General
# Why is shipping to the United States this expensive?
The reason is that the US now requires electronic pre-registration of all commercial postal shipments. DHL/Deutsche Post only allows this as part of their PDDP service, which also includes all the customs handling - the customer pays the duties at checkout, while DHL bills us with it later. PDDP is only offered for DHL Paket and not Warenpost International (slower service for small commercial packages), which is the significantly cheaper service available for many countries.
# What is the warranty on 49bitcat products?
In accordance with German consumer law, 49bitcat provides a two year statutory warranty on any defects which existed in the product at time of purchase.
# Are 49bitcat products available through mainstream online marketplaces?
No. 49bitcat products can only be purchased through the 49bitcat online shop.
# Are 49bitcat products available through third party distributors?
At this time, there are no authorized third party distributors of 49bitcat products.
nileswan
# Can the nileswan cartridge’s 3D printed shell be replaced with an official WS/WSC cartridge shell?
No. nileswan uses different screw hole locations and sizes due to the dense packing of electronic components. As such, only shells dedicated for nileswan, such as the bundled 3D printed shell, are compatible.
# Will nileswan be offered as a “do it yourself” kit?
There are no plans to offer such a kit for nileswan at this time. nileswan is a complex product with over 80 placements and over 30 unique parts including a few BGAs and fine pitched QFNs, which makes assembly a complicated process. In addition, it would be difficult to provide adequate customer support for self-assembled kits.
# Is nileswan open source?
nileswan software (firmware, boot loader) is available under the GNU General Public License, version 3. The relevant source code can be found starting with the GitHub repository.