Notice I said 'provide it as a kit', not
'provided it as a kit or ready
made'. The point being that if _only_ the kit is available, people who
want it have ot buy the kit, and they have to be clueful enough to put it
together.
I see the distinction, but I feel it's infeasible to offer just kits.
Not only does it mean limiting exposure of a product via bypassing
assembled unit sales (which appear to be 10 to 1 over kit sales) just to
eliminate assembly support, but it also means ticking off a number of
prospective customers who have no concerns buying finished units and
will complain on the boards if a finished unit is not available, killing
a certain amount of kits sales. Now, we can debate it, but I feel
offering economical products means ordering parts in 100 unit batches,
and I don't want to sit on stock any longer than necessary.
I really don't see the problem with SMD assembly
at home...
Most hobbyists do not possess the tools needed to do SMT.
OK, I am odd, but I have avoided buying some low-production-count designs
becasue they were only avaialble ready-built. The main reason for this is
that a kit comes with dcoumentation on how to assembly it and often a
scheamtic. And with low-production devices, I can't count on the
desinger/company being around in 5 years tinme when I need to fix it. I
am going to haev to fix it myself.
I understand, but I think you should rethink that viewpoint for projects
that are released as open source. Such a license ensures you have all
of the information in order to do repairs, in my opinion.
We may never see eye to eye on this, but I think my position is the one
many manufacturers are taking, and thus the option for kit-only projects
may disappear.
Jim