The trail to innovation

“Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.”

Richelle Mead

To program a blank avr you could use an Arduino and a lot of wires plus a few components like resistors and capacitors.  It's a bit of a chore actually, especially when you swap back and forth from program to prototype board.  Many a bug is introduced when a wire comes loose at the wrong time!

So - looking for a solution we found plans for an avr isp shield made by the innovative and very talented Jia Huang.  The files weren't in a format to be usable for manufacture, so after installing eagle and watching a heap of youtube videos on pcb production, we nervously sent off an order for 5 shield pcb's based on Jia's design.  Twenty four hours later the pcbs were made and dispatched, arriving in Margate Tas around a week later.  Total cost? $3.20 per board...delivered.  OMG.

Then the soldering began and hilariously the first attempt was upside down - let's put that down to the need for soldering practise?

Anyhoo emerging from the soldering haze was a beautiful board that actually works as Jia intended, with the ability to program a range of avr chips and also be used as a prototyping board (all pins are broken out to the shield).  Wonderful...

It's a beautiful thing...no?

To buy a cut down (single chip) "local" ugly commercial shield = $26.41 plus delivery.  That 10/1 ratio for the Australian "innovation" tax is fairly normal and a great discouragement for any kiddies (or kiddies in adult bodies) who wish to pursue IoT or other modern embedded systems, or indeed electronics in general.

For instance:
100uF capacitors - Australia 35c, China 4c
Arduino kit - Australia $198.35, China $31.77
...and so it goes on...

It's pretty disgusting how much price gouging is going on out there - no innovation at those prices Prime Minister!  Royal Commission!  Put Dutton in charge...er, no wait...