Campaign to save the YAPP

[gerry99]

The mods have clearly stepped up to the mark with this and reversed the decision; and having looked closer and given it the due consideration I hope they can now see it is an excellent choice for a PBO article...

+1 I second that, an article in PBO about the great work Angus, Dylan, Simon, Gus and others do for the boating community would make an entertaining read. They are all interesting characters who are innovative and creative and are putting something back into our community. From my experience forumites are quick to spot when someone tries to milk the forum for openly commercial gain and are even speedier in responding to it and long may it continue

 

[dom]

To think that pricing has anything to do with costs, even costs of Rolls Royces, is naive. To a first approximation, the goal of pricing is to charge exactly the price that results in the highest overall sales (sales in pounds, not units). If you can tweak this by charging different (groups of) people different amounts for an even higher sales figure, so much the better. Costs have absolutely nothing to do with it, except to set a floor below which it's not (usually) worth bothering.

Pete

A firm can't just seek to maximise pound sales; imagine selling 5,000,000 radars at a loss making £60! But perhaps I should have been more precise: you are correct to the extent that in a perfectly competitive market manufacturers face a perfectly elastic curve. What this means is that there is a going price for a good (say the price a supermarket will pay for a pint of milk) and firms can either take it or leave it; in other words they have no pricing power.

But in a monopoly/oligopoly, a firm or a small group of firms faces the aggregate demand curve of the market, which as we know is downward sloping. If the firm raises its price, demand falls, but it does not fall to zero. This downward-sloping demand curve places a monopolistic company in a totally different position to a competitive firm. A monopoly can optimise its profit by increasing supply up to the point where marginal costs = marginal revenues. Whereas, in a perfectly competitive market the market will theoretically raise production all the way up to the point where marginal cost = total demand.

For this reason anti-trust folk (Competition Commission in the UK) are always on the look out for companyies/sectors which enjoy a significant leeway to price at a level, which maximises profitability. Sub-5 mainstream competitors is the generally accepted number of constituents where anti-trust organisations get interested, and the marine electronics industry is no far away!

If what you are saying that pricing in marine electronics (even as a small niche industry) has little to do with marginal cost then that is well worth knowing!!! In this light Mr Mc Doon, as a non-profit amateur, provides some useful transparency as to what the marginal costs of production for the electronic parts. That doesn't stop anyone going right ahead and buying something more expensive; in they same way someone might buy a luxury watch, in full knowledge that Casio have set a competitive benchmark.

 

[saltylegs]

Glad the mods have wised up.
YAPP is a perfect example of practical boat ownership.

 

[ShinyShoe]

The 'leeches' you refer to, I assume, are the supply chain that delivers the product to market? The alternative being what exactly? I have no objection to doing stuff for yourself, but the world doesn't run that way - in order for Angus to deliver these goods at such a low cost he must have developed the knowledge and acquired the money somehow. Doubtless as part of the real world in which people get paid for going to work (not just the designers).

I don't get what you are saying? Are you suggesting that Angus got his knowledge from the Marine Electronics Industry and is then almost stealing their secrets to deliver rip off copies? I don't know much about Angus but I think you may be very wrong.

I have absolutely NO design training. I did some fairly high tech electronics at school for my time and a tiny bit of software programming at school. An optional module on biomedical instrumentation while at Uni but not engineering or software stuff. Since the days of a Spectrum 48 I've been hooked on developing my own solutions to problems. Back before people had windows computers I spent an unbelievable number of hours writing a printer driver that was intended to allow true type printing from the equivalent of a beefed up Spectrum. Learnt by reading manuals and trial and error - reverse engineering I expect! It got about 95% complete and then I got a Windows 95 machine and binned the project. It'd take me a day or two to get back upto speed but I reckon I could finish that driver in a week if it had any purpose.

Since then I've been hooked on Open Source Coding. Using other peoples. Developing solutions from other peoples. Developing my own. Never made a penny. No desire to. I make my money to put food on the table from other means.

2 weeks ago I decided I wanted to log the temperature in my hotbox on my allotment. I posted some thoughts on a forum, shared some refinements rapidly taught myself about 1-wire protocols, ardiuno electronics, Raspberry Pi's, etc and have a working prototype. If I was to begin from a clean slate I'd build it completely differently. But my point is I think someone could develop their understanding of this technology without needing to be in the tech business. Indeed wanting to do it for nowt and wanting to do it in your spare time probably mean it may not be their day job...

Why would I share my work......because I learn masses by sharing and people making suggestions on how it could be improved etc.

But the reason I do these things is because I just love that I can. I guess its like why someone climbs a mountain...

