Hi,

I have a product idea and wanted to know if its possible to build a SD card reader with 5-10 slots?

 

I suspect it is, but the host would probably only be able to access one at a time – you’d need to look at how the card addressing works. It might be as simple as providing a logic high to a pin of the card to be accessed.

 

Welcome to AAC!

I have a USB multi-format card reader that has 6 slots.

 

Hi,

I have a product idea and wanted to know if its possible to build a SD card reader with 5-10 slots?

From a technical standpoint, it's certainly doable. But whether it is a viable product is a different matter.

What is your target market? Who needs to have that many cards plugged in at the same time? How many of them would be willing to pay for that ability, as opposed to just using multiple cheap readers plugged into a USB bus?

Keep in mind that your price point is going to be dictated by the competition, which is dominated by sub-$10 to $20 devices. You are probably going to have a hard time selling anything at much over $30 (and, again, how many people need it enough to actually buy it?). To get your costs down enough, you are going to have to spend the time, money, and effort designing for volume production and then you are going to have to produce enough to get the per-unit costs low enough. How many units will you have to sell before you recover your NRE?

 

From a technical standpoint, it's certainly doable. But whether it is a viable product is a different matter.

What is your target market? Who needs to have that many cards plugged in at the same time? How many of them would be willing to pay for that ability, as opposed to just using multiple cheap readers plugged into a USB bus?

Keep in mind that your price point is going to be dictated by the competition, which is dominated by sub-$10 to $20 devices. You are probably going to have a hard time selling anything at much over $30 (and, again, how many people need it enough to actually buy it?). To get your costs down enough, you are going to have to spend the time, money, and effort designing for volume production and then you are going to have to produce enough to get the per-unit costs low enough. How many units will you have to sell before you recover your NRE?

Thanks for your replies. I don't want to reveal too much of my idea but my target market is a niche group and they would be ready to pay about 100$ for this kind of device with the right software/firmware.

The general idea is that a custom firmware and a software copies the data from SD cards one by one onto your PC so the user doesn't have to switch the cards manually if he has to copy 5-10 cards. I'm a software guy so I would write it by myself but I have no idea about hardware design and would hire a PCB designer but needed to know if its even possible to build.