If Rev-Ed went bust...

[Grogster]

Hi.

I would imagine that Rev-Ed are to be with us for a long time, but having said that, what becomes of the Picaxe, if Rev-Ed should fail, close-down, sell to another party?

I doubt this will ever happen, with a product such as Picaxe, but I just want to evaluate the worst-case-scenario...

In that event, what happens to the thousands of us who have used a Picaxe in our product?
If they sold-out to a 3rd party company, what is to stop the price of Picaxe's sky-rocketing beyond all expectation?

If they went under, what happens?
Can we get any support or a new source of chips in this event?

I have no wish to be negative, but I have to evaluate the pros and cons, as I now use Picaxe chips in pretty much all my new designs for many, many clients, and this is the first time these thoughts have occurred to me...

 

[hax]

If you are in the technology field then you know that stuff gets redundant very quickly, whether people go out of business or not.

We didn't have an 08M only 5 years ago, and we didnt have a 14M till very recently.

Even if Rev-ed continue to trade, in another 5 years it will become hard I expect to find an 08M due to a newer chip on the market that we have not heard of yet....

Will the new chip or concept be backwards compatible for your current clients? Maybe, maybe not.


It's an uncertain world.

If you cant get spares you will have to redesign the product. Too bad. But the new product will be better due to better chips, whether from Rev-Ed or from Parralax, or AVR, pic Bloader, or any other system.

As an electronics designer, you should be greatful!!!

The redundancy in products makes you more money. Not the other way around.

 

[marcos.placona]

I think it's quite difficult to happen. But should this happen, I'd move to one of rev-ed's competition. There's one out there that has almost all the picaxe functionalities, uses the same language and has the same pinout (I won't mention it's name btw). So, in case that happened, I'd just stick to my designs but replaces chips.

I'd be really sad though, as picaxe is my preference by far, but if that was the case, I'd have no choice

 

[Mycroft2152]

Having a second source is a serious concern for manufacturers in the real world. This is one of the reasons the PICAXE is not used in major commercial prducts.

What would happen if there were a fire or flood at the Rev-Ed facilties and all production stopped for a couple of months during rebuilding?

Myc

 

[Dippy]

Well I certainly hope Rev-Ed go on and on.... there are others more likely to fail.

But I guess this concern applies to every major component on your board when swap-outs aren't available.

Haxby has said most of what needs to be said. Again my crystal ball has clouded and you will never get significant advanced warning of a Company closure or buy-out.

I would have thought the degree of concern is proportional to how many units you provide.
But, if you Business Plan reckons you will sell thousands then buy thousands now if your cash-flow permits it.

I would also say that keeping with a PICAXE based design for small production is sensible. If the worst ever happened you could migrate to a different compiler and keep the same PIC ic and I/O structure that you have now - meaning that your tens of thousands of PCBs are NOT redundant.

My greater concern is for people who have based a production run using 'bargains' e.g. an Ebay RF module....
And another concern is for when IC manufs drop DIP format for SMD only e.g. RAMTRON's FRAM. I have yet to hear of anyone here actually contacting a manuf to see if a particular format is being dropped.

So, Plan but don't Panic Grogster, you'll have probably made your millions before Rev-Ed disappear

PS
Myc. a similar thing happened at the Cross & Blackwell (Premier Foods) factory a couple of years ago and I had to go without Branston Pickle for 2 months!

 

[hippy]

The situation is no different to the unavailability of any critical component. Businesses have to work around that and are always advised to have contingency plans in place or at least be aware of what the risks are with their business venture. That's just a part of being a business; nothing's guaranteed.

If you have a product dependent on PICAXE availability at a certain price you could be left high and dry if circumstance changes. You wouldn't be the first in that situation. You just have to adapt to it, or throw in the towel; "it was good while it lasted, now time for something else".

 

[hax]

NASA had a famous problem when they developed a booster engine program on an old 486 CPU.


They assumed that it would be re-designed in a few years, so they only bought a few of the 486 CPUs, but due to budget cutbacks, it was not re designed in the original time frame.

They had to embarrassingly "put out a public call" to reasonably large reputable companies to see if they had any spare old CPUs available. (in good condition of course)

Managing risk is what it's all about. Your insurance is how many chips you buy now. Your cost of insurance is the loss in interest from your funds being tied up, or the interest rate that you pay to your lender if you are borrowing the money.

You could put it into a function of what your time is worth in developing your product, the expected life cycle of your product and the expected pcs you will sell.

Ultimately you might end up with an answer similar to what most electronics companies do..... Hold next to no stock, and work like hell with your fingers crossed.

Unfortunately Economics is the new Electronics.

 

[Dippy]

Ah , good old Just In Time.... good for some, disaster for others. Size is important.

 

[Technical]

Actually the PICAXE master files and instructions are at our solicitors. If Revolution goes bust or a volcano erupts in Bath then the PICAXE goes open-source. We don't want over ten years worth of development to suddenly disappear either!

 

[Dippy]

Phew!
Hopfully that's put this one to bed.

 

[marcos.placona]

Actually the PICAXE master files and instructions are at our solicitors. If Revolution goes bust or a volcano erupts in Bath then the PICAXE goes open-source. We don't want over ten years worth of development to suddenly disappear either!

