Coop's

[Timon]

I'm confused about the coops. It seems to me that they get posted without any warning and at who knows what time of the day. If your not near you mail client or happen to be busy the coops open and close so fast you don't hardly have a chance to get in on it. I also don't understand the order limits. This like a strange way to do business.

Why can't coops always be posted at a convent time when everyone is likely to be home?

Why can't a heads up posting be made a day or so in advance giving the date and time the coop will open.

Why do coops need to have quantity limits? If 200 people need to order why limit a coop to just 100 units. If enough people want a controller and the count ends up at say 426 what's the problem, you build up 426 kits.

To me a coop buy is to give everyone a way to buy at a lower cost that one would get if they bought the parts a unit at a time but as it is I just see it a big crap shoot trying to getting into one.

IMHO

Confused John

P.S. Question: do the kits come with the processors programmed?

[RJ]

I'm confused about the coops. It seems to me that they get posted without any warning and at who knows what time of the day. If your not near you mail client or happen to be busy the coops open and close so fast you don't hardly have a chance to get in on it. I also don't understand the order limits. This like a strange way to do business.

Why can't coops always be posted at a convent time when everyone is likely to be home?

Why can't a heads up posting be made a day or so in advance giving the date and time the coop will open.

Why do coops need to have quantity limits? If 200 people need to order why limit a coop to just 100 units. If enough people want a controller and the count ends up at say 426 what's the problem, you build up 426 kits.

To me a coop buy is to give everyone a way to buy at a lower cost that one would get if they bought the parts a unit at a time but as it is I just see it a big crap shoot trying to getting into one.

IMHO

Confused John

P.S. Question: do the kits come with the processors programmed?

Ok I need to explain something that seem to keep coming up with the new members.

DLA is not a business, So it truly is no way to run a business. If DLA was a business we would sell the Express complete ready to run and they would cost much more, we would make profit on them and therefore we would make as many as fast as we could by hiring people.

But because we are just people donating our time to make kits that save others money we only ask the coop managers to do the amount they are willing to invest time to do.

See the issue is you say "you build up 426 kits"  but see that is it, someone else builds up the kit. It is not you spended every moment of your free time sorting parts for other people so they can save money. These people do not get paid for their time. They get some thanks normally from the coop members and some compliants from people about why they did not do 426 kits but only 100.

100 Kits is sorting thousands of parts folks and will take a coop manager maybe 50,60,80 hours of work. most have jobs and do this is their free time.

It is very easy to be the arm chair quarterback until it is you on the field with the mud on your face fighting for every yard you gain.

Let me counter by saying what I think was meant,

 "Thank you smartcontrols for running the 100 unit coop, I did not make it in but do know you are doing a lot of work to help a bunch of people just not me this time. Maybe next time you do one I can make it into it and you can then help me also by saving me a lot of money."

If this is not what was meant then I am the one that is confused, Why not?

See here :
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I think this should cover this thread.

RJ

[Jeffl]

I haven't had a chance yet to do a coop, but as I was putting some LE boards together tonight and I told my wife.  Look at this:

Look at how many bags there are to each kit
The power transformers cases are cut by hand and taped
The opto chips are in a hand cut case
The sockets are in a hand cut case
Each set of critical chips are on special static foam and the same order
Special static bags
Heat sink and screws are even separate bags


I have purchased kits from business and they don't come this nice.  And the list of sacrifices I know runs deep that these coop managers put on the line.  I for one am grateful.

[urthegman]

I couldn't have said it better Jeff.

[frankr]

Good job Jeff! Very well stated.

[rrawlings]

I too am fairly new, but I read a lot before I got involved.  I knew that this was all volunteer labor and was grateful as any person could be that I was able to buy an express from someone else who bought it in a coop, and a dongle board and case.  This got me wet enough to know this was for me.  I have been in the electronics manufacturing business for 20 years and was amazed at the amount of work that went into the coops.  I also knew how much this whole DIY thing was saving me.  I hope that by the time I have been in a year I can contribute to a coop by running one.  I too missed out on both of the recent coops, but I know there will be more and am patient.  I do have 2 more expresses and a few wireless boards I have accumulated as I could.

[sebjsan]

I have yet to put together or receive a kit from DLA, but from reading all the comments posted by RJ and other members here I just want to say thank you in advance. As RJ said this is not a business but more of a volunteer type of community. Especially from him and the rest of the staff here. I too would be disappointed if i missed a COOP, but would quickly understand that i should be so lucky for other people to give up such amounts of hours to put them together and complete them. It takes alot of time to organize so many parts. From ordering, organizing and shipping, that is ALOT of work to commit to. I for one im on this site about 6-8 hours a day. Not just to catch the next COOP but to be part of this great community. I am very pleased with all the info and generosity from members on this site.

[Timon]

RJ

Just to be clear I didn't meas "business" in the normal since of the word as I understand it's not a business. I think the word "process" would have been better.

Thanks for the clarification about why the numbers limits. It's keeping one person from being "over loaded". Sorting out lots of parts can take time.

