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If we already paid the current price, we will still be getting the newer version but without your updated price I’m assuming?Leave a comment:
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Just to update you guys on the state of things, I'm officially having issues sourcing the core Bluetooth module that I use on the BlueBus -- the BC127 by Sierra Wireless. A month ago there were 7,000 in stock and now there are none. I managed to snag 320 for the October run, but if I want anymore BC127s I am going to have to order 1000 minimum at a whopping cost of $24,000.
Instead of making that big of an investment and continuing to be "married" to a module built by a company that has little interest in continuing its development, I'm going to switch to the ESP32 by Espressif. This will allow me to have granular control over the Bluetooth stack as all of that is left to the developer, which is awesome! The best part is the module cost less than $4 a pop, and it would allow me to remove other hardware from the BlueBus that would be duplicating effort. With that said, I'm announcing that I'm officially developing the BlueBus "2.0" -- before you grab your pitchforks, I want you all to know that software development will continue and the feature-set between the two units will be exactly the same. In fact, I am very likely going to roll everything under the same code base to make my life easier.
The other value of using the ESP32 is that it's used in many applications and has a lot support behind it. This means that I should not have issues with stock.
The one feature I'll probably add to the "2.0" that I can't add to all prior units is playback from microSD cards as the ESP32 natively supports FAT32 filesystems and .mp3, .flac, etc.
The other goal of the redesign is to lower my cost so I can make it more affordable for customers. My current target price is $189 or lower.
Comments, concerns, etc are always welcome
-TedLeave a comment:
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