BusKill (FOSS Dead Man Switch) v0.7.0 released 💾 ( www.buskill.in )

conciselyverbose , 1 year ago

$100 for that seems like a lot.

maltfield OP , 1 year ago

Unfortunately, that’s what it costs to make open-source hardware at small-scale.

There’s a cheaper $59 cable available or you could build your own.

uberrice , 1 year ago

Definitely. I assume the actual cost for the cable is <10$, but engineering work gets very expensive very fast if you’re small scale.

I’m interested in something - say you got an order for 1 million units, what’s the price per unit you could offer?

Edit: just looked at the DIY option - seems right now you’re just using off the shelf parts, which is fine. Clever use of them, even. Main part seems to be ‘present usb device - once the usb device gets removed, lock down the PC’. So, you specifically just need some usb device with a cord that attaches magnetically - and securely enough that it doesn’t disconnect randomly, with some mechanical way to fix it to yourself. So yeah, at million scale, seems you could definitely sell it for 10 bucks a piece.

maltfield OP , 1 year ago

I’ve paid myself nothing so-far. The price just barely breaks-even for the business. There’s one-time costs like a few grand for a CNC’d injection mold and assembly jig, but also certification fees, product boxes, cardstock paper for documentation inserts, printing fees, artist commissions, packaging materials, warehousing, shipping, other logistics fees, etc.

All of this is explained in-detail in “The Finances” section here.

I prefer open-source hardware to be designed using common off-the-shelf items that are easily found everywhere in the world. Unfortunately, the one vendor of a USB-A magnetic breakaway couplers decided to EOL their product shortly after I published a guide on how to build your own BusKill cable. After we published, they all got sold-out, and we had to go to manufacturers for a custom component.

Prices would drop dramatically if we could do production runs (and actually sell) >10,000 units at a time. Currently we only sell a few cables per month. If you want to help, please tell all your security-conscious friends about BusKill :)