Thanks guys for the kind words and it's very gratifying to hear that some have enjoyed this product.
In response to Dane, there certainly are no shortage of manufacturers who will build boards, the issue is one of cost and more precisely, who is willing to bear it. Hobby King did pretty much everything else wrong, but the one crucial benefit they did bring was the willingness to fund the production entirely on their own dime (they kept the profits too, naturally, though I doubt there were much of any at the incredibly low price they sold them for). Even a small run of 100 boards would probably require an upfront expense of approximately $5,000 USD, not to mention whoever is doing the selling must also then take care of shipping, etc... Yes, theoretically the money is recouped through subsequent sales, but that's a lot of cash for a hobbyist to put up and I personally don't think it's a sound investment for me. Nor would I want to be taking trips to the post office every day and sending parcels all over the globe...
As opposed to Benedini who considered it (rightly for him) a loss and an attack when the Chinese cloned his sound card, I on the other hand have actively approached Chinese sellers on AliExpress and elsewhere, and told them, "Here you go, all the schematics and firmware are completely free, please produce this and sell it and keep all the money to yourself!" But so far none have been willing. The hardware on Benedini's sound card is very inexpensive, and they have probably sold many thousands. The hardware on the TCB is not cheap, profit margins would be very low, and even if they keep the price down the demand is still not that great. RC tanks is a pretty small market, and as Wibbly points out, this device is really only attractive to a small subset even of that.
He is right though that you can make a TCB with a stock Arduino Mega, though obviously with reduced functionality. Sergey has a very good writeup on his Russian forum, it is written in Russian but I found it quite readable if you use Google translate:
The Open Panzer TCB from Scratch
Sergey also posted a rather less detailed version in English on the Open Panzer forum:
TCB project from scratch (based on Arduino Mega mini)
Finally there is another more general discussion of using the Mega as a TCB in this other thread over on the OP forum:
Testing TCB Firmware with Stock Arduino Mega
.
Thanks for the sobering economic assessment, Rob. What you say makes perfect sense. I guess any electronics enthusiast here, with a good idea, is never likely to get it as far as a 'Dragon's Den'.
