EMRFD Message Archive 189

Message Date From Subject
189 2006-11-07 23:11:38 Monty N5ESE New Filter Chips
Very interesting chips, available from Mouser, for about $8 (or a 4-channel
version for $19), which are fully programmable digital filter chips that
work in conjunction with an analog-to-digital converter and microprocessor
of your choice. Could be verrrry interesting for ham radio apps.

http://www.quickfiltertech.com/

chips:
QF1D512
QF4A512

73,
monty N5ESE

--- Important Message from Mom - PLAY NICE!

Monty Northrup, N5ESE (ex-N5FC)
Austin, Texas
e-mail: n5ese@io.com
web page (ham): http://www.dit-dididit-dit.com
web page (home): http://www.io.com/~maddog

______ _
_/ \_/ \
/\/ _ \_ \
190 2006-11-08 08:14:15 Stan Re: New Filter Chips
The chip price is very reasonable, but the development kit cost $200.

Stan ak0b



191 2006-11-08 18:20:48 jr_dakota Re: New Filter Chips
You'd think a better Business Model for these companies would be to
sell the development kit at cost (or slightly above) and get your
money back selling a lot more chips as you have a potential for many
more users ...

Instead they scare people away with an outrageous price .... makes no
good sense to me

JR


192 2006-11-08 18:37:12 Shawn Upton Re: New Filter Chips
I dunno--that might be the break-even cost for them.
Costs money to design a board and write software, no
matter how many you build up. Then throw in support
for umpteen calls from customers, and figure out the
price per minute for that. Lastly, do up the actual
cost to assemble, yes, price goes down the more you
make--but it's still a chunk of change.

The customers that they want to land probably do get
these for "free". Afterall, what's a $200 board when
you want to make a few mil?

Shawn KB1CKT

193 2006-11-08 20:37:34 michael taylor Re: New Filter Chips
On 11/8/06, jr_dakota <SG2112@yahoo.com> wrote:
> You'd think a better Business Model for these companies would be to
> sell the development kit at cost (or slightly above) and get your
>
> Instead they scare people away with an outrageous price .... makes no
> good sense to me

It's a dev-kit, not a end-user product. I'm sure you could get them to
include the kit free if you order 1,000-100,000+ chips. That's their
business model.

Since I just noticed them today for the first time when flipping
through in my print copy of Electronic Design, I assume they are a
smaller company who wants to just break-even, not take a loss on
dev-kit.

Given that some larger companies like Analog, National,
Motorola/Freescale/OnSemi, Maxim-DallasSemi, and TI have been good to
amateurs with samples and cheap dev-kits (e.g. TI's $15-20 ez430 USB
stick), I expect in time if hams are reasonable when dealing with
Quickfilter Tech, there is a chance we might make a new friend who has
interesting products to play with.

-Michael Taylor, VE3TIX
197 2006-11-09 20:48:36 Monty N5ESE Re: New Filter Chips
The points about the QuickFilter development kits costing $200 are well
taken. In fact, I approached the QuickFilter Appls Engineer about that
very issue, and he let me in on a little secret:

"We have a complete working design with code
using TI's MSP430 uP. We have what we call
the MSP Mojo. [snip] This will sell through
Mouser under DLP Design for about $39.95 I believe"

The Mojo works in conjunction with TI's MSP430 development kit
(TI P/N EZ430-F2013 which costs $20).

He tells me that the Mojo should be stock at Mouser in about 2-3
weeks. For more info:

http://www.quickfiltertech.com/html/qfilter_page.php?content_id=54

I'm very excited about what might be done with this chip in a
communications app. I encourage you to view the presentation at:

http://www.quickfiltertech.com/html/demo.php

It's quite impressive. I'll be ordering one as soon as it's available at
Mouser. Looks like the part number will be 'DLP-MSP-MOJO'

73,
monty N5ESE
http://www.dit-dididit-dit.com


At 10:33 PM 11/8/2006, michael taylor wrote:
>On 11/8/06, jr_dakota <SG2112@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > You'd think a better Business Model for these companies would be to
> > sell the development kit at cost (or slightly above) and get your
> >
> > Instead they scare people away with an outrageous price .... makes no
> > good sense to me
>
>It's a dev-kit, not a end-user product. I'm sure you could get them to
>include the kit free if you order 1,000-100,000+ chips. That's their
>business model.
>
>Since I just noticed them today for the first time when flipping
>through in my print copy of Electronic Design, I assume they are a
>smaller company who wants to just break-even, not take a loss on
>dev-kit.
>
>Given that some larger companies like Analog, National,
>Motorola/Freescale/OnSemi, Maxim-DallasSemi, and TI have been good to
>amateurs with samples and cheap dev-kits (e.g. TI's $15-20 ez430 USB
>stick), I expect in time if hams are reasonable when dealing with
>Quickfilter Tech, there is a chance we might make a new friend who has
>interesting products to play with.
>
>-Michael Taylor, VE3TIX
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
198 2006-11-09 21:36:20 jr_dakota Re: New Filter Chips
Now this is smart business ... reasonably priced and you still have a
MSP430 development kit to work with for other experiments ... I can
justify spending 60 bucks but not 200 ... especially after investing
150 or so