Where do you buy your components?

The place I often go to start searching with is octopart.com. You can't buy from them, but they are like froogle.com for electronic parts. (I haven't seen any price quotes from E-Bay on there though....) I also go to octopart first when I need to look up a datasheet.

Hmm.. I haven't tried looking for a generic 1K resistor there though. I'm kinda afraid of search result overload if I try...

Jameco & Digi-Key. I've been buying from Jameco for more than 30 years!!!! Digi-Key many years too.

I haven't had any custom boards made (or made any myself) since I was in college. Usually, I build the project permanently on a plug-in breadboard. It can be very reliable. I built a car-alarm on a breadboard about 20 years ago, and it's still working. I've also use various perfboards, wire-wrap, terminal blocks, etc. to avoid the cos to a custom board

The last perfboard I built was an ugly mess (I didn't have space for the breadboard), so I'm probably going to use a real PCB next time i build that circuit. There are also a couple of circuits I seem to build over-and-over, and I'm thinking it's time to get some boards made for those.

E-bay junky here. :wink:

Lefty

Huge TaydaElectronics fan.

Recently had to get some TIP35C power transistors to replace some that were blown in a supply. Also, wanted to get some op-amps preventatively since I didn't know what else was blown. Considering that TIP35C, and most other power transistors/MOSFETS, are commonly fake on ebay; I didn't want to go there. Turns out Tayda had a better price than even the fake ones on ebay and these were the real deal. I ended up getting a huge variety of stuff from there because of the prices, comparatively sites like digikey, mouser and jameco would have cost 2-3x as much. Unless I wanted to buy in the 2000-10000 unit categories (which i guess is how they get the prices this low).

Anyways, I received them and they are exactly as reported. Very high quality, clearly NOT fakes. Oh yeah, also I received my parts in about 1 week (unlike chinese sites which can take 3-6 weeks).

Their machine pin headers are steal, albeit they are hidden as a SIP Socket (single inline package) and not located under the header section. For $0.39 each its hard to beat.

Also a quick hint on ebay, Hong Kong Post and China Post are two entirely separate entities. HKP typically takes ~1week to reach here, China Post around 3 weeks. So if you can find a vendor for the item you want from HK then you will likely get it much faster.

I, also, am a huge TaydaElectronics fan. I also use Mouser and Digi-key. But for caps, resistors, and basic color LEDs (red/green/blue/yellow), you simply can't go wrong with Tayda on pricing.

It doesn't matter you get your components from ebay via Hong Kong Post or China Post, or even Tayda Electronics via Thailand Post. Most of them if not all come from Hua Qiang Bei, i.e. the Electronic Market District of Shenzhen, China.

Distance between Hong Kong and Shenzhen is 17 km, 11 mile.

I put a little visual tour of Hua Qiang Bei, Shenzhen. You might be interesting.

If you plan to visit China, Shenzhen should be at your top list.

4 Shenzhen restaurants named Top 50 restaurants in China, it is very impressed if you count Shenzhen's population in only 10 million, but population of china is 1.344 billion.

While you are in Shenzhen do not forget enjoy nice food.

Great China Chiu Chung Restaurant in Sheraton Shenzhen Futian Hotel

Great China Chiu Chung Restaurant in Sheraton Shenzhen Futian Hotel is the largest restaurant for Chaozhou cuisine (subset of Cantonese food) and Cantonese cuisine. The expensively decorated restaurant features a main hall that can accommodate 1,200 people to dine

Per capita consumption: US$32 – US$127

To completed picture, I might have to point out dark side.

Inside Dongguan, China's Sin City, The Telegraph UK

Distance between Dongguan and Shenzhen is 69 km, 43 mile.

To calm my the other half down I removed Dongguan portion map from my GPS, How do you manage yours, you are on your own.

So do you know of any services that will shop for you? You give them a list, they go buy it (in Shenzhen) and ship it over to you (in the USA)?

Bernarr:
So do you know of any services that will shop for you? You give them a list, they go buy it (in Shenzhen) and ship it over to you (in the USA)?

What you asked for is China buying agent, China sourcing agent, China online shopping agent, Taobao English agent ... Google it.

www.dx.com (DealExtreme) is one of them.

Taobao=Chinese Amazon+Chinese Ebay+Chinese Paypal.

As far as I know we have member(s) on this forum come from local (Shenzhen), which item are you looking for? list here and ask them advice.

Distance between Hong Kong and Shenzhen is 17 km, 11 mile.

Hong Kong is one of best shopping, attractions, hotels, restaurants city under the sun, may be just next to Paris, special thanks for its blood, i.e. half English and half Chinese. leave a piece of plastic with my the other half at HK. She is self-entertainment well. I could shopping well at Shenzhen. This is a proved working plan B.

About food, HK has ~10 Kosher restaurants, how many Kosher restaurant does your city have?
HK has great selection of food.

For United States residents, 2 great places are Amazon... You can buy SainSmart and return it in the same week. Amazon sell the 3.2" 320 X 240 displays for $19 - $20.00
you can also find bootloaded 328's for $2.99... and all 8 I've bought were perfect. There are many other electronics and Arduino products for sale there as well.
OddWires http://www.oddwires.com/ has competitive deals is local, more or less to the western end of the United States and is a new company... I originally found on Ebay. They seem willing to be helpful and they have a good selection of basics.

Doc

I'll give them a try - ordered an FTDI interface board.
No sales tax, $2 USPS shipping.
We'll see where it ships from, the websites gives no indication of where they are located.

oh, it does

oddWires details

The full name of oddWires is oddWires.

oddWires is registered in Contra Costa County, CA.

oddWires registered address is:

881 Richard Ln., Danville, CA 94526, USA

http://www.oddwires.com/terms-and-conditions/

Ok, I didn't see that way at the bottom of the page.
Might be registered there, not sure they actually ship from there.

TaydaElectronics is in Bangkok, but shipments to the US seem to originate in Colorado.

Do not forget Amazon Prime, for $79/year, you get;-
FREE Two-Day Shipping on millions of items
No minimum order size
Free or paid Amazon Prime members can share their shipping benefits with up to four additional
family members living in the same household, or up to four coworkers. I share it with my kids and my parent. The key issue is independent account no share at credit card. I means kids.

You might not need to pay, Amazon offer Free membership to student, and it is shareable as well.

For US military service members and diplomatic personnel only.

Here is USPS offer;-

Our military service members and diplomatic personnel work hard for us overseas. Far from home, few things brighten their days more than mail from friends and loved ones. APO/FPO/DPO shipments has same domestic prices rate.

Obviously you need to select US vendor who could use USPS as shipping company.

Far from home, few things brighten their days more than Arduino from friends and loved ones.

Ok, so you're suggesting buying parts thru Amazon.
Locate an item, research the actual ship-from location, wait weeks for delivery.
I don't think so.
For example:
16 MHz crystal
Lowest price found is for 3 pieces

Apparently made by Amico,
but not amico.com, which is in the healthcare industry
About | Amico Group of Companies
but distributed by uxcell,
Uxcell
which resells parts from 100 factories in China

So who knows what you actually get and where it came from.
Pass on that.

CrossRoads:
TaydaElectronics is in Bangkok, but shipments to the US seem to originate in Colorado.

Consolidation and Groupage then Re-distribution
Consolidation is the practice of combining diverse cargoes (pre-packaged and labeled) into single shipments then transport it to destination country hubs, to achieve substantial savings on freight costs and speed up the shipping. These hubs accept larger shipments and then break it up and function as distribution centers for cargo to reach smaller outlying communities. This method will working very well for 2 countries have huge difference labor rate.

CrossRoads:
Ok, so you're suggesting buying parts thru Amazon.

You mean me?

It happens that I bought a package of 25 16 MHz crystals from Amazon, All were good product and the 6 or 7 I've used so far were fine and IF the parts are not directly from Amazon the wait is never more than a week.. usually 5 days MAX for non Prime parts. or at least that's been my experience.

Doc

The last time this question came up, I put together a list of places I've ordered from or that other people recommend:
http://www.the-meissners.org/electronics.html