Aether II in store?

[bassmants]

Any chance the Aether II pcbs will ever be available in the store?  Other than bending/fitting an aluminum heat sink(which some of us would do happily), isn't everything else available without having to wait on a Coop?  They can be pretty costly to buy too many at once and with only one coop per year, it would be sweet to be able to put together an arsenal throughout the year  

[tbone321]

The other side to that argument would be to keep putting the money for them aside and then when the coop does run, you can afford to buy them and at a discounted cost. 

[bassmants]

Oh sure, be the voice of reason!

[MazdaFan]

Another facet to that argument is IF and when the co-op is run.  It sometimes tough to get a manager to step forward and run a co-op.  LoneWolf41 did a fantastic job at running the Aether II co-op this year, but he took some huge risks to insure that they got to the members on time.  If the boards are not in the store, then we have to wait for a manager.  No manager, no Aethers that year. 

Another is the assembly and testing of the Aethers and incorporating them into your show.  Do you go ahead and plan them into your show for the year hoping the coop will be run?  Or do you sit back and wait and see then scramble at the last minute to add them in, or (in my case) just wait till next year. (tough when you've got $400-$600 in lights that you aren't using). 

If this were a voting matter (which to the best of my knowledge, isn't) I'd vote for the boards in the store.

Jamie

[zwiller]

I suggested this before and like you I thought the heat sink was the issue but I recall RJ telling me the issue is rather related to the LED... 

[arw01]

That is one expensive led for sure in there.

Got curious, but did not finish out the curiosity, what it would take to put TWO of those leds in the light. Was going to look up the regulators and other chips to see how much headroom they had for additional current demands from having 2 leds in there.

Then got wondering if I changed to like 8 smaller leds, but didn't get that curious to research the different options with the same type of wiring hookup.

My biggest issue I had with putting them out in the show right away, was I did not realize how limited their color saturation was in lighter shades.  On a white house, anything like a light blue or light green is pretty much white instead of a pastel.

Need to tweak the sequences to stick closer to full intensity red green or blue, haven't found an orange I like yet either.

Alan

[tbone321]

People need to remember that this is not a retail store.  Someone has to pay for these boards and if the design is changed or a part it requires reaches its EOL, then who eats the cost of the now useless boards?  For as long as I have been here, if there is a demand for a device, a coop usually runs but with the big move toward RGB, there has been a reduced demand for many of these devices which increases the chances that ordered boards will become obsolete.