Keep costs down by using simple non-digital, non-IC components for simple jobs. Instead of using a microcontroller that costs a couple of dollars to blink an LED, use an astable built out of a couple of transistors, caps, and resistors. The cost is pennies rather than dollars. The same goes for invertors (a couple of resistors and a transistor), one-shots, simple encoding/decoding, etc.
Most of the circuits you need are already online or available in various electronic circuit cookbooks.
This also saves I/O lines in circuits where you have microcontrollers doing other tasks. If you use
bulk buys for your components, you can cut costs dramatically by using simple analog circuits in place of microcontrollers, even the small cheap ones.
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