2 weeks ago I'd no idea how much was involved in displaying some data on a 16x2 LCD screen. I imagined it may be complex. I've gone with a RasPi solution and it was a doddle for me. I gather an Ardiuno solution would have been easy too. To someone who's never used linux or programmed sofwtare it would have been a massive learning curve. But those were skills I gained on previous projects.

"Limited specification" pretty much defines a YAPP.

Does it? I'd have said the things that defined YAPP are the ability to do what YOU want to with it because its open source. Want a six port version and Angus has only designed 4 port, you can take his board, modify it, take his code modify it... you don't have to start with a blank canvas.

Sometimes he has better identified what you might want the kit to do. That may seem lower spec, the alternative would be to think of it as desirable spec. No business conflicts where they want to sell their Chart plotter to work with their GPS etc...

If I can build on my example from above I use temperature monitoring kit at work to monitor some business critical fridges. We pay other companies to do it. We pay them hansomely. Their kit doesn't do all I'd ever want it to. Yet my allotment thermometer in 2 weeks has an LCD display, a web page for results, an email alert to out of spec readings, an SMS alert to out of spec readings, the ability to add a local buzzer for out of spec, the ability to build as complex an out of spec rule as I can think of. My work kit struggles to do more than have a threshold and send an alarm to reception desk. We can upgrade that - for significant cost!

Are you sure all those unwanted functions are unwanted by everyone?

Almost certainly not. But its like my car radio has AM on it. I've never used the AM functions. They may have cost nothing extra to add. They may have cost 5p extra or £5 extra. Someone will use AM radio I guess. Even if it costs nothing extra it may add a complexity to use, add an extra source of faults.

I think your analysis is naive but although it may not seem like it, I do have sympathy with your experience. It is sometimes impossible to find equipment that does exactly what I want and I have to compromise, buy or make a YAPP or dig more deeply into my pockets.

Is that not the beauty of Open Source. You can decide to add a feature. Ever tried to add a single line of code to windows software?

 

[Andrew G]

Firstly thanks/congratulations to Nigel for starting this campaign - and good to see a timely and appropriate response from PBO - congratulations to you too.
Excellent to see a (generally) outwelling of support for Angus.
Angus and his YAPPs may have been saved but let's think a little broader. Angus willingly devotes a lot of time and is not profiting from this. He is potentially out of pocket due to delayed or missing payments (or under pricing). I for one am perfectly happy to pay a little more for future YAPPS but respect Angus' wishes to keep it low key.

Can we collectively think of a better way to use and reward Angus' talents, skills and "sense of community" so that he is not put through this ever again?
Andrew
(wrt the one "No" vote - it would be intersting to know the reasoning (and not to persecute them) - or if it was in fact just an error?)

 

[alahol2]

Can we collectively think of a better way to use and reward Angus' talents, skills and "sense of community" so that he is not put through this ever again?

How about free life membership to the forum?

 

[JohnGC]

"Limited specification" pretty much defines a YAPP.


Does it? I'd have said the things that defined YAPP are the ability to do what YOU want to with it because its open source. Want a six port version and Angus has only designed 4 port, you can take his board, modify it, take his code modify it... you don't have to start with a blank canvas.

That is true, but it will be a different YAPP with additional development costs and a new specification.

.....you don't have to start with a blank canvas.

Neither does Angus, significant ideas are freely available from semiconductor manufacturers in the form of application notes and example software. Development work is still required to build on those particularly at the application level.

If I can build on my example from above I use temperature monitoring kit at work to monitor some business critical fridges............

Have you costed your time to do this at your normal work rate, including the time lost to your normal duties and any delays resulting? Have you balanced that against using the same time to look for an alternative system to the one you currently use? I don't claim to know the answer, but I suspect the true cost advantage to the business you work for will not be so significant.

Is that not the beauty of Open Source. You can decide to add a feature.

Yes it is and you can if you have or choose to acquire the skills needed to do so. But in a commercial environment, that has a cost. This thread set out to support Angus's YAPPs on the basis that they were not a business and that is the point of my contribution.

Ever tried to add a single line of code to windows software?

There is no need to. Microsoft provided tools to freely access most Windows features. Those features are documented and can be accessed by a wide range of compilers using different languages. Microsoft supply a free C compiler and it is used in a number of Open Source projects that are Windows based.

 

[Fantasie 19]

I admire these YAPPS tremendously. Totally outside my knowledge and skills but clearly topics that interest many practical yachtsmen. Can PBO please reconsider?

That sums it up nicely for me - I don't understand more than one word in three but I find them absolutely fascinating!

Well done PBO for reconsidering...