The Louder-ESP32-mini is finally available at Lectronz and Tindie. Well… kind of. It was sold out in a day, since I only had 10 boards from the first test batch, and I want to keep one for myself (for reasons explained below). One of the goals for this board was to be affordable. I think at $15 a piece, it is.
I’m placing a factory order for a new, larger batch (I can actually afford this price only if I order at a volume of 100 boards or more), but it will take 3-4 weeks before they will be back in stock.
One of the ideas I had in mind for the Mini is to create a tutorial video for beginners, explaining how to install it into the speaker and how to set up the software. Basically, all you need to do from the moment you get your board unpackaged to the audio playback. For that, I kept one extra board for myself 🙂
Another idea I had in mind is to create a tutorial video for more adventurous people on how to order yourself a set of boards from the PCBA factory. I’m planning to publish all the design files as usual, but I will also add BOM and pick-and-place files this time, so you can submit them to the factory directly and get your own set of boards. The video should guide you step-by-step through the process.
This may sound like shooting myself in the foot, but actually, unless you order hundreds (like I do), you’d pay higher per-board than the price I’m planning to offer. So in my head, at least, this is more educational than practical.
Next, I’m working on a slightly larger 52x52mm board for a larger speaker terminal. More importantly, it would have some extra space to host a USB-PD trigger chip, so output power would be around 15W, limited by the heating, more than by the power source, as it is for the small Mini.
Minis will be available through Elecrow for US folks, but it will also take 4-5 weeks for them to be in stock.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.