Before I moved into networking and windows administration I was a computer systems design engineer so I know a little bit about PC board kitting. Let me think about this for a while because I "might" possibly have an idea that might help speed up the kitting process. If not I'm the only one who's time has been used. Who do you normally go through for the componits? That will help me see if my idea will work. PM me if that information should not be made public.

That said would it be possible to issue a Pre-coop alert with the date and time of the next coop 24 to 48 hours befor the coop is going to open? Maybe even reserve the first couple of hours for those that have not ordered for that kit before? I think that would give everyone a more even chance at the coop.

As always IMHO and keep up the good work.

John

[z327]

I was new to the coops last year and it only took making it onto one and seeing all the parts and free labor involved to never complain when I missed one.

I instead ordered boards and used the wiki to order the parts myself. It doesn't cost that much more then the coop considering the alternative of purchasing equipment from a commercial business.

So a big thanks to all the coop managers. Keep up the great work and don't let the few complainers ruin a good thing.

[SteveMaris]

I haven't had a chance yet to do a coop, but as I was putting some LE boards together tonight and I told my wife.  Look at this:

Look at how many bags there are to each kit
The power transformers cases are cut by hand and taped
The opto chips are in a hand cut case
The sockets are in a hand cut case
Each set of critical chips are on special static foam and the same order
Special static bags
Heat sink and screws are even separate bags


I have purchased kits from business and they don't come this nice.  And the list of sacrifices I know runs deep that these coop managers put on the line.  I for one am grateful.

I just built one tonight myself. I was thinking the same exact thing.
Well said.

[rogerwh]

I too missed out onthe Express coop but have been around for a while and understand bith that there are limits for a reason, and to be patient becuase as long as there is enough demand there will be more coops.  Others have expalined teh volunteer process of sorting parts quite well so I won't re-hash it.  But in addition to the volunteer labor you also have to remember that when dealing with $60-$70 kits it doesn't take long for the money to add up as well.  As RJ has said, this is not a business and we are basically sending thousands of dollars to someone to handle. 

With that being said, I think most of the problem is just from the exponential growth of this site in the last year.   I typically use the "unread posts since last visit" feature it and seem that about 80% of the posts are new member introductions. 

It would be nice to have a "store" so that we could place an order even when a coop was not running.  Then when we reached a certain point and a coop manager was willing you could peel off the next X orders and give the members a short window to pay or else loose their place. 

[Timon]

It would be nice to have a "store" so that we could place an order even when a coop was not running.  Then when we reached a certain point and a coop manager was willing you could peel off the next X orders and give the members a short window to pay or else loose their place.

Now that a well though out idea. Then your not dependent on the luck of the draw when trying to get in on one. You also see what the demand is and can allocate accordingly. It the amount was large then more than one coop manager could process the orders.

I think I'd add one slight modification to this and that would be to round robin the orders between those that have placed orders in the coop list up to the count they requested. Example, if I wanted 5 kits and someone else wanted 10 kits and another person 7 kits and then the kits would be allocated one to each of the three person until each reached their request then the remainder to the remaining requests. That way everyone gets some but maybe not all they wanted at least till the next coop.

Great thinking Roger

[Rod R]

I think everyone has to remember that we are all pretty pumped up from the Christmas season and want to get started right away.  Hey its still January there are going to plenty of more coops going on throughout the year and as long as there is a demand RJ will still have the managers running the coops.  RJ has started the store up as a way of making it easier for both him and the members to get boards and other stuff away the the coops and will be tweaking it as we roll along during the year.  Mid year things slow down a lot but coops still happen so maybe that's a good time if your budget allows.  Sometimes as a lot of you have already pointed out we have to take a deep breath step back and look at the big picture.  There is still plenty of time left in the year even if you start right after Halloween.  DLA is not just a site but more of a community of hobbyist coming together and sharing their ideas moving all of us towards things we never thought we could of done years ago.  Most of the members will go out of their way to help out fellow DLA'er come up to speed.


Now would be a great time to use your time and energy to work on your sequences, that is the killer for me.  Takes me a day to build an Express takes me weeks to complete a sequence and I still tweak them.

[taybrynn]

Here is a great video of JJ doing a 175 LE COOP ... simply amazing !! 

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[rimist]

It would be nice to have a "store" so that we could place an order even when a coop was not running.  Then when we reached a certain point and a coop manager was willing you could peel off the next X orders and give the members a short window to pay or else loose their place.

Now that a well though out idea. Then your not dependent on the luck of the draw when trying to get in on one. You also see what the demand is and can allocate accordingly. It the amount was large then more than one coop manager could process the orders.

I think I'd add one slight modification to this and that would be to round robin the orders between those that have placed orders in the coop list up to the count they requested. Example, if I wanted 5 kits and someone else wanted 10 kits and another person 7 kits and then the kits would be allocated one to each of the three person until each reached their request then the remainder to the remaining requests. That way everyone gets some but maybe not all they wanted at least till the next coop.

Great thinking Roger

Good thinking. I'm working on international shipping, then will tackle something for co-ops. I'm not promising anything in particular, the initial goal is to simplify the co-op managers job.