I have been working on an extension hardware for the Raspberry Pi for the last year : www.machinon.com and I have a spare prototype that I would like to donate to a serious Home Assistant developer to tinker / integrate the comms.
My goal is to create an open community hardware where people can just about install anything without having to add many modules or wires. The device it is a bit industrial like, that is because that is my background - hopefully not a bad thing. You can find more tech info here: https://github.com/edddien/machinon
In terms of pricing, I haven’t got there yet, my intention is to get enough interest to order some units and offer them (via kickstarter or similar) at a cost.
If anyone is interested or have any questions, please do ask me. More than happy to answer any questions.
The plan is to be a community device, that is manufacturing cost. I’m trying to collect as many people interested on https://www.machinon.com under “register interest” to keep updated about pricing.
Right now I’m waiting for a few quotes, what I can see is that the sweetspot seems to be around 300 units which is quite a lot. So trying to get that price at much lower volume.
What is an accessible price? It helps me negotiate the price. For example for me personally a £200-£300 is accessible, yet I like to hit the under £200 to make it much more attractive. That is my opinion but… would love to know what others think
The device it is a bit industrial like, that is because that is my background - hopefully not a bad thing.
That is very much a good thing.
If you go for a price point at £200 then I think you will not hit the small tinkerer market. That may or may not be a bad thing! For example £200 can buy a lot of ESP8266 nodemcu units (2 for £8 on Amazon) plus some wire, sensors, reed switches, slack handful of resistors etc, some USB chargers. Actually, you could get a Netgear PoE eight port switch and some CAT5e solid core and some back boxes as well and some PoE to USB converters.
That said, I love the look of your device and I will be registering on your site.
yes that is always the challenge, I personally use something like this at home, I just wasted too much time to put it together. Initially I started just connecting all the individual zones and sensors from my alarm system, then quickly started to sub-monitor electrical circuits of the house and adding some switching to things that I was not feeling comfortable with wireless solution.
After a while I went for one of the big UniPi, however I never managed to fully learn its development tools… this is when I made machinon prototype (well a few)
Re size, cannot do much about without making it really difficult to work with. Having easy access to 49 I/Os is not a small thing. Something about the size of a Pi is the PiFace2 http://www.piface.org.uk/products/piface_digital_2/ , this is what I used the first time before deciding to make machinon. Not only not enough I/Os for me but also the interrupts are handled by software so many pulses were missed. There’re other key differences on the behaviour on machinon, (explained on home opening post)
Re pricing: I wish I could get an electronics manufacturer that could do it for the same price of a Pi! If anyone has any recommendations… I’ll take them!
That aside, interested on your perception, too big I cannot change it but too expensive… now is the time. What would make it more interesting for you (price wise)?
If anyone has any recommendations… I’ll take them!