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  • Yeah, I thought perforation might be a step too far. However, if there was a clear line then the instruction could be to cut the tracks with a scalpel first (probably slightly back from the line) and then use whatever means necessary (Dremel; Hacksaw; persevering with a Stanley knife) to separate the board itself.

    As far as the micro- is concerned, if refactored as though-hole (or easily surface-mountable) the carrier board could be in kit form, as you say, or a hand-assembled board offered at a higher tier pledge. Other boards could be offered as downloadable designs, one-off orders, or small runs based purely on demand and cost... perhaps even as separate mini-Kickstarters themselves.

    If you could get the business aspect just right and find a few good customers, bulk sales of the core module for integration might subsidise the hobbyist and developer boards. I've seen a few successful Kickstarters for IoT modules designed for production use (eg. RFduino, MetaWear... admittedly both BLE + ARM), and none of them are anywhere close to being as easy to develop as Espruino.

    For that matter, if anyone produces an ARM package specced to run Espruino well enough and integrate BLE into the package itself, I reckon it'd be worth dropping everything and getting a Kickstarter out there ASAP. The barrier to entry for BLE for unfunded startups (eg. wearables) is too high at the moment: complicated dev tools and environment, bad example code and documentation, and so forth. Javascript would be a perfect host for an integrated (ie. not serial-driven) BLE component.

    Anyway, I digress. :)

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