Uzebox DTV

Topics regarding the Uzebox hardware/AVCore/BaseBoard (i.e: PCB, resistors, connectors, part list, schematics, hardware issues, etc.) should go here.
CunningFellow
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by CunningFellow »

Yeah - they would have to be assembled. A lot of people would have a hard time soldering it themselves. Also I would have to CNC the cut outs for the uSD and the other stuff. People would not have fun doing that themselves and getting it neat.

The only thing people would have to do themselves is solder a power plug onto their 3.5mm to RCA lead.

Sure thing with the logo.

Will put a URL and QR code in the cut out on the back as well that points to belogic.
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uze6666
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by uze6666 »

CunningFellow wrote:Yeah - they would have to be assembled. A lot of people would have a hard time soldering it themselves. Also I would have to CNC the cut outs for the uSD and the other stuff. People would not have fun doing that themselves and getting it neat.

The only thing people would have to do themselves is solder a power plug onto their 3.5mm to RCA lead.

Sure thing with the logo.

Will put a URL and QR code in the cut out on the back as well that points to belogic.
Excellent!
CunningFellow
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by CunningFellow »

I've been doing some spreadsheets.

Can Uze/Harty please give me advice on how popular these kinds of things are. PM me if you don't want to make sales numbers public.

I am going to set the kickstarter campaign "success" level at 10 units. If I sell them for $50..$55 dollars then I will be not be out of pocket and I can make 10 units myself without too much problem.

If I get over 100 sales I will be able to turn a profit, and get the added bonus that the ones I keep myself to give away to "novice" coders will be cheaper.

There is this no mans land in the middle. 50..100 units I won't be able to make them myself in a reasonable time frame, and the price breaks on components aren't good enough yet to afford to have someone else make them.

This is all taking into account that:

1, I am in Oz and that the cost doing any thing here is high.
2, I won't use cut price PCB houses. I have been burned there before.
3, I am factoring in some losses in my spreadsheet/formula/graphs.

The other thing I was thinking of was offering different "perks" Maybe 10 units cheap then priced higher. but that kills the possibility of large sales and "spreading the word" more.

What do people think of the idea

10 cheap
90 more expensive with an early delivery date
unlimited number cheap but a promised delivery date of 6 months
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uze6666
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by uze6666 »

Sure, I can help, let me think about it a bit! But for one, I'm pretty sure you should aim for a bit more than 10 units.
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renix
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by renix »

Congratulations, It looks great.

I have a CNC to make PCBs at home, and I want to try your design, and make my own UzeboxDTV ofcourse, Can you share the design files, I have a lot of experience with Eagle and I can help with routing and design...

See my projects at http://www.retronia.cl (my spanish site)

Regards

Renix
CunningFellow
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by CunningFellow »

I use gEDA/PCB not eagle, so not sure how useful my files are for you.

I am doing some changes at the moment to the video out and audio out parts and waiting to see how the ESP8266 thing is going.

When I have hit a "ver 1.0" design I will put all the EDA files up here.
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Matej
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by Matej »

I will take 2x Uzebox DTV!!!
CunningFellow
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by CunningFellow »

Sorry about taking so long. Some parts of my life have been very interesting in the last year or so.

I am just about ready to launch a Kickstarter campaign for the UzeDTV.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/si ... n=5d549b70

The aim is Friday the 30th September.

100 Units is the point were I can just about break even after taking into account kick/paypal/losses etc. I think if I get enough people helping me with spreading the word 100 units should be easy to do.

1000 units is were I can actually make some profit, but I doubt it will get that many sales. Though you never know your luck in a big city.

Please give any feedback you can on the campaign. The video is not complete yet, and there is parts being added to it showing the hardware, how easy it is to load games and some video of games being played.

Edit: Oh - here is the shot of the hardware with the overlay text with the system specs

http://www.jimspaphs.com/00005.mp4

and here is a long shot of how that video was made.

http://www.jimspaphs.com/00007.mp4
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Artcfox
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by Artcfox »

I really like the stepper motors!

I might update the screenshot of Tornado 2000 running in the emulator to show a later version of the emulator, and it running at the full speed of the CPU, just so people new to the Uzebox don't get the wrong idea of how fast the chip is running versus other homebrew consoles.

There are some grammatical changes that I would make, just to make the reading feel smoother. There were a couple of sentences that I had to read a couple times just to discern the proper meaning. I'm not sure what the best way to communicate those changes to you would be, perhaps a diff of the plain text version?
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Jubatian
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Re: Uzebox DTV

Post by Jubatian »

I am just thinking...

Sure it is a good idea to launch this now? For one thing, there is the UCC ongoing, its deadline being just two months after the planned launch while it could bring some additional games to show. For another, I am a bit concerned about the bootloader, although that doesn't have to be complete by the time you launch the Kickstarter (but have to be with sufficient testing to the delivery deadline).

I admit I am very much overwhelmed with various stuff (Uzebox is just one of the many I am doing), and completely set aside anything about the bootloader despite that I acquired a programmer since a while (which I didn't even try yet, just not being prepared to fix it if I screw up, which would mean no real hardware to test things until I manage it). While building my emulator I became fairly confident that it should be definitely possible to produce a bootloader which supports SDHC (with FAT32) and fragmentation, so at least for the most common small games eliminating these problems. Of course I would go for a two stage bootloader then to have a robust bootloader kernel to provide SD access and programming functions along with the core logic over which I would add the GUI as a second stage (so that it could be replaced).

Anyway, from the user perspective the SDHC and fragmentation support could be important.

What do you think? I just think that the SD card and the FAT isn't such an untameable hairy beast. Sure they are little ugly beasts, but going through the emulator I think I got a good understanding of them, sufficient to write robust support for those. But I really think I would only do anything related starting in December (although likely I will do the SPM support in the emulator sooner).
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