#oggstreamer – Production costs – a rough estimation

Here I want to give you an Idea – of how much the production of 50 OggStreamers costs.

The following calculation still leaves the following costs:

• NRE costs for soilder stencils
• NRE costs for programming of the pick’n’place machine
• machining of the case
• laser-engraving the case
• THT soldering
• Final assembly

all prices in EUR (without taxes)

PCB	550
Special SMD-Parts	1650
Pick’N’Place + Standard SMD-Parts	2400
THT Parts	1150
Linux-Module (XportPro)	2200
Sum	7950

thats roughly 200 Euros per Device (as a conservative Estimation) – a more realistic Estimation would conclude with apprx. 160 Euros per Deivce. – remember these are not the final production costs, because this calculation leaves out the above mentioned points.

The OggStreamer-Device started as a Hobby-project and evolved over time – it is an ongoing Experiment so to say – and it was never cost optimized. All our design decisions were carried out the way that we wanted it to be – we didn’t waste a thought about the economic feasibility of this project. 🙂 So it is kind of miraculous that we have come that far in this process. A pilot run of 12 devices was accomplished with the generous support of many friendly people and our supporters. And there is more to come we recently secured the sponsorship for the production of 50+ devices from the “Internet Foundation Austria” – who acknowledged the value of this Project and OpenHardware in general. The OggStreamer is now part of the “NetIdee 2012” sponsored projects.

#oggstreamer – measuring the input stage (2nd time)

Today I had an in detailed look on the input amplifier of the OggStreamer – i documented the measurement in this report.

If you don’t want to read the full report – I copy’n’pasted the summary here:

Findings:

The input amplifier stage of the OggStreamer performs in almost all respects as desired. One problem showed up during the measurement: The Inbalance of Gain between Channel A and Channel B. Further investigation proved that the Potentiometer is responsible for this Inbalance. We already took care for a second option for the potentiometer while desing the OggStreamer. The option would be a Vishaytype of Potentiometer – for the next batch of OggStreamer devices this will be an economic decission whether or not to use the Vishay-Poti (12 Euro) or the ALPS-Poti (1,2 Euro). Apart from the Inbalance-Issue the ampilifier works as desired.

	Gain	Channel Inbalance	-3dB cutoff	THD+N	Crosstalk
Measurement 1	0dB	0.18 dB	~ 30 kHz	< 0.2 %	< -60 dB
Measurement 2	-15dB	0.57 dB	~ 27 kHz	< 0.12 %	< -60 dB
Measurement 3	15dB	0.27 dB	~ 25 kHz	< 0.6 %	< -50 dB

Conclusions:

1. We will specifiy the input stage of the OggStreamer for +/- 15dB Gain – in reality it is a little wider but for the docs we will stick with +/- 15 dB
2. The ALPS-Potentiometer performs mediocre – We will test an alternative VISHAY-Type (Order Code: 148DXG56S103SP) and evaluate if we can afford using this more expensive Potentiometer

#oggstreamer – Go watch OggStreamer in Vienna 19.Okt – 16.Nov 2012

I am proud to announce that OggStreamer will be presented at the Vienna Open Exposition. It is an Exposition about Open Design and there are numerous interesting projects worth being watched by you 😉

http://viennaopen.net/en/gal/

#oggstreamer – arrives in Spain ;)

The OggStreamer arrived in Spain and the people from the Medialab Prado filmed a “How-To” for it. Makes me smile 🙂

 

#oggstreamer – A Digital Media Primer for Geeks

The guys from xiph.org – who also developed the nice ogg/vorbis algorithm the OggStreamer is using – explain in an amusing video the basics of digital Audio and Video.

thanks xiph.org for your great codecs and thanks for the following video: