It is going great and we are just too busy, which explains why we are not as active in the community as usual. Here is some tips of what is going on …
We are moving to a new building in few weeks. The new building will allow us to optimize our production and lower our overhead. This will contribute to better product pricing. The new building is only 10 minutes away from our current location. Both buildings have a similar footprint but the new building does not have a second level. To us, as we work as a unit, not having a second level is a very good thing. Also, see item #3 below.
There is a new website to be announce shortly to our insiders and will be public in a month or so. This new website is designed to carry any of GHI’s no commercial products. This will help GHI’s main website to concentrate on professionals and commercial needs, where the “fun” products can be on a separate website.
There is yet a third website coming as well! The third website is designed to host PCB designs, closed and open source. Meaning, you can upload your designs’ BoM, Gerbers, schematics, images…etc. and then optionally make the project public. The website will also be a gateway to out manufacturing capabilities. Very soon you will be able to let GHI build your boards! (the move to the new building will help with this as well)
NETMF 4.3 is a top propriety to get complete, we had the first SDK out couple of weeks ago and a second one this week. More details on this in the news post. We plan to continue posting releases every couple weeks till it is done. It should not take long as the transition has been going very smooth so far.
non-NETMF products are on the way! While we love NETMF and will continue to support it, we have a lot of passion for other technologies and we have a lot of product ideas we like to share with the world.
We will detail and publicly share everything later this month so stay tuned.
Boy I am surprised no one has commented on this yet! This is great news. Anything that increases the availability of GHI products is good. And if the price is lower even better.
Is there any chance that your new facilities will also produce enclosures? It would be nice to have professional enclosures similar to the Raspberry Pi.
I know you said more details are coming but just throwing it out there… But great news!
Do you plan to move community/codeshare/creations to the new site(s)?
Feels like you are going back to what you had before - multiple site (mainsite, tinyclr, fezzer, wiki, etc.) vs one combined site.
This is all great news, I’m sure. But, I feel like I’m experiencing deja vu. Aren’t you guys getting tired of moving? Hopefully, this move will produce a low cost WiFi solution.
When you say “build boards” do you mean PCB fabrication, or do you mean assembly? I’d be (pleasantly) shocked if you could come anywhere near DFRobot/Seeed/OSHPark prices on PCB fabrication, but small-run assembly is an unfilled niche, IMO.
About the move, we have moved five times in the last eight years. Yrs wet do not like moving but is part the growth wet have been going through for years there isn’t a lot of interruption usually as we always have overlap between the two places that last for weeks or even months. Obviously wet hope this move will now last longer
We are a USA manufacture to start with but however we are not competing with these guys at all the way we see it and the way we plan to offer our services. It Will make sense soon. I am sorry I can’t share more info just yet.
No as the new websites are not related at all. Old websites were merged as they all were NETMF related.
The community will still be here on the main website. Possible add new sections on the forum for the new topics. Do not worry, the new topics do interest someone them we can add a feature to opt out, keeping the community the same way you see it today.
Either way, the community is built for all of us to enjoy and we can modify the website to whatever makes sense to the community.
Have to concur on this one. That would be great if someone could offer that type of service. There are loads of low cost PCB houses now offering small prototype runs,DFRobot for example but I only know of one PCB place that offers low volume assembly. I’ve used Myro PCB for small runs of 3-5 boards. Not exactly hobby prices but still very good value for what I was doing.
A 10 board assembly service would be ideal for the likes of all the creations.
I have only one other thing to say, and that is that it seems like that there continues to be a lack of focus at GHI. So many things going on, and so many things left undone or half-done. Premium, OSH, Hydra gets no love, Lynx, Medusa, bare NETMF, Gadgeteer, laser cutter, website after website after website (GHI very well might be a website company), and now a whole new set of things.
I’d like to be excited, but really, I read the announcement as, “we got bored with the stuff we were working on so now we’re going to try some new stuff, we may or may not get back to the old stuff at some point.”
That is what I read too - and, being bored myself, saw it as a positive thing! GHI is fun to work with. You pay a price for innovation - but the benefits, for me, are far greater.
A package was released couple weeks ago and just released another one today! I am not sure why you have those feelings but we are still giving NETMF a lot of attention.
