my estimated cost was fairly close to the the mark.
>
> I don't yet know what the board itself will cost so am estimating it
> based on a similar sized, low volume board (i.e. BX24-AHT).
>
> For those buying the parts from Mouser and doing all of the assembly,
> it will cost about $35-40 plus shipping. This excludes the ZX-24 chip
> ($60 after March 1, $45 currently ), an enclosure (Polycase LP31F),
> the xPort Ethernet module (Mouser $49) and cables. This requires
> soldering of 4 SMT chips and several SMT resistors & capacitors (805
> size) plus through hole connectors and capacitors.
>
> If there's sufficient interest, fully assembled boards could probably
> sell for $50-60 including the enclosure but excluding the ZX-24,
> xPort & cables. Users can jusp plug-in the ZX-24 but the xPort cannot
> be socketed and will always require soldering - it needs the copper
> on the board for a heatsink.
>
> So it will vary from about $80 to about $160 depending on whether you
> assemble it, when you buy the ZX-24 and whether you buy the xPort.
>
> If you want X-10 RF input, it will require soldering a jumper on the
> main board (+5V power for the MR26) and replacing the serial cable on
> the MR26 which will also involve soldering. There is a replacement
> PIC I did a couple of years ago for the MR26 that allows it to handle
> X-10 security codes. This requires soldering an SOIC-8 SMT chip.
>
> If you add the xPort, it web-enables anything connected to Rosetta.