On Apr 7, 12:48 pm, "RST Engineering" wrote:
A bare circuit board for $22 is fairly pricey but not beyond reasonable.
However, if a "sorta-kit" with bare board AND all components (less case or
chassis) were available for $35 or so, how would that fly in Peoria?


Having just gone through the tedious process of collecting all the
pieces necessary to make a capacitive fuel tank sensor that doesn't
work, I would HAPPILY pay $35 to have all the pieces collected
together. There would be some comfort in knowing that someone has
done the difficult work of verifying that all the parts are present,
the tolerances work out, and the circuit has some hope of working. I
bet I spent over 4 hours ordering less than 50 pieces. Digikey put
each in an indiviual box and then put them all in a really large box.
My $20 worth of pieces ended up costing me $35 once the shipping was
added in. A $.04 resistor only cost $.04 when you buy a roll.

I also made my own circuit board. It was a fun exercise, but time
consuming. Once I learned the circuit layout package, etched a board,
discovered all my errors (it's not always obvious which side a trace
MUST be on), etched two more iterations...I've got dozens of hours
tied up. I'm sure I'll be able to make circuits with this method in
the future. It's fun and rewarding. But if someone has a board
avaible for around $20, it's hard to justify the effort.