Using mbed in real product

22 Aug 2012

I really love mBed. It helps me so much in prototypes. I know that it makes no sense use mBed in mass-production. But, in some projects that are not in mass-production I would like to use it in the product like a component. Are there any limitations or wrong about it.

22 Aug 2012

I assume you mean a custom PCB ?

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it is not that difficult, as a few of us have got it going,

Here is one i made earlier ..

/media/uploads/ceri/_scaled_imag2163.jpg

I have also managed to get Ethernet working on my own PCB !! (lots of thanks to those who helped with BIN2HEX Issues)

also .. LPC Mini is very interesting.

Hope this is usefull,

Ceri

22 Aug 2012

Actually, I didn't mean custom PCB.

But I mean I would like to use mBED itself in the product. I know it will be expensive to use it, but there is some projects not in mass-production and time issue is more important. So, I would like to use mBED as it is and I will make a base-board for mBED. Then I will put mBED into the base-board. This will be my product. Are there any license issues or something else like that. For example; in maximum I will produce 30 pieces in a year, so are there any risk that not to find enough mBED.

22 Aug 2012

Hi Bora,

Yes, you are free to do this. There are no license issues stopping you, and in fact is often a model we've seen people use to do initial trial runs of products/equipment with customers to win contracts etc, where time is the really important thing. Although to be clear our focus is definitely helping you prototype and do trial runs to test your product ideas quickly to get them in front of your boss/customer/VC, not as OEM modules.

You won't have issues getting hold of them; we are constantly building lots of them! The mbed boards are designed as professional prototyping modules that we produce with a long lifetime, so it is not like a one-off batch of marketing evaluation boards. The long lifetime is designed also to build the community, libraries and shared experience around a known platform too, which also helps productivity.

So, certainly nothing is stopping you. Hope it goes well!

Simon

p.s. We have occasionally considered making OEM versions of mbed, with the same form factor but just the target MCU, no programming interface and minimal components on it, so it could be used in production without your whole design needing to be SMT. They'd be a lower cost/zero packaging/bulk purchase affair - if you or anyone is interested in this, please email us at support@mbed.org with approximate volumes and we can gauge interest.

22 Aug 2012

Thanks Simon,

It is really relaxed so much!

20 Feb 2013

I would be interested in the OEM version of MCU. Small quantity, but if there are many interested users, even with small amounts each, the number may be high enough to compensate the fabrication.