This sounds really good Technical. It shows that rev-ed is not just interested in profits (as many other companies), but in satisfied customers.

Hopefully Bath will never be hit by any natural (or even unnatural) disasters, and we'll have picaxe for many years!

 

[leftyretro]

Phew!
Hopfully that's put this one to bed.

Well almost. The underlining PIC chip it's self is a single source supplier of the Picaxe microcontroller products if I'm not mistaken.

Electronic manufacturing has changed a lot over the 3-4 decades. In the 70s when I first started working in the industry a manufacture would almost never design a product unless all the component had a least two suppliers or more. Now that is hardly the case with most of the advance programmable chips and such. It's just a new risk that manufactures have to deal with I guess.

Lefty

 

[demonicpicaxeguy]

Well almost. The underlining PIC chip it's self is a single source supplier of the Picaxe microcontroller products if I'm not mistaken.

Electronic manufacturing has changed a lot over the 3-4 decades. In the 70s when I first started working in the industry a manufacture would almost never design a product unless all the component had a least two suppliers or more. Now that is hardly the case with most of the advance programmable chips and such. It's just a new risk that manufactures have to deal with I guess.

Lefty

these days getting a supplier to supply you with anything in quantities of less than 1000 pcs is getting harder and harder over here in australia there are two main suppliers of the samsung nand chips, so far both suppliers won't take orders of less than 1000 pcs the lead time is beyond 12 weeks in most cases and thats providing they actaully get back to you with a quote,

i've had to resort to using nor chips instead at $6 a piece i've still got a 12week lead time but i don't have any other option other than learning chinese and taking a plane trip

 

[tmack]

I was too scared to read this post at fist but Im glad I did.

 

[Grogster]

Well, Technical has cleared up any possible problems there.
Who would have thought, that ANY company would be so considerate?!??!!!(rhetorical)

This is wonderful news, and puts my mind at ease.

As also mentioned by retrolefty, the PIC chip itself is also a consideration, but I don't see Microchip going anywhere anytime soon either.


I feel I should make myself very clear to this forum: I in no way mean to offend or upset anyone by the posting of this thread, moderators, guests, members or Technical - I just wanted to evaluate the worst-case scenario. I also need to make it clear I am not trying to start a flame-war, as the thread subject could actually be taken that way(in that I am trying to), if I don't clarify my position...

There have been some very good posts here as to being a realist in the designs - people, companies and circumstances change, as Haxby, Dippy and others have pointed out.

I think I will do as Dippy suggested, and just buy up about 50 or so chips for each of the type I use frequently. As Haxby also mentioned, in another 5 years or so, the 08M will probably be replaced with something else, so design changes are perhaps inevitable.

The chips I currently use, are the 14M, the 18X and the 40X1.
I don't use the 08 or 08M at all other then for very basic stuff.
I have not yet found a use for the 20, but i'm sure a project will come along before to long!


Picaxe chips are just so wonderfully easy to program, and far cheaper then the Stamp family of controllers, which is why I choose to use them over Stamps or plain "Blank" micro controllers(which are far more difficult to program in their native language).

 

[leftyretro]

Well, Technical has cleared up any possible problems there.

Picaxe chips are just so wonderfully easy to program, and far cheaper then the Stamp family of controllers, which is why I choose to use them over Stamps or plain "Blank" micro controllers(which are far more difficult to program in their native language).

You sure got that correct. That was my first impression when I first found the site and saw how little $$ and time for someone to start out learning and using microcontrollers. No steep learning curve with the Microchip IDE and hardware programmers. No complex language to learn to get started, just simple Basic commands. Now there are applications that justify the faster and more powerful Pic tools, but for learning and simple applications that don't require max speed you just can't beat the Picaxe system.

Lefty

 

[hippy]

I just wanted to evaluate the worst-case scenario

It's an interesting question as to what would be the worse case ?

That could be said to be Microchip going belly up but with their portfolio I'd expect someone to step in and buy it up, if it were market desertion Microchip could probably be dead, perhaps also if the suspected Bath Volcano turned out to be in Arizona.

But even with Microchip gone the PICAXE could migrate to another microcontroller, Atmel being the most obvious choice, perhaps something ARM-based, but there are many more options. They may have different pinouts, slightly different I/O specs but the Basic commands would largely be the same and the Programming Editor would still work. If Rev-Ed really wanted, a dose of venture capital and a trip to a Taiwanese Chip Fab, and same old PICAXE in a shiny new plastic package with a Rev-Ed logo printed on it would emerge into existence.

So what if volcanoes in Arizona and Bath ignited simultaneously while the solicitors with the PICAXE documentation were hit by an unusually high Severn Bore tidal wave, were washed away, lost for ever ?

It's looking more desperate, but it would still be possible to re-create the PICAXE line or enough of it. It would all be down to benefits and enthusiasm in doing that. Is there a profit in doing that, is the effort worthwhile, and would people have been lost to other product before that could be done ?

I cannot really think of any other scenarios where we'd really care afterwards if the PICAXE were around or not