Vitaly,

We bought them for just under $20 at Qty. 2500 or 5000 (don't remember
specifically, but I know the deliveries were scheduled over the year). This
was about a year ago before ZeroG was purchased by Microchip. They were the
only module we found that easily interface to a simple microcontroller port
(i.e. not PCI-E or some other PC bus) for anywhere near that price.

Even back then, Microchip Direct was setup to sell them and that's where we
got small quantities for prototyping.

Our requirements were:

FCC Pre-certified Module (with pre certified Antenna[s]) - Check
Generic Drivers Available - Check
Priced under $20 in volume (2500-5000/yr.) - Check
Microcontroller Interface (SPI or UART) - Check
Minimal external components and easy PCB assembly - Check

Anything else we found was either overkill and expensive (Lantronix WiPort
and a few other similar ones) or many, many inexpensive (~$15 or less)
modules with PCI-E or other PC type interface and only drivers for Linux,
Windows, WinCE or Mac and no processing on-board. The cheap modules were
basically a chipset level radio with antenna interface but no processing,
they expected the (PC class) host to do that.

Chipset level devices were out due to the FCC certification process
required and also the massive amount of driver work involved. If it wasn't
one of the above listed operating systems then almost all the manufacturers
gave us the cold shoulder concerning drivers and many wouldn't supply
technical programming information even with an NDA.

Matt Pobursky
Maximum Performance Systems

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:08:44 -0700, Vitaliy wrote:
> Olin Lathrop wrote:
>>>> The ZG2100M and ZG2101M modules from Microchip at $27 per are the
>>>> cheapest modules I've found. Haven't looked at bare chipsets.
>>>>
>>>
>>> How long has Microchip offered them for this price?
>>>
>> Since they acquired ZeroG, I believe.  ZeroG was selling them at that
>> price
>> or close to it before if I remember right.  Why does it matter though?
>> They cost what they cost.
>>
>
> It matters because I'm trying to remember what our rationale was, for not
> picking a ZeroG module for our project. I know for sure that we looked at
> them back in the summer of '09 and IIRC they weren't FCC precertified or
> didn't work out of the box (required code) or both.
>
> Vitaliy

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