I've updated my profile to show my location, sorry about not showing it before.
I live in Romania, so have 3 options:
Buy from local stores, which have very high prices. For the NDP6020P-ND it's not an option at all, they don't sell it here and they can't even place an order to bring it from an international supplier.
Buy from eBay. It's cheap and usually there are plenty of items and sellers to choose from, but delivery takes a month.
Order from UK online stores which ship internationally. I've never done it so far because the cost of transport was ridiculously high when I looked for some items in the past.
Every time I try to solder together some circuit, I reach the same conclusion: I should move to UK
CrossRoads:
Wow, 10 pieces for $7.50 - that adds a lot to cost of the MOSFET!
Unfortunately, yes - although SMD mosfets are so cheap that it still costs less than using a TO220 mosfet (but a lot more work of course).
One day I'll get round to sending an SMD adapter design off to Itead to reduce the cost. It would be useful to have boards that take 2 or 4 SOT23 devices too.
I have just tried Farnell. They sell it for about 2.5$, same as the Chinese eBay seller (which could be fake). They say it's coming from UK, so it would probably take less time. The problem is however, that they haven't got a user-friendly site and I just can't figure out how much the transport to Romania would be without trying to actually buy the stuff
Un4Seen:
I have just tried Farnell. They sell it for about 2.5$, same as the Chinese eBay seller (which could be fake). They say it's coming from UK, so it would probably take less time. The problem is however, that they haven't got a user-friendly site and I just can't figure out how much the transport to Romania would be without trying to actually buy the stuff
If you go through the order placement process, I think you will find the carriage cost (if any) added on before you get asked for your credit card details. It may be free, some of the stuff I buy from Farnell gets shipped form mainland Europe and I don't get charged extra. You may find there is a minimum order, it's GBP20 here in the UK for non-business accounts.
OK, I have figured it out As I wrote, one NDP6020P costs about 2.5$ at Farnell. The transport to Romania would be 5 Euro, regardless of what is in the package. So, assuming that I'd buy 15 pieces of NDP6020P (8 for the 8x8x8 cube, 5 for the 5x5x5 cube and 2 for spares), the total cost would be around 27E or 35$. That's more than the 1000 LEDs and about 33% of the total project cost I there's no other choice, I'll go for it, but if there's some more widely available, less expensive MOSFET, I'd prefer that
From my point of view the biggest problem is not that they are pricey, it's that they are rare. Otherwise I could buy them here at home or on eBay I just talked to a friend and he says that Farnell only ships to Romania for companies, not for individuals. I'll have to check that out.
I just searched eBay for P-channel mosfets and got 156 results. The SMD ones are inexpensive, the TO220 ones cost a lot more and are mostly not logic level.
Un4Seen:
OK, I have figured it out As I wrote, one NDP6020P costs about 2.5$ at Farnell. The transport to Romania would be 5 Euro, regardless of what is in the package. So, assuming that I'd buy 15 pieces of NDP6020P (8 for the 8x8x8 cube, 5 for the 5x5x5 cube and 2 for spares), the total cost would be around 27E or 35$. That's more than the 1000 LEDs and about 33% of the total project cost I there's no other choice, I'll go for it, but if there's some more widely available, less expensive MOSFET, I'd prefer that
Yes, see http://www.aosmd.com/pdfs/datasheet/AO3401.pdf. They are rated at 4A continuous (although 3.7A would be a more realistic limit when driven from 5V, since that is the current at which Rds(on) is measured for Vgs=4.5V) and 1.4W power dissipation (although I wouldn't want to dissipate more than a few hundred mW in one).