Buying arduino platforms in bulk??

Hi,

i need to buy 40 Uno's and about 80 Mega's.

i was wondering if anyone had suggestions of a good place to get those quantities and what price range i might expect?

I'm also interested in alternatives and have read that clones seem to work ok.. but mainly the first question.

Thanks!!

At that sort of quantity I would dump the 'duino and make my own PCB
what are they for?

Clones are almost always OK. Best I can figure, they are made by the same people, same sweatshops that made the TV in your living room.

The same reasons that would suggest clones do not work OK, would apply equally to said TV.

(Yes, I've had to return an IKEA TV for exchange.)

Paul__B:
Clones are almost always OK. Best I can figure, they are made by the same people, same sweatshops that made the TV in your living room.

The same reasons that would suggest clones do not work OK, would apply equally to said TV.

(Yes, I've had to return an IKEA TV for exchange.)

IKEA TV??, was it flat-pack? :smiley:

megaBlocks:
i need to buy 40 Uno's and about 80 Mega's.
i was wondering if anyone had suggestions of a good place to get those quantities and what price range i might expect?
I'm also interested in alternatives and have read that clones seem to work ok.. but mainly the first question.

Cannot speak for clone Uno's (both mine are genuine) but I have a couple of (reference to company selling counterfeit boards removed by moderator) and they have worked flawlessly for me. The price is really good but it's still well worth asking if they will do bulk discount.

EDIT: I am in no way affiliated with the eBay seller but have always had good dealing with them.

Lakes:
IKEA TV??, was it flat-pack? :smiley:

Ha Ha! Did I say that?

It was of course, ALDI.

I dunno, unless you are running a class room or something similar, I would imagine by the time you get to wanting 40 Uno's and 80 Mega's, that it is time to learn how to program the chips directly, and skip all of the extra stuff that is needed in a development platform, but not for rollout of products.

I would also combine it to just 120 Mega's, and skip the Uno's so that you only have to worry about one design.

Remember to order a few spares as well.

Just thinking about the connections, you would presumably want to design your own PCB's that everything fits in the right location, rather than doing all of soldering on random parts.

At a higher level, having the components mounted via a pick and place machine would probably become economical, but probably not for 120 units.