From what I understand, there are some nice all-in-one kits out there from places like Heavyprops. I’m just not sure if it’s worth spending the money for the convenience of someone else to have it all together, or if it’s better to spend what I would assume to be less on parts and build it myself. I’ve recently been exploring my budding interest in basic electronics, and don’t see wiring a kit together to be that difficult, but I could be wrong.
For those who have made this decision, or those in one camp or another, what is your opinion?
That just depends on your skill and how many materials you already have on hand.
If you don’t have the parts, figure out the cost of material to make everything you want. Since you are not buying in bulk you don’t get the “economies of scale” that comes with making a ton of kits. I imagine a full setup would cost anywhere from $100-150 for just a one time build. Subtract the that cost from how much buying prepackageed setup would cost. The difference is the value of the cost of labor and not having to deal with the “pains” that came with doing it myself.
For me, it was easier to just spend the $200 to get the GBFans Wand Kit, GBFans Soundboard, GBFans Pack/cyclotron kit, and the pretty decent speaker in the GBFans store.
The full gbfans sound and light kit (except for the ribbon cable needed to run the pack lights kit) is currently available to pre-order in the shop with an expected ship date of May 1st. I highly, highly recommend it.
If you are capable of making your own, you could give it a shot. You could maybe start with an Arduino, add some LED drivers and piece together something fairly easily for the pack lights for example. Its not a terribly hard endeavor.
There are even tutorials on the site from people that have gone this route.
It does start to get harder when you want to start adding sounds. Lots of design revisions, testing and engineering went into the GBFans Sound Board to make it free from noise. If you used a sound board chip and programmer, you would probably have to end up using 2 power supplies to run it. Making your own design with memory and ADC might be viable, but probably more expensive.
Making a wand board, though similar to the Pack lights, is more complicated due to the small size. It is pretty easy to also make a mess of the cramped wand body with extra wires for switches and LEDs and the like.
In my experience you almost always end up spending more for a DIY solution than for buying a ready made setup. Remember that it costs time and money, but you may gain knowledge from the experience. Where as something like the GBFans Kit is plug and play, and you can have the whole thing up and running in under 5 minutes.
Speaking as someone who has looked into Arduino, EAGLE, and sites like Jameco for parts and OSH Park for circuit boards, trust me when I say it’s far cheaper to just buy the damn things. If you want to look into electronics as a side hobby and something you can do for other projects, by all means, get into it and learn everything you can. Just be warned that it’s not cheap, and if you’re not going to do anything with it regularly, it’s far kinder on the checkbook to buy the boards from places like the shop here or Heavy Props.
I looked into this a while ago and building one from scratch but have instead decided to put my money towards a tried and tested plug and play solution like the GBFans board as 1. I know it will work and if there is a problem there is a full set of instructions and a community of users (including the chap who made it as well as AJ) who will be able to point me in the direction of what I am doing wrong and 2. They are always improving it and offering upgrades to improve my pack (or possibly be split up into a second Pack if I ever get that far).
If you’re new to electronics, doing a light kit can be daunting. I think in my DYI setup, i have around $40 in it and I have basic pack lights. I have my arduino programmed for the bar graph, but I never picked up a multiplexer.
It’s much easier to keep costs down on a DYI setup if you know what you’re doing. However, time can be an expensive commodity. If you have time and want to learn, then do it. If you feel that dealing with microprocessor programming, filter and amplifier design is too much, and you simply just run out of hours in the day to work on a DIY setup as well as all your normal day to day stuff, buy a predone setup. I highly recommend the gbfans kit. Literal plug and play and it has the most options available. If I was’t swamped with work, school, and kids, I’d finish my setup. However, my time is a premium so I splurged om the gbfans kit. Never looking back. I’ll just repurpose my light kit and add an amp and filter to it for a custom one off project I’m working on.
Just one more thing, if you decide to go with some other kit rather than the GBFans sounds and lights I would highly recommend you read through the feedback and Blacklisted members section.
While there are many reputable makers there are also some thieves that sell via facebook and Ebay.