The Board-Support Package Is Not Enough!
Some weeks ago, I ordered a Variscite iMX8M Nano development kit online. At least, I thought so. Instead of a confirmation e-mail, I got a phone call from a sales person, Max (name changed), the next day.
Max: “Who is your customer?”
Me: “I don’t have a concrete customer. I just want to evaluate your SoM like I did for the SoMs of Toradex, Seco, Avnet, DigiKey and others. Then, I can help my customers decide where to buy their SoMs.”
Max: “If you don’t have a customer, you won’t get a development kit.”
Me: “What!!!???”
Max: “All our potential customers get free support to customise the Linux image to their needs. This is often a substantial effort for our support engineers. If you only buy one SoM, this support is not justified.”
Me: “I don’t need any support. I do Yocto BSP customisations for a living like implementing custom Yocto layer, OTA updates, remote support via VNC, window managers, communication between Cortex-A and Cortex-M cores and secure boot. Your customers must do these things themselves. They often fail and must hire expensive consultants. Why don’t you build these features once and sell them to all your customers, say, with a premium on your SoMs?”
Max hesitating slightly: “You sort of got a point there. But that’s not how we do business here. I hope for your understanding that I can’t send you a development kit.”
Me: “I hope for your understanding that I cannot recommend Variscite to my customers then.”