I originally backed the Kickstarter for this project, but pulled out, even at the lower price of £9/unit. Just didn't feel there was a lot to gain for the money.
Love that the GPIO pins are compatible. Less impressed with the misslabling of the flash but 8MB is still pretty good (and I think per the spec sheet is actually the most the RP2040 can use.) and the deal breaker is having this not being able to fit into Zero cases. That’s a shame.
It's great there is interest in designing and marketing these boards. Your comments are unbiased and factually correct, but perhaps a bit harsh. Maybe you could reach out to them and make a quick follow up video with their feedback?
Thanks for the feedback. Perhaps I was a bit harsh, but I have to make sure my points got across without confusion/ambiguity. I would be happy to do a follow up, following some changes to the board, but I think a price drop would be the way to go for this board rather than a redesign. As I said in the video, a price drop would make it more compelling and worth considering. I will pin a comment to this video if I receive any feedback from SB Components.
This is useful to me because I don't have the place to solder myself. I bought only one for the convenience of the pins (including swd and sclk) and built in microsd, something which the Sparkthing-RP2040 plus has. Price could go down a little bit. Note you can still power this with battery if needed, so it has that going for it. From now on though I'll learn how to solder myself, more cost effective to use original Raspberry Picos.
Now that I did some searching, the cytron series of rp2040 compatible boards have much more value to offer per dollar, with pinouts (even if they are in Grove ports)
Go mine through the Kickstarter - your video has just reminded me that i should actually get it out of its oversize box to try sooner rather than later? have bought several of their products in the past - generally very pleased with build quality . on-going Documentation / example code can be slightly lacking i find In your link to buy this you have put " Badger 2040" instead of " stackyPi" by the way
@@LearnEmbeddedSystems just tried the sdtest.py example that was supplied on my unit & i get a module not found error!! Not an auspicious start i feel?
On pricing I think you should have used RS components as LCSC prices do not include all the import charges levied by the UK government. I've made a few projects using LCSC and usually it's at least an extra 22.5% + handling fees, so now I use RS components as all the costs are upfront. Does the board state where it was manufactured? as that will affect pricing.
You make a good point however, I assumed outsourced assembly which would mean taxes added at the end of the process (which I absorbed into the assembly+testing fee). Didn't make that clear, sorry. I personally use RS for my components as well as Farnell and Mouser. There was no mention regarding where these boards are assembled, so I assume it is not the UK as we are oddly obsessed with telling people when things are made in the UK. I will ask SB components for this information and update this thread if I hear anything back.
I must assume that the megabyte typo was no typo as I pointed the mistake out to them during the Kickstarter campaign and they didn’t change it anywhere.
I want to give them the benefit of the doubt but I don't feel like it was a typo at all. Maybe in one or two places yeah that's forgivable and understandable, but everywhere? Not too sure
@@LearnEmbeddedSystems This were the key statements of my conversation with them on February 1st and 2nd: Me: "do you mean 64 MB (Megabyte) or 64 Mb (Megabit)? If megabyte: How do you connect 64 megabyte to the RP2040, as it only supports 16 megabyte?" Them: " Please find the part number of the flash memory's part number "WINBOND W25Q64JVSSIQ" with the memory of 64M-bit. You can read the data sheet in detail and in case you need any help please let us know." Me: "So you are sharing wrong informations for your project. "MB" is the abbreviation for megabyte. But you don’t provide 64 megabytes, but only 8 megabytes." But they didn’t change it anywhere. So I assume they did that on purpose to deceive supporters. And their buyers, because also on their website you can find this "typo" until today.
