Outside of the obvious external costs (development, transport, overheads, import, profit, etc), PCB + Tooling costs are often wildly underestimated.
For reference, a PCB of this size requires a setup + stencil template, which would run ~ 400 - 500 USD.
Tooling for the plastic injection mold for this piece would run around 5000 USD, and each subsequent piece would probably cost around 10 - 50c USD.
Tooling + PCBA done right have significant upfront costs that often seem to be forgotten.
Hence, the popularity of the Design for Manufacturing concept these days...
They'd be probably even more surprised to find that it'd cost 10k - 15k to make the tooling.
Diagnosing / 'debugging' issues with injection molding is incredibly difficult - again - it's almost black magic, and it's sadly a skill that's getting harder and harder to find.
If you cast your eyes around your desk / room, we see molded plastic parts every where - so we make the assumption that they must be cheap and easy to do.
And indeed - the assumption of facility due to availability is a very common trap that many kickstart projects fall into.
It's harder to scaffold and pivot in real life ;)
5kUSD would be a conservative price from our factories; but the item is rather simplistic. As a general rule of thumb, for cases in plastic injection molding, you're correct - you're looking at 10 - 20k easily. Multiple pieces with complicated gating, the price goes up.
Zinc / Metal injection molding involves much more black magic, and this is reflected in the costs.
With all of that said - we're in complete agreement on the main subject - even if tooling cost 5k + 20c per piece, the estimation of $1 for PCBA + PCB Stenciling + molding is way off track, unless it was amortised over tens / hundreds of thousands of pieces.
I guess they could have waited until they had more to publish it, but I found it interesting regardless
But now PlugUp web site, http://pu1.fr, redirects to a trendy, rebranded site that I can't get to work. So I don't know if that vendor exists anymore.
I am excited about YubiCo products. The key I have Just Works, looks and feels very well-made.
>That is not a big deal, considering that Levels 1 and 2 of the FIPS140-2 certification are just a marketing gimmick for most electronic devices.
They have a point here: technically, the iPhone is FIPS140-1/2 compliant. By itself, that doesn't mean that the device is secure. It does show two important requirements for security.
https://twitter.com/flexlibris/status/660108123487789056
> TSA at Boston airport tried to take my Yubikeys away from me to a second location "for a test". I refused & they backed off but FYI people.
If you have your Yubikeys with you while traveling, you might want to be careful.
>The whole point is to use them as part of your authentication chain.
I know and that's exactly why I said you might want to be careful with them while traveling. If your keys are taken away from you and you don't have any backup solution (such as recovery keys), you will get locked out of your important accounts.
(1) http://www.amazon.com/FCS-Moulded-Steel-Fin-Key/dp/B003JCQPX...
