Picocalc done properly?

Author	Message
toml_12953 Guru Joined: 13/02/2015 Location: United States Posts: 546	Posted: 12:38pm 02 May 2025         matherp said   Is there really a big market for this sort of thing? If there is why not do it properly? Single board that can be fully built by JLC using my standard component blocks from various boards RP2350, 16Mb Flash, 8Mb PSRAM Battery backed RTC I2S Audio with amp, speakers + headphone jack Battery with onboard charging and use when external power connected. 16-bit parallel display so fast Custom keyboard with 10x8 matrix scanned direct from the RP2350 so no tacky I2C faults Case design for resin print by JLC or home print Properly supported by standard MMBasic Everything open source and no profit The only bit that would require a bit of investment is the tooling for the keyboard. Looks like this would be about GBP1500 one-off for a similar keyboard to the PicoCalc and probably less for a membrane keyboard with click keys. The £1500 is a UK price I'm sure there are Chinese firms who could do this cheaper - haven't researched - and that would have to be amortised across a reasonable build volume - say 100 Interesting? It all sounds great. I'd buy one. However, I'm not a typical user. You'd be competing against the $75.00 USD PicoCalc so you'd have to create a lot of buzz for such a device if you want to attract the kinds on numbers that would make it feasible. At £1500, there are a lot of much more powerful tiny computers available although they're not self-contained with screen and keyboard. If you ever do produce such a device at under $1K USD, let me know!