Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #00344
To: JVernonM@aol.com, beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Dave Hrynkiw dave@solarbotics.com
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 02:11:16 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: question
At 01:25 AM 2/12/99 , JVernonM@aol.com wrote:
>Soooo, why is it
>that I can buy a three motor hexapod walker kit from Lynxmotion that is
>programable, turns on a dime, reverses, has tactle sensors, and infrared
>object detection, for less than 200 bucks American? But a beam walker kit from
>Solarbotics, that as far as I know, can only reverse, goes for 300 bucks.
Easy. We don't produce very many walker kits (yet), and with low volume you
have to expect high prices. When we're pumping out walker kits by the
hundreds like Lynxmotion, our prices will come down. I would rather
concentrate our efforts on the solar aspect of BEAM rather than walkers, as
they are more inexpensive and (in my opinion) more satisfying to own. I
prefer to work on the less-expensive non-walkers.
>Where is the cost savings? It would seem that when this technology leaves the
>realm of scratch builts made with found parts, they suddenly jump to higher
>than programed robots when they enter the retail kit market.
Like you say, scratch built is much cheaper.
>Another thing, My Cybug, a
>very advanced analog bot with many higher behaviors costs less than 100 bucks
>in kit form (including the hunger add on), while a simple miniball kit goes
>for 160.
Hand assembled gearmotors will do that to the cost of any kit. If I could
find gearmotors as good for cheaper, they'd be the ones used.
> As a matter of fact the photopopper, a limited bot compared to the
>basic cybug, are almost the same price.
Not quite a fair comparison. Cybug has a 9V battery, and can get away with
a much heavier PCB; waaaay less efficient motors, and cheaper components.
You can't compare that with coreless motors, gold caps, ultra-thin & formed
PCB (hard to manufacture!) and custom-manufactured tactile sensors.
>Could
>someone explain to me how this pricing reality jives with the BEAM philosophy
>of a better CHEAPER bot.
You answered your own question - by building it yourself. When you buy a
kit, you are paying for the R&D and development time, documentation, the
time in assembling the components into kits, and a reasonable margin so I
can afford my new baby daughter and the minivan she came in! I dare ANYBODY
to find comparable quality and documentation in any robotics kit. I'll
venture to say there's a scant few that can compare their quality with what
we produce.
The tech isn't expensive, especially if you are not afraid of doing a
little research. The kits we sell aren't any big secret - you can find the
schematics and documentation for most of our stuff, and for what stuff we
don't publish on the net, you can find comparable plans elsewhere on the
internet.
I don't understand your frustration. We "old-timers" didn't even have kits
to learn from, let alone several dozen well-documented BEAM websites.
Regards,
Dave Hrynkiw
President, Solarbotics Ltd.
---------------------------------------------------------------
"Um, no - that's H,R,Y,N,K,I,W. No, not K,I,U,U, K,I,_W_. Yes,
that's right. Yes, I know it looks like "HOCKYRINK." Yup, only
2 vowels. Pronounciation? _SMITH_".
http://www.solarbotics.com
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