The Make vs. Buy Decision

So I probably mentioned a while back that I was going to build a circuit board for the STN1110 chip of which I have a sample.

I've also been traveling quite a lot, so I haven't had time to work out designs and schematics by hand, but I have had a ton of time to think.  This thinking has led to a dramatic epiphany.

Buy a pre-built STN1110 circuit board and then mod it to my hearts content.

The decision to make versus buy comes up a lot in the Engineering world, especially when you start moving from engineering builds to factory builds.

Let's take a walk down the pros and cons of this possible decision of mine.

Pros

Make	Buy
Full control of design	Existing design
Have fun doing it myself	Design has been tested by a lot of people
	Get to hack to make it work in the system

Cons

Make	Buy
Don’t have the design complete	Don’t get to have as much fun
I can't solder well	Pre built
Time to build	Have to hack to make it work with the system

Sorry for the ultra craptastic table formatting, let's just say it's my throwback to the original web v0.5.

Looking at the tables, it's easy to see that there are good and bad points to both options.  Also notice that hacking the pre-built made the pro and con list.

One thing that didn't make the tables was cost, because, in my thinking about it, it'll roughly be the same price to make the circuit or buy pre-built.

Ultimately, I'm going to buy the pre-built circuit board and then mod it to work with my setup.

I plan on getting the OBD-II UART board from Sparkfun.  The main modification will be to remove the DB-9 connector, cutting off pin 9, and then re-soldering the connector.  I'll then wire my own 12VDC to the circuit to remove the constant dependency upon the car's battery.