Reliability of Adafruit board

[Arios]

I'm planning to use the Adafruit Feather M0 Adalogger and I wanted to know what is the failure rate for this board? What soldering techniques are used? and what is the likelihood this board will be obsolescent? would it be 15-30 years or less than that?

[adafruit_support_mike]

I'm planning to use the Adafruit Feather M0 Adalogger and I wanted to know what is the failure rate for this board?

There are no specifications for that, and trying to calculate one would require a huge amount of information.. what kind of power supply is available, how many times will the system be power cycled, what's the expected frequency and range of supply transients, what's the expected operating temperature, what kind of thermal cycling is expected, what humidity and humidity cycles are expected, what's the expected exposure to reactive chemicals, etc, etc.

What soldering techniques are used?

Reflow with no-clean lead free solder paste for the surface-mount components, and selective soldering with lead-free for mechanicals like pin header.

and what is the likelihood this board will be obsolescent?

We don't have any kind of roadmap, and our production is irrelevant. The design is Open Hardware, and you're free to use our design files to fabricate boards on your own terms.

would it be 15-30 years or less than that?

Anyone making 30-year predictions for digital technology is optimistic, to say the least. I don't know if computers will still use USB or SD cards by then.. in 1991 CDs and SCSI Zip drives were popular.

[Arios]

Thank you for your response. I have a couple of more follow up questions.

How long do you provide firmware support for your boards? Particuarly, how many versions of Arduino IDE have to pass before old firmware stops being supported?

I'm interested in purchasing the Adafruit Feather M0 Adalogger board but I noticed its out of stock right now. How many boards are available to purchase at once? and how long will

it be before the next boards will be in stock again?

[adafruit_support_mike]

How long do you provide firmware support for your boards? Particuarly, how many versions of Arduino IDE have to pass before old firmware stops being supported?

There's no roadmap or correlation. We have libraries that worked before the IDE switched over to board support packages, and others that are still under development. The only reason libraries stop working is as a side effect of major architectural changes in the IDE, and we generally update those because people want to use them.

And like our hardware designs, the code is Open Source. Anyone who wants to update one of our libraries has our explicit consent to do so.

How many boards are available to purchase at once?

We have bulk prices that go up to 100 units in the shop, and will negotiate terms for larger orders.

and how long will it be before the next boards will be in stock again?

You can check our distributors like Digikey and Mouser to see if they have any in stock right now, and can sign up for notification on the product page.

Beyond that, we don't do ETAs. There are too many soures of delay in the supply chain we can't control, and *way* too many people on the internet who think 'estimated' means 'guaranteed'.