BkkCoins,
We have received Avalon sample chips. We did get about 10 K16 boards manufactured locally as well. We want to assemble one board to help with development and testing. We have resources here that can help push the project forward.
Can you upload the silk screen for the components (those nice little labels that indicate which component is to be placed where on the board)? And if possible XY data that can be fed to an SMT machine?
Wow. This is news to me. And frankly it terrifies me that so much has been invested in my design when I haven't even been able to verify it. However, I'm not going to stand in the way despite the feeling that control is being wrestled away.
I'm ready to release everything I have along with a proper open source license but first I would need two things - 1. A public commitment that any info derived from testing/debugging will be submitted back quickly so that everyone has access in a timely fashion. 2. A disclosure regarding any independent firmware and driver development and whether you plan to use proprietary code to enter the market first.
The lack of past communication makes me concerned that your main goal is to gaining competitive advantage, and that my materials will be used towards shutting everyone else committed to assembling units, and who have been communicating with me daily, out of the market.
I assure you, we are doing the business on minimum margins, and will actually be providing a great alternative to DIY assemblers. Putting those chips on the boards manually is next to impossible, and getting it done from an SMT facility is very expensive if done in small quantity. Our purpose is to not wrestle the control out of your hands at all.
1. We are publicly committing here that any information we get from the testing/debugging the circuit, we will submit it back here on this forum, and to BkkCoins so that he could update his designs. Any changes we make to the circuit will also be submitted back.
2. We won't be using any proprietary code. We will be licensing the code from you. If we do make any changes, we will release them to public. We are committed to pay a royalty fee for every board we sell to you.
We actually have the resources to design our own circuit, but we wanted to help the open source initiative by expanding it further. I have offered my help for the firmware in the past as well, but wasn't replied to.
Ok. Acknowledged. I'll work today on preparing my work for release on github.
I would rather have released a working version as inevitably some people are going to see this and think they can jump on it and start using it, and others are going to be critical of my design choices and I won't be able to say "hey, it works". For the record - this is both untested hardware and non-debugged software but the advantages of allowing others to feedback and fix my mistakes appears to outweigh that of keeping it back longer until a working version is available.
My main fear is that now I'll spend most of my time supporting user problems instead of coding/testing. So - be aware, I may not respond to issues unless fixes are also provided.