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Aussie Sawppy - What's the damage?

A project log for Aussie Sawppy

An antipodean sibling

teamsgTeamSG 05/13/2020 at 13:192 Comments

I finally got it together to organise the dollars / details / notes that I've been setting aside since we started the rover build.

So what's the damage?

***   $737.16 AUD  ***

Today is the first time I've added it all up and I'm pleasantly surprised. I'd figured we'd gone a bit over the nominal $750 AUD budget I set in June 2019.

AUD vs USD is currently 0.6485, so my total cost is $478.05 USD.  @Roger set himself a target of sub-$500 USD for the Rev0, public-domain #Sawppy the Rover build, so...

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Mission Accomplished.

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The full, tidied-up-for-public-consumption cost spreadsheet is in the Files section of this project log.

Or get it here.

Most of our parts came through Ali-Express, which has a bewildering array of supply options for the more common items. The prices in the spreadsheet are what we paid but there are myriad vendors and endless variations of free / paid shipping, bonus offers and discounts plus the daily fluctuations in exchange rates. You can waste tremendous amounts of time chasing & comparing prices in order to save just a couple of dollars. How much is your time worth?

The only thing not on the final list, so far as I can tell, is the 3D printer we bought to kick this whole thing off, which was $399 AUD from here.

Discussions

Roger wrote 05/13/2020 at 23:43 point

Thanks for tallying it up. I had been worried at the start of this project when you described the difficulties you faced trying to source parts from western Australia. I was afraid the tally would end up significantly higher than my target of $500 USD. Congratulations on your accomplishment!

  Are you sure? yes | no

TeamSG wrote 05/14/2020 at 01:28 point

No worries, Roger. I figured you (and others) would want to know the all-in cost.

I think the actuals would have slipped over into the red if I'd chosen paid shipping for all the AliExpress gear. Mostly I went the cheapest or free shipping and waited (... and sometimes waited & waited… and then waited some more, lolz). I took the embedded time penalty as an impetus for good planning.

I’m down with local supply (especially bricks-n-mortar shops) but there’s an acceptable limit on the extra time / cost / pain.

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