Buy designs on OpenHardware.io

[hek]

I'm happy to launch a new feature I've been working in for the last few weeks!

We will now allow authors to sell their designs on OpenHardware.io through Ebay or via our manufacturing partners.

This feature is currently in beta testing together with the first manufacturer PCBWay.com. I hope to smoke out any bugs during the next couple of days. Please report any problems you might find in the contact form.

There is just a few of steps to make your PCB available for sale as an author:

• Upload and publish the Gerber files for the PCB (you've probably already done this part).
• Add an optional BOM to allow the manufacturer to create DIY kits or fully assembled boards.
• Fill in the PCB characteristics and create a new revision in the "Selling" tab where you edit the project.

When someone buys through OpenHardware.io , the author will get a small commission sales! Pretty neat to give some encouragement back to the talented open hardware designers we got here right?

When a board is available for sale (all variants) it looks like this:

[carlierd]

Very good idea ! Especially for the DIY kit !!

[scalz]

oh, very nice idea
Thx for thinking to us, that might be helpful
I don't know pcbway yet but will give a try soon I guess, to see quality! Do you think there will be multiple fabhouse available? I think so..

[Samuel235]

@scalz, me and @Hek was discussing this the other day, and will correct me if i'm wrong in saying that he will be seeing how it goes with PCBWay and then maybe looking for other fab houses to use if it goes well.

I love this idea, and i'de to thank Hek and everyone involved for the work and organisation that has been put into making this feature become live!

[scalz]

oki.
I am looking at their website. they seem to have nice options (lot of, so that's cool!) without asking. for 4layers, not the cheapest! the fabhouse i use is cheaper on this but 2layer is more common, so. And again they have transparent/priced options, cool! I guess offer will grow, fabhouses will be interested that's a really cool idea

[Samuel235]

@scalz, I had a quick look at their services the other day after they added me on facebook, I was quite impressed with what they claimed they could offer. I will be sure to try them out ASAP.

[Didi]

I love this new feature. No more wasting time for seeking parts and put them together.

[barduino]

Great Idea!

Its a good way to show our appreciation for their great work.

Cheers

[bjacobse]

Good way to ensure that mysensors + author gets some hard value credit This will help us all that those people involved to get things moving forward also get donation accordingly

[hek]

Ok, Integration with PCBWay.com has now been completed and tested.

First board out available for sale is @sundberg84's EasyPCB EasyPCB.

The shipping cost is currently set by the manufacturer per country and shipping method. We will probably make some adjustments of the pricing in the future to handle light packages better. All boards sold are HASL lead free.

@Hardware-Contributor
Please prepare a revision of your board under the "Selling"-tab of your project to make them available for the community to buy.

[shabba]

Is openhardware.io separate creds to the forums or is there a SSO?
If separate: the sign in with google a/c is throwing a 500 error.

[hek]

Yes, the credentials is separate at the moment.

It was a too big task to build a single-sign-on solution when I build openhardware.io. I might have another look some day and create an OAUTH-endpoint for the forum (but that will only solve it for new users).

[robosensor]

@hek, is it possible to search for projects that I can buy? It would be great to have such filter.

[hek]

Yes, was actually thinking about this too.. I will create something to find them more easily.

[Samuel235]

FANTASTIC NEWS @hek!

Yet again, you don't surprise me with your achievements for us. Thank you very much!

[gregl]

@Hek - this is a really cool idea.. well done yet again!

[hek]

Shipping cost is now much lower for small orders!

During testing/integration with the pilot manufacturer PCBWay.com we discovered that shipping cost calculations was a bit too un-flexible. This resulted in a quite large shipping cost for small orders (like 10 PCBs).

This has now been resolved by letting manufacturer do advanced calculations based on PCB properties (weight). Hope you like the result!

[Cliff Karlsson]

Are there any plans to also add the option to buy the boards from PCBway fully assembled?

[hek]

The manufacturer evaluate the possibility to offer kit/assembled version for each board that has the sales function activated. A few requirements:

1. Complete BOM with components and package sizes.
2. Its also hard for them to offer boards that consists of multiple sub/child PCBs (like an Nano/Pro Mini, breakout sensor boards). As they would have to source these parts from different vendors.

[Samuel235]

I really like the idea of kit form availability, especially for the through-hole boards for the new comers/beginners. Allowing them to assemble and understand how the module works on a hardware level.

[Cliff Karlsson]

Ok, well regarding boards that includes Arduino nano/Pro mini etc. in my opinion it would be great if they just soldered the pinheaders so that you could just place your own arduino without pinheaders on those and just solder that part. I just looked quick but all boards I found on openhardware that contained a standard arduino looked like it would be easy to place it as the last component and where easy to solder.

[hek]

Yes, a possibility.

But it must be totally clear for the buyer what (s)he actually get when buying the kit/assembled board. So if parts are missing it should be mentioned with bold text on the project page and in the BOM perhaps.

The author can give instructions to the manufacturer about the details when creating a new revision for them.

[emc2]

Would it be possible to mix assembled / kit parts?
Ideally I would like to create a project with some components assembled on the PCB (especially SMD) and a few through-hole not assembled as they may be customized by the user (terminal block, mosfet)

[NeverDie]

@hek said:

When someone buys through OpenHardware.io , the author will get a small commission sales!

How much is the commission?

[NeverDie]

If all else fails, another way to address the kit issue would be to pick a vendor known to have a wide selection of parts (e.g. Digikey, Mouser, or the like) and have the author also give that vendor's specific part numbers on the BOM. Then, anyone who wants to buy the parts to go with the board can just go to one place (to hopefully save on shipping) and punch in the numbers and order it.

I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of the big outfits supports pre-defined shopping lists, in which case you could just click on a link and have all the parts added to your shopping basket in one stroke.

[Samuel235]

@NeverDie, as i create my boards i'm trying to include the order number for farnell for every part (as and when i can). I'm also very very tempted to create these kits myself and sell them through Openhardware.io on eBay. So you guys only need to purchase the kit from eBay and we are good to go!

[scalz]

actually most of electronics vendor already does this. when you have an account, you can save your boms. keep it private or share it. the maker just need to put a link, very easy..

[NeverDie]

@Samuel235
Well, I'm sure buiyers wouldn't care who kits the parts, but do you really want to be in the fulfillment business? I don't see enough upside in that to justify the bother unless your volumes were high. I'd say cross that bridge only if that's what the sales trendline objectively demonstrates. Otherwise, you're taking on inventory risk that could leave you in a hole.

[Samuel235]

I was only tempted to allow people to get modules up and running tbh. If there is another way to do this, saved baskets like mentioned above, then i will happily go that route.

[hek]

It's tough for the manufacturers to produce assembled boards at competitive prices when producing 1 at the time...

I'm playing with an idea of doing some sort of mini-crowd-funding function. Co-shopping so to speak. Like campaigns for 20, 50 or 100 boards to get a better price for small batch volumes.

But it means I have to dig deep into payment provider apis and read the small print on their fees so we don't lose on big time their huge margins on every tiny transaction involved. Or if campaigns fail automate the refund.

[bjacobse]

@hek
Would it be easier for you, to do some paypal stuff. so you can avoid all the payment provider stuff?

[hek]

Paypal is a payment provider.

Right now, I'm forwarding the payment handling to the manufacturer (to avoid double payment fees).

But PayPal actually have some advanced chined/parallel/delayed payments that could be useful for a co-shopping function and to handle commission to author for simple orders. But it all depends on how PayPal fees turns out (do the chop a fee in every step?). I've send an email to their support (no replies yet...) to help me understand what is possible.

[GertSanders]

@hek How do you start a new (hardware) related topic without making a new project ? I have not figured that out.

I was wondering if I could start a non-Mysensors hardware project, but before I do that I wanted to ask the question. I know I can make a new topic in the HARDWARE section of the MySensors forum, but that seemed wrong to me because I wanted to start a hardware topic on motor control (tangentially related to LED and fan control).

So as they say in Singapore "so how to do lah ?"

[danivalencia]

How do we know order's state for buyed DIY kits from OH? I ordered a kit Saturday and haven't received any news from PCBWay or OH since then.
I tried searching PCBWay site but no luck.

[hek]

https://www.openhardware.io/account#tabs-orders

When order has been shipped, they send also send over tracking number which will be linked on that page.

[danivalencia]

Just received DIY kit (My Slim 2AA node), and they sent me SMD NRLF24+, not the standard Do I have to contact them?

[hek]

@danivalencia

PM me.

[hek]

Happy to announce that ITead has joined in as manufacturing partner on openhardware.io.

...and we got 100 projects on the site now! Awesome, everyone involved!

[NeverDie]

@hek said:

Happy to announce that ITead has joined in as manufacturing partner on openhardware.io.

Sounds great! What exactly does that mean?

[hek]

It means we can buy pcbs (and sometimes assembled boards) from two different manufacturers super easy, and at the same time support the author and community.

You can compare prices instantly and do not need to handle gerber files or set any mystic parameters when placing the order.

[den2k]

I'm looking for some advice. I created a board for my own use to work with mysensors a long time ago and have continued to improve it. Others liked it so I began selling it on my site. We now want to introduce it to more people - so should I upload it to the openhardware.io community? I'm not exactly sure about this.

The design itself is based on ATMega32u4 with RFM69 radio options. I like RFM69 better vs nRF24 for distance. 2.4GHz is also pretty crowded. By the way - Mysensors just continues to get better. I love having all these controller options. Here is a picture of the board. We like yellow boards because they are sunny!

[NeverDie]

@hek
What's your guidance regarding which type of licensing to pick on the pulldown menu? What are the trade-offs and pro's/con's of each?

[hek]

I'm no expert on the pros/cons, but CERN seems to be a popular pick.

[NeverDie]

Well, in that case, can anyone else here shed some light on it?

[hek]

I started this thread a long while back:
https://forum.mysensors.org/topic/2963/open-hardware-licenses

Might be better for this discussion.

[NeverDie]

@hek
Which would the manufacturers most prefer that we use? For that matter, have the manufacturers manufactured anything yet? It seems what's novel (and promising) here is having a place where people can easily buy something and then automagically get the physical thing delivered to them, already assembled. Am I right? If people just want the files or PCB's and then take it from there, there are already commonly existing ways to do that, like posting them in a zipped file on a thread somewhere or on github.

[hek]

Which would the manufacturers most prefer that we use?

Not sure I understand what you mean here.

For that matter, have the manufacturers manufactured anything yet?

No, they will most probably manufacturer on demand. But they always have the option to stock popular boards to increase their margin.

It seems what's novel (and promising) here is having a place where people can easily buy something and then automagically get the physical thing delivered to them, already assembled. Am I right?

Yes, it is very easy to order a pcb (or assembled board where available) on the site. Especially for none electronics people. Without having to bother with weird file formats, layers and other cryptic stuff.

If people just want the files or PCB's and then take it from there, there are already commonly existing ways to do that, like posting them in a zipped file on a thread somewhere or on github.

Absolutely, everyone is free to manufacturer things anywhere. I don't care. But it's a nice gesture to support the author (they get a small kickback) when placing their order on openhardware.io.

Anyhow, it's upp to the author to activate the sales function (by creating a revision under the sales-tab). Nothing gets activated automatically. Or if the author has the time, they can handles sales themselves, on ebay, just by adding the link in the sales tab (we fetch the price automatically and present it on openhardware.io).