[time-nuts] TTimelab question

[Bob Camp]

Hi


> On Feb 21, 2017, at 11:45 PM, Mark Sims <holrum at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I doubt that it is something TAPR would do.   Building complete systems gets into all sorts of issues (mainly regulatory).

There’s also the issue of cost. If you need to sell maybe 200 gizmos at $100 to make things work, The same process is a bit more 
exciting when it’s 200 gizmos at $800. In the first case, somebody needs to front the money for a $20,000 project. In the second 
case they may need to take out a second mortgage. If 20 of the $100 devices don’t sell, they have $2K in inventory to write off.
In the second case they have $16K. As you can quickly see on their web site, some of their projects hang around in inventory 
for a *long* time.  Yes, that’s all in sales dollars to make the math easy. Somehow I doubt that TAPR is a high margin / high profit
organization :)

Bob

>   But it is easy enough to build.   They sell a nice case that the RPI3 and touchscreen mounts in.  The PI+touchscreen+case sells for around $110.   The TICC(s) connect to it via USB.  
> 
> There are also some Win10 tablets with 1024x600 touch screens that sell for around $60 (apparently Microsoft doesn't charge manufacturers for Win10 on tablets with small/low res screens).
> 
> I  am thinking about laying out a front-end board for the TICC.  It would have some switchable (relay?) 50 ohm input terminators,  switchable PICDIV dividers for PPS/1MHz/5MHz/10MHz/15MHz (or 2.5 MHz)  inputs,  footprints for a decent reference oscillator (MV89/8663/DIP/etc), and a 12V to 5V (3A?) power converter for the  TICC and PI... most of the better surplus oscillators run off of 12V.  Also maybe add a data multiplexer for combining the outputs of two TICC boards into one data stream (but Heather could do that in software).  John has some ideas for a similar board.  
> 
> -----------------
> 
>> Wow!  If you can persuade John and TAPR to produce that, I would be there
> with my chequebook before the ink had dried on the web-page! :-)
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