Radio Shack is listening
Put in a plug for your favorite microcontroller:
http://blog.radioshack.com/post/2011/05/19/RadioShack-And-The-DIY-Community-You-Talked-Were-Listening.aspx
http://blog.radioshack.com/post/2011/05/19/RadioShack-And-The-DIY-Community-You-Talked-Were-Listening.aspx
Comments
Basically I want to say "organize your drawers first so I can actually find the parts I'm after".
edit:
OK, they finally took my comment. Twice, with the many "errors on page" and slow page loads:
"DIY starts with being able to locate the items in a Radio Shack store. Just because they're listed on your website doesn't mean they can be easily found in any given store, even if they show as "in stock". I live