I realize this is blasphemous... any plans for a single ended only (non balanced populated?) version to help bring down the price point?
The full retail price of this board is only $200. How much could it possibly go down?
I am willing to bet that the start up costs of doing a second separate production run and the costs of maintaining dual inventories would more than wipe out any potential savings that might be had from a simpler circuit.
(Not trying to bust your b@lls, but product costing and pricing is what I have done for a living for the past 25 years so I have developed a pretty good gut feel for these kind of things.)
Where's the ball busting emoji?
Having an alternate BOM where certain components are populated or not is not rocket science. A simple "That is not in our plans at the moment" would have sufficed.
Let's argue for a moment that the current implementation is targeting a "higher" end user. If he were to get down to $120-ish range, might he be able to take volume from someone who would look at one of the other Pi Hat options? I wouldn't expect huge delta's in fixed costs by supporting 2 builds, so would (bad assumption?) uptake in volume for hitting the lower end, while also hitting the upper end drive possibly larger quantity buys (lower part costs)... maybe there wouldn't be that much of a delta in volumes so it's not worth it.
I realize in some eyes it's "only $200"... another way to look at it is that it's 2.5x-3x "comparative options".
<edit>Not suggesting it's not worth the extra money. I do hope he sells a crap ton. I'm only asking if the thought had crossed his mind.</edit>
Perhaps I read too much into "
Questions/Comments also welcome."?