Hey all,

If you're new to the email list, welcome! If you're not new, then thanks for sticking around! First of all, please check out my recent Patreon post from last Friday here for some general updates regarding board progression and for some initial context before reading about the group buy.

TLDR: boards almost ready, screen sourcing has deployed negotiations and I'm waiting on basic samples.

This is a long email. If you'd like to look at it later, please click this link:
​https://de-link.kit.com/posts/group-buy​-survey​

HERE IS THE PART WHERE I TALK ABOUT THE GROUP BUY

A group buy, that is really the only true path forward with projects like these. I have no means of mass producing, I have no means of investing tens of thousands of dollars into materials, I have no means of running a full business (right now). So the plan, at least that I foresee, is to initiate a BETA TESTERS GROUP BUY.

Here's how it will work:

1. Interest is collected via the form of a survey, saying "here is the price for a kit/unit, would you want to buy it from me at that price?"
2. If the number is above my target (100 due to minimum order quantity of screen panels), I set up shop with a payment link that would go through to me.
3. I order the materials, in bulk, with the money I collect
4. I build, test, repair if needed, and send them out to all buyers individually

That is how it will work in an ideal world. There are two forks in the road there, one being there is not enough interest BEFORE payment commitment and another being that there is not enough actual payment commitment from those who did initially say they were interested. Of course there are more along the way with obstacles for actually producing/sourcing the product, etc.

So what is the price, and when is this happening?

I'll answer the "when" question first, as it is a bit more concrete. As soon as I get the new board, as soon as it's OK'd by my reviewers, as soon as it is tested in my hands, I will IMMEDIATELY get to work on:

• making the new enclosure
• organizing background logistics (licensure, suppliers, etc)
• opening up everything I've done so far and making my work re-producible, which will firstly include a tutorial for ordering/producing the PCBA yourself through a manufacturing site
• POLLING PUBLIC INTEREST IN THE GROUP BUY AT THE ESTIMATED COST (link to survey at the bottom)

In short, ASAP. Realistically, probably late September/early October depending on shipping times.

When it comes to cost...

It's undecided for now, but here's my thinking so far based on what I'd like to include in a kit:

• assembled PCB
• screen panel with touch and frontlight
• 3D printed enclosure
• screws
• NO MICRO SD CARD
• NO CABLE
• NO BATTERY

The battery is omitted as it would make shipping much harder and much more expensive, when I think it's much more worth it to point to a $9 battery off of Amazon with Prime shipping. The cable and card, I know it is standard practice to include those, but it's just not something that's worth the cost for beta kits. I apologize. For the rest of the items, here's the math I've done.

First of all, the context here is that if I aim to sell 100 units I need to aim to buy 120 of each unit in the event of failure/etc. So let's do the math for each component in this kit.

PCBA:

This one is pretty cut and dry, if I assemble everything and order it RIGHT NOW through JLCPCB at a quantity of 120, the total cost is $3,546.28 after shipping and tariffs. You can't really get cheaper than JLC in this regard, even if I try an American supplier (who will likely have a higher MOQ) I'll do my research, but for now that's the number I have.

3D Printed Enclosure:

I'd either print (pain-stakingly) or order the eventual FDM case for de-link. This of course would just be the first viable case we get, and I would be ecstatic if more cases were to be developed down the line by the community. I estimate the cost would be something like $5 each? So that would be $600

Screws:

Probably $100.

Screen Panels:

Here's where it gets complicated. As I stated before, there's a fee to produce custom screens with a frontlight and touch module. The fee is "one time", and is $750 each. So if I want touch only or frontlight only, $750. If I want both, $1,500. Then, I have to actually pay the price for the screens after that fee. The price per unit I paid for the 5 samples without touch/light was $9, and he mentioned bulk samples would be cheaper. Nonetheless, the typical $45 that 5 sample screens would have cost me shot up to $120 after tax/shipping/tariffs, an 166% increase.

If you assume that 120 panels are sold to me at $6/pc with an 166% increase, that is $1,915, let's round to $2,000 just to be conservative.

TOTAL ESTIMATE:

$3,500 (PCBA rounded down) + $600 (case) + $100 (screws) + $2,000 (screens) + $1,500 (customization fee for screens) + $100 (packaging material)= $7,800.

I also started a 0% APR credit card for project expenses so far (dumb, I know) that has a balance of $1,800 which includes cost of PCBA samples, screens, soldering equipment, 3D printer and filament.

So my break-even sits at $9,600.

If I sell 100 units, that puts the break-even cost at $96 per unit before shipping and before Stripe fees, shipping, chargebacks, and replacements. That isn't the final price; I'm still weighing it. What I'd like is a margin healthy enough to reinvest and take de-link further without leaning on risky tactics like financing the project on a personal credit card.

Here's the pitch, and the vision behind it.

Even that break-even figure is competitive with the average microreader, it lands under the X4 Pro's retail price. That's my personal cost to build a unit, before I've added a cent of margin. It's also at an order quantity of just 120 units, while carrying a significant one-time customization fee and the debt I've taken on to get this far. That de-link costs this little to produce from such a disadvantaged starting position tells me something important. If we can clear this first hurdle and build momentum, without being handicapped by tiny order quantities, one-time fees, and a single operator funding it out of pocket, then de-link becomes more than an accessible, open-source, fully repairable, customizable, and expandable microreader platform. It could also become the cheapest.

Let me walk through why. These are rough projections rather than firm quotes, but the direction is what matters.

Strip out the two one-time costs: my project debt and the screen customization fee, and $3,300 comes off immediately, dropping the hypothetical break-even to $63 per unit. From there, volume does the heavy lifting. PCBA pricing scales dramatically: even a 10x increase in order quantity, to 1,200 units, can cut it by as much as 30%, and larger runs push it further. Screens come down too, less steeply, but perhaps another 15%. Screws and packaging, maybe 5%. That brings the break-even to roughly $49.

Now add back the pieces a finished product should include: USB cable, micro SD card, and a battery. Then it settles back around $70, comfortably conservative. And the number keeps falling the closer we get to true production volume, the kind that starts to put XTEink's pricing within reach.

I'll be the first to admit I'm partly thinking out loud, and that I'm leaving out real costs XTEink carries and I don't: R&D, marketing, distribution, y'know the actual machinery of a business. But consider this: the R&D I've poured into de-link, I've done for free. The work every CrossPoint developer has contributed, they've done for free. So why couldn't we reclaim that value now and pass it straight through to the reader, while providing them a platform that doesn't rely on me, but relies on the community.

That's the optimistic case. Coming back to earth, what I actually need at this stage is price feedback. I'm willing to run this first group buy on thin margins provided I can secure commitment from at least 100 beta testers. That's the first domino. If it doesn't fall, de-link stays what it is today: an open-source project that never quite reaches production, something only I and a handful of tinkerers feel safe investing in.

So I'd genuinely value your input. I've put together a short Google Form with a single question about price:

​https://forms.gle/eXh43fp7mEWLs6ei7​

The price range I'm evaluating is $110 to $150, with thin margins at one end and thicker margins at the other. What I would do with said margins, is also up in the air. But I will detail that further once I have a better idea of what you think. Again, thank you all very much for following de-link, and I am immensely grateful to even get this far on what I considered a small post-grad project just for me to learn electronics and to pick up reading.

Thank you.

Ian