[OpenRelief Developer] Down the line: restoring GSM communications/using GSM communications

[Shane Coughlan]

Hi Andrew

On Apr 18, 2012, at 4:27 PM, Andrew Back wrote:
> On Apr 18, 2012 7:02 AM, "Shane Coughlan" <shane at openrelief.org> wrote:
> > I met and spoke with Harald at the European Legal Network Conference on Thursday and Friday. He told me that the ballpark  figure per unit was around 2,000 Euro. Obviously that's putting it outside of our target price for the base platform, but this type of  technology could be very useful as a clip-in module.
> 
> That's a touch more expensive than I'd expected. But I imagine the development costs were not cheap and it may well use a few pricey parts.

Yes, I think the development cost has been priced into the per-unit cost, and that's understandable. But on the other hand, it is more pricey than I would like too. Our drone build is showing a projected BoM of around 1,000 USD per unit using retail sourcing, so with labour and factoring profit we could expect companies to start shipping production units at around 2,000 USD. In other words, the GSM technology will cost as much as a whole drone. 

> > What I suggest is that we head to launch with the basic airframe, the radiation module and the weather module. Then after launch we try to get funding to obtain development units of the telco system, and take it from there.
> 
> Yes, that makes sense. I'm sure we could put a good case together and I may know of some commercial organisations worth approaching.

Yup. If we can get enough sponsorship to put proof-of-concept into play, then I think we are likely to see commercial investment and later adoption of the same (or similar) technology.

Regards

Shane