2 of 7 found this helpful:

When I saw this item appear on Sparkfun I was intrigued. As with most people, though, I was taken aback by the price point. But I read the blog post by SparkX and got on-board.

When I received the item it definitely did not feel like $60 of hardware, but I can understand that the cost of something can be in the development time and not just the hardware. I did note that there is an 8-pin DIP socket on the board and hoped that it would require a common IC (555, etc.). After trying endless things to get the serial connection to work I found that I had to order a unique (re-branded) 'Serial IC'. Approximately $3 for an 8-pin IC and $9 in shipping and I received the part. Now the bill is up to ~$75 and still no COMs. That is where I am at the time of this writing.

In writing this review I wanted to understand how others felt about the item and I found a very different consensus on the product page. To be honest this shocked me. Luckily, though, a comment by Member #50532 indicated that the serial drivers don't work on Windows 7...which is what I am using. Now (after a lot of lost time) I must find a Windows 10 computer to continue this journey, and to be quite honest I am almost ready to throw this thing in the garbage and save myself any additional cost/frustration. I honestly don't know if the IC was even necessary, all I know is that if this thing requires me to pay $9 to ship another re-branded part from DigiKey I am done.

All of that said, I am not your modern SparkFun buyer. This is the first item I have bought from the site in quite some time. I am an Adafruit convert through-and-through. I think I was once spoiled by Sparkfun and since then have become disenchanted by your products and posts. I live in CO and entered the maker scene when you all were still doing Free Day, Yearly Open House, and non-Educator SparkFun Classes in state (back in the day I took soldering basics with Nate in the ITLL, the Zigbee class with Robert Faludi, and plush toy making with a CU prof/TA). As SparkFun has grown all of this has changed - only some of which is understandable.

Maybe just be open about the additional cost and the OS pre-requisites for this item and get back to basics for the rest of the site. I would love to see some awesome classes or community events rather than people embedding RFID tags under their skin and making their own tattoo guns. Edgy/unique is not always fun, and while this device is unique to the field I am not having fun. :(