I have had a more in depth look at it since making my previous post. It isn’t like it is completely beyond me, I understand what is going on in the instructions but the main thing I am worried about is that I have very very limited experience soldering things and what I have done before hasn’t exactly been great work so I’m not sure I would be able to do a good job on the small stuff that is involved here.
It would be a good learning process though and like you say I could employ some help from various different places.
Do you have a sort of roundabout figure in terms of cost for all the parts? Just to give me an idea of how much they buy in for the project would be before I started fucking stuff up? XD
I do definitely like the concept though and certainly appeals to me so I will be looking more into it. Thanks!
Minimum order quantity for the populated board is 2. That costs, iirc, around €20 for both plus shipping (if you are patient, that’s a few more €).
This micro soldering part can by now be ordered to be included in the assembly, so that you don’t have to solder it. I haven’t tried the process of ordering extended parts from JLCPCB, but if that works, that’s another ~€10. Otherwise you’ll have to source it yourself and end up with a similar price.
The Blackberry keyboards go for €3-6 on Aliexpress.
A 5-pack of the USB connectors is about €10 on Amazon, but on Ali you can get one for ~€1.
That’s all the electronics, so for two of them, that’s about €40-50.
You also need a 3D print, which costs around €1 if you print it yourself or get a friend to do it. If you order it, that can be anything from €10 to €50. The cost of these services varies wildly. You might need to print it multiple times to get the tolerances exactly right. So if you get access to a printer, that would save a lot of money.
But all in all, if you manage to build two and both work fine, there are lots of people on Lemmy, Reddit or Crackberry who offered me to pay €100 for a ready-made one.
I have had a more in depth look at it since making my previous post. It isn’t like it is completely beyond me, I understand what is going on in the instructions but the main thing I am worried about is that I have very very limited experience soldering things and what I have done before hasn’t exactly been great work so I’m not sure I would be able to do a good job on the small stuff that is involved here.
It would be a good learning process though and like you say I could employ some help from various different places.
Do you have a sort of roundabout figure in terms of cost for all the parts? Just to give me an idea of how much they buy in for the project would be before I started fucking stuff up? XD
I do definitely like the concept though and certainly appeals to me so I will be looking more into it. Thanks!
Minimum order quantity for the populated board is 2. That costs, iirc, around €20 for both plus shipping (if you are patient, that’s a few more €).
This micro soldering part can by now be ordered to be included in the assembly, so that you don’t have to solder it. I haven’t tried the process of ordering extended parts from JLCPCB, but if that works, that’s another ~€10. Otherwise you’ll have to source it yourself and end up with a similar price.
The Blackberry keyboards go for €3-6 on Aliexpress.
A 5-pack of the USB connectors is about €10 on Amazon, but on Ali you can get one for ~€1.
That’s all the electronics, so for two of them, that’s about €40-50.
You also need a 3D print, which costs around €1 if you print it yourself or get a friend to do it. If you order it, that can be anything from €10 to €50. The cost of these services varies wildly. You might need to print it multiple times to get the tolerances exactly right. So if you get access to a printer, that would save a lot of money.
But all in all, if you manage to build two and both work fine, there are lots of people on Lemmy, Reddit or Crackberry who offered me to pay €100 for a ready-made one.
Cool. Thank you so much for the information and taking the time to reply :D
No problem!
If you decide to make one and need some help on the way, either PM me here or post in the discussion section on the Github repo.