I've been very worried that this chip was going to price itself out of the market in the last few months. In that it is critical to making a shaft-encoded gearmotor for either positioning or polymer pumping, watching the price on the Austria Microsystems webstore crawl up towards $10/chip was very discouraging.
I had some good news a few days ago when Austria Microsystems rolled back their prices a bit. Now it seems that Austria Microsystems has designated a US distributor,
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www.cdiweb.com]
These guys are great! I just talked to Jennifer Stewart, my local CDI Web rep, a few minutes ago. They are buying in bulk from Austria Microsystems and passing along a lot of the savings to small quantity buyers. I just got a quote on the AS5030 for $3.60/chip in small quantities. This is a perfect situation for the self-build audience that we are trying to address. They are also offering the higher resolution AS5040 at about $6.60/chip in small quantities.
