On 11/10/2015 08:53 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 11.10.2015 um 13:20 schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
>> What
>> does it cost to put one of these into your product? Like, if you're
>> buying a couple of thousand of those things, what's the unit price?
>
> You might ask a quote from a company that manufactures those thingies.
> Or a distributor. You know, like Farnell:
>
> http://uk.farnell.com/displays-lcd_7-segment

I've never heard of Farnell before. And that's kinda the thing; I don't 
work in this industry, so I have no idea who you'd go to.

I *am* kinda surprised you can get prices from a website. I thought 
these things are usually like "call us and we'll think about telling you 
a price [which will only be valid for 21 days]"...

>> I've heard it said that on "most" electronic devices, the buttons and
>> lights are the most expensive part.
>
> It's often worse than that: Depending how the switch is mounted, manual
> labour may be required.

Ouch! Man, that's gotta get expensive fast...

>> I'm just wondering... High-colour LCDs are in even cheap phones now, so
>> the LCD itself can't be all that expensive. So why don't more devices
>> have these displays?
>
> Probably because (1) display quality is /the/ top selling point in the
> mobile phones market, even in the low-cost niche, while it is less
> relevant in treadmills; (2) in the mobile phone market per-unit margins
> are minimal, and profits are made by volume, whereas in the treadmill
> business volume is low, and profits are made on a per-unit basis, so
> mobile phone manufacturers can get significantly higher discounts on
> displays than treadmill manufacturers; and (3) mobile phones have
> mind-bogglingly fast development cycles, and adapting an existing
> hardware design to use a different display is a routine process; also,
> serving a volume market, development teams can be large, possibly even
> with a dedicated expert for display technology; in the treadmill
> business, development cycles are much longer, adapting the hardware
> design to a different display is less pressing and therefore not done
> with every cycle, and the development budget may even be too small to
> have any dedicated embedded computing hardware expert on the team at all.

That... is quite an interesting analysis, actually.

So essentially you're saying it has nothing to do with the manufacturing 
costs at all, and it's all about what it will cost to design the thing 
versus what they can sell it for. (?)

> Also, what *will* cost money is changing an existing embedded computer
> design to drive an entirely different type of display, as opposed to
> just adding one more switch or even just changing the software.

I have no idea how this stuff works. Like, I have no idea what kind of 
circuitry it takes to hook a microcontroller up to a display, and how 
much different display types differ.

> The question is, would you pay for it?



some washing machines. (I.e., I could buy 2 for that price.)

> Would your decision to purchase model X of brand A instead of model Y of
> brand B really depend on the presence of an LCD, or would it instead be
> driven by a gazillion of other factors?

Honestly? The main concern is the physical size of the hole it needs to 
fit into. And what colour it is. That usually limits you to only one 
specific model possible, IME...

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