exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

kickstarter is the same problem as "pre-orders" it commits into doing something. something which basically hasn't being designed yet and may never get produced. I doubt people would put money into a project where they are likely going to see nothing in return.. I would rather people buy something and get something, this way money is generated and if I decided to abandon some project, then people don't lose out and I avoid angry mob at my door.

kickstarter would only work for production units, where design work has already been done, and the kickstarter funds a production run.. but no need to involve kickstarter with more fees and work, I can take pre-orders myself, but I still don't want to put under pressure to deliver as said above. I wrote a lot on this topic somewhere on the forum already.

Mostly its a time issue more than a money issue, don't forget I am doing like 100 things for my store now which takes up a lot of time. I also have a day job, and past year I have repaired several falcons and other ST machines which soaked up my time. So there is no way I can "be honest" with any sort of time scale or results. 4 years I have been trying to find time to complete the 32mhz STFM booster for example.

I'm not saying kickstarter isn't a good idea, it obviously works well for a lot of things, but I don't see it as something which would work in my case. If 10 people put up £30 each thats £300, enough for a PCB run, but they wouldn't get anything as its dev-costs, and still have to pay parts & assembly like everyone else. Even so, easily I may need to do more than 1 PCB, sometimes several until I am happy... so more people needed, likely more funds needed.. if I gave them a discount on final product, then I would have to add that cost into it all, and kickstarter cost would be even higher. Plus like I said in the booster section, I spend £300 on prototypes, then abandoned that series due to issues. In that case, kickstarter people would get nothing, and I am back to angry mob at my door again. Just no way to know any prices of things until all work is done and product is built.. Overall, I just don't want the extra hassle of it all.

Overall, my store generates enough funds for work to go ahead, but obviously I have to get £1,000+ back ultimately. So price gets lumped onto the final product price. First batches of items I mostly make a loss on, but second batches of items the dev-costs are then recovered over the months, and that money is used to fund R&D work. think of it that every sale I make is a donation to future products.. Money, while I have near zero, isn't the really the issue here.. its time.

This is why I have people like Rodolphe who help me with part libs for my PCB's for example. It saves me a lot of time ( I never understood the lib editor!) so rather than messing about for endless hours, Rodolphe spends some time here and there and helps me out. Troed is working on some booster stuff for me, hes posted about it. Its modifications which are going to be on one of the next-gen boosters. There are people doing stuff helping me all the time, though the community needs more active people to help in projects thats all.

I probably wrote way to much, I do of course appreciate people's suggestions.. I of course am not trying to dismiss your kickstarter suggestion. It's just not really the issue here

Yup, Daniel and Chris nailed it. It's not about money, really. What Kickstarter can't offer is exactly what has been mentioned -- the time. All right, if I say I'm going to finish my ScummVM port so it would run on stock Falcon and Kickstarter could deliver say 10,000 EUR for it, fine, I could take a break from my job and do it. But that's not gonna happen. I would raise maybe a thousand and that's not really worth going to all that trouble with public promises and whatnot. It's easier just to make it a hobby.

And hardware development makes it even worse because you have to actually spend money and time even if you fail in the end.

I have to say, it does frustrate me sometimes when I read posts where forum members start to criticise or blatantly moan about ideas and their detail regarding projects people have instigated or have in the pipeline. Often the bickering, moaning and opinions which people like to pass off as matter of fact deter projects from ever lifting off. Not directed at anyone here by the way. Seems to happen more frequently than I would like in the Atari community.

What I will say, is a BIG thank you to you Daniel and Chris for your support, ideas and projects which helps keep one of my hobbies and passion's alive in a creative way. I have a lot of respect for people such as yourselves, Willy, Uwe, Lotharek, Wolfgang (Inventronik), Alan H and the list goes on, who continue to invent and contribute. There are many others outside of the Atari community, with other platforms and technology of which interest me who do the same through mods, circuit bending blah, blah... and as a person without that technical know how, I am in awe of the commitment, effort and ingenuity exercised! CHEERS!