xpyttl wrote:
Paul

I think the NJQRP DDS Daughtercard is a good model for something that would
sell. Indeed, NJQRP has had to take a break on making them because the
volunteers who actually kit them are totally fried from assembling literally
thousands of the things.

NJQRP and AmQRP have had remarkable success with their kits lately, not just
the daughtercard. The PIC-EL had to be stopped after only a couple of
months, again, because they neede a break more than anything else. Ditto
with some others. I'm not sure what the magic is, but the daughtercard is a
component in a number of other kits, as well as providing a simple module to
solve a hard problem for folks homebrewing their own stuff. Of course, they
have the unfair advantage of free labor, but on the flip side, they don't
have the access to volume discounts that someone who was making a lot of
other stuff might have.

With high quality circuit boards, I think the TSSOPs are within reach of
most amateurs. Most of us, however, can't make circuit boards with that
sort of feature size. The appearance of even more frustrating packages like
BGAs is worrisome, though.

One of the challenges, of course, is that with these newer, more complex
circuits, amateurs don't become comfortable with them until well into the
product lifecycle. By the time the amateur community latches on to a part,
it is already obsolete. This can lead to a pretty short life for some of
these things. Some kits like the Small Wonder Labs DSW had to be pulled
because the parts went out of availability almost before they appeared.

A potential way around this might be to package functionally complete
modules that folks could use without really having to get to know the
innards. This eliminates things like the synthesizers that really need
microcontrollers to operate, thus requiring builders to get familiar with
them, but perhaps something like a mixer, IF strip, etc. might work.

A lot of the builders these days are QRPers, and they are always looking for
reducing size. I would think something like the FAR Circuits 9850 board,
but entirely surface mount, might be a hit. You would need to provide some
sort of ICSP port for this to play, however. And the 9850 has to be well
along in its lifecycle. Personally, I would like to see some sort of
quadrature DDS along with a Tayloe mixer pair.

The 9850 is still a listed part, but the latter ones in the 9850 series
with the built in clock multiplier (almost a pin for pin replacement)
are a better bet. The 9950 series are current state of the art and with
their 400mhz clocks and 14bit d/a's are cleaner too.
I'd like to see a kit or circuit board based on the 9954. BTW you can
get these as samples for just a little begging. Analog Devices likes to
send samples to hams.