AVR-Chat

Hi Mike,

 

Interesting. I never knew about the SD licensing. I guess I need to do more
research next time.

 

The cost is actually $1000 per year which is not a lot if you sell loads of
products but those companies like myself who sell only a few per year or one
off bespoke designs, this could be a nail in the coffin so to speak. As
Kenny asked, I might have to consider looking for something that is non SD
based. 

 

I am going to see about signing the NDA and getting a copy of the
specification to see exactly what is licensed as I am unsure if you use a
non SD format storage method, that it will be outside the licensing
requirements. I am looking at using an SD card for internal storage. The
user has no access to it from the outside. It is simply installed to give
data storage and download is over Ethernet, USB Flash etc.

 

Thanks for the heads up.

 

Dave.

 

From: AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com [mailto:AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of Mike Payson
Sent: 02 February 2010 01:58
To: AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [AVR-Chat] Looking at doing a datalogger using an XMEGA part -
not sure which storage technology to use

 

  

If you're making a product for sale, be sure to read the license terms of
each technology before deploying. It's possible that you may decide that one
tech is better than the other for non-technical reasons. I'm not familiar
with Dataflash, but I can tell you that in order to include a SD card slot
in your product you are required to join the Secure Digital Association,
which costs a couple thousand dollars, and to pay annual license fees per
product, which are thousands more. It's been a while since I looked, but I
believe it was around $5000 for the first year and $2-3k for all future
years if you sell only one product. The price is regardless of whether you
sell one board or millions.

I suspect that you could make a small hobbyist board without having to worry
about the license fees, but it is something that you should be aware of.





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