[time-nuts] Anybody want a Thunderbolt power supply?
Charles Steinmetz
csteinmetz at yandex.com
Wed Aug 31 18:02:25 EDT 2016
Bob wrote:
> OTOH, how many time-nuts have any interest in paying for a power supply that's up to time-nuts standards? It's really not easy to bring a small product to market at a small price. Even if you completely discount the personal effort of design, construction, and marketing, there's the issue of packaging. Without a package, it's just an amateur effort not worth considering. With a package, such as a Hammond box, the price moves into new territory and nobody's interested.
So the answer is to bring crap to market because nobody will pay for
something that actually does the job?
IMO, the answer is to accept that the small, "little gizmo" providers
simply cannot fulfill this need efficiently. I provided one solution,
using a surplus device from a large supplier and fifteen minutes of
soldering-iron time. Even if you buy a box for it, it won't cost much
more than the $25 the OP proposed (and maybe not as much -- the ones
I've made have cost less than $25 each). (And note that the OP did not
propose a complete, mains-to-Tbolt solution. The proposed solution
assumed an existing mains-to-12v supply.)
That is part (the essential part, IMO) of the "little gizmo" provider's
business model -- find niche markets where things made at that scale
provide *better* performance than the alternatives. There are lots of
areas where this can be done, but also very many more where it cannot.
The "little gizmo" provider is well-advised to learn how to tell the one
from the other.
Best regards,
Charles
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