I will try to answer various questions here. First of all, we are expert in hardware but not software. So we need help from the community.
Hardware - we will collect all your requirements here, sort them out and then present an updated configuration. We might end up with two types of pricing. A fully configured (with Raspberry Pi board, SD card with OS, Plex or some other media server and DAC) product for standard distribution. The price will go up once it has to go through the distribution channels. But we can also make the parts (mainly the case and power supply, perhaps DAC board) available for much lower price for order online. This will be fair. Non DIY person will be ok to pay $200 to $300 extra to have everything nicely put together with usage guides.
I started to realise that we can be very competitive. The STA-9 for example, such a high-end amp, is roughly 2X the price of a similarly configured DIY amp. We are able to offer Raspberry Pi chassis and parts because NuPrime has a factory.
Software - Plex is very interesting because it is a media server and client software that runs on everything. I am just starting to explore this.
For the non technical people, you can do a lot of things with Raspberry Pi:
1. It can be easily setup (out of the box from the factory) as a media server for your music and video. You can run Plex app on all your devices. See
https://plex.tv2. It can also be used for other purpose because ultimately it is a linux computer.
This platform is complementary to all our "high-end" products. You still need a very good DAC and power amp. Or a portable server and player such as Omnia.
Customers have a choice and not lock in to some proprietary and outdated platform.
Instead of Raspberry Pi board, we can also consider miniPC board.