Will the Panda II be discontinued in the near future?

Hi, I havent been here for a while and it seems that GHI is heavily into .NET Gadgeteer and some of the old stuff seems to be disappearing like the Domino and the original Panda.
Ill rather not go the Gadgeteer route and will continue building my stuff on protoboard and custom PCB shields.
As Im currently building stuff based on the Panda II that might end up as a product, will the Panda II be available a year or two from now, -or should I start stacking up?

We just answered a very similar post about domino. You can still order domino and actually we have shipped some very recently. See this http://www.tinyclr.com/forum/topic?id=7824

Ups, sorry I didnt see that
Still I think my question is valid. I dont want to go the Gadgeteer route and is there any plans to discontinue the Panda II ?

Not as of now but i highly recommend you give gadgeteer a chance.

There’s always the Cerbuino - a hybrid device.

BTW - any update on your Whirligig (or it’s successor) project?

There is nothing wrong with Gadgeteer, its a great concept for prototyping and anyone that is scared of a soldering iron :slight_smile: but for low volume production and one shot installation I think the price is too high.
In my current project I have a 16x2 LCD screen, a Bluetooth module and a custom built weight cell amplifier. The Bluetooth module is $6.43 http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Wireless-Bluetooth-RF-Transceiver-Module-RS232-TTL-/170822890379?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27c5d6738b#ht_3224wt_952 (free shipping) compared to the Gadgeteer at $39.95 http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/312 as far as I can see its the same module only on a breakout board.
I cant find any HD44780 based module, but with the Panda II I/O pins it only cost me $2.62 http://www.ebay.com/itm/1pcs-1602-16x2-HD44780-Character-LCD-Display-Module-LCM-blue-blacklight-New-/251049844026?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a73bc9d3a#ht_2971wt_1504 (free shipping)

USBizi support, while not going away, is now likely to stay at 4.1 framework version. There’s also discussion about that on the forums in the past week or two.

But, Geir, none of that changes with Gadgeteer. You can still use Extender modules to connect to any component you wish on a breadboard and when you’re ready to make that low-volume run then you can slap a PCB to a Cerb40 ($25) or soon a G120 and you have an even better solution than putting a shield on a Panda and at the same price or less. Most of my current Gadgeteer projects are using very few modules except for simple things like power & buttons that I don’t want to bother wiring up during prototyping.

You can connect anything to gadgeteer modules, even shields! See DuinoProto wiki page http://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/319
You can also use the extender module. Or you can make a “module” that includes everything you need.

Still, gadgeteer is the future and the lower cost on the long run :slight_smile: We do not mind selling you panda or even domino but I am only recommending you take a deeper look at gadgeteer.

I think that’s a stretch, Gus, unless you start giving away those darned Samtec sockets and cables away for free.

It is all about volume. USB cables are harder to make but they are lower cost and easily available. Get everyone to use gadgeteer and these cables will cost pennies.

There’s competition in the USB cable market, but Samtec mostly has the Gadgeteer cable market all sewn up. I’m not disagreeing with you, everything’s cheap in large enough quantities, and Gadgeteer will get there in time, but there will ALWAYS be a cost associated with a Gadgeteer solution, if only because it’s (necessarily) less highly integrated.

That’s not to say that a solution that started life as Gadgeteer can’t be put together for exactly the same hardware cost, because it can (see Cerb40). Furthermore, with the one-chip Gadgeteer solution (of which Cerberus is the only one, currently, I believe, until the Mountaineer boards are available), highly integrated complete products can be prototyped with Gadgeteer modules and then taken to production in a single cost-effective package.

@ Geir - Good to see you back on the forum!

How is IGOR doing? :slight_smile:

Any new interesting projects?

Hi Architect
I’m sorry to say that IGOR lost his FEZ Panda to another project and is now mute :frowning:
My current project is more practical than fun like IGOR. The current project is to be used on live stock RFID tags and a load cell via Bluetooth.
I’m also rebuilding my XY-table XY Table by Geir - Thingiverse with at custom driver shield and some new stepper motors. I absolutely love DipTrace for PCB layout and having great fun with that.

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Poor IGOR :frowning:

DipTrace is looking very interesting:

http://www.diptrace.com/screenshots.php

@ Geir - Your X/Y Table is very nice! I am looking forward to seeing the post on the new one!

Ditto on the XY table. I have a lab background, and “auto-samplers” like this are very pricey. I’m assuming this would be a huge cost savings over available “professional” lab equipment.

@ Architect - Yes I think DipTrace is great and you can get 200 extra pins if you are a member of LMR, giving you a total of 500 pins and that is more than enough for most of my projects.
I also use this bordhouse http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=19_20&products_id=175 where you get 10 each 10x10cm two layers boards for $24.90 The quality is superb.

@ Geir,
I use http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/fusion-pcb-service-p-835.html?cPath=185 which costs the same.

I’ve had a bad run-in with itead. They claimed that they shipped my order, but wouldn’t give me a tracking number, after pushing they told me that they have not shipped my order, after more pushing they told me that they did send my order, saw something was missing, recalled my parcel, and that they where waiting for the missing item, an item that their site said they had 36 of in stock…

Caveat emptor

FWIW - I’m having a very similar issue with an order from Seeed now. We’ve got it, no we don’t, sorry for the long wait, can’t upgrade the shipping when we do get it, blah, blah, blah… that’s their idea of service. The hassle is MUCH more expensive than getting a better price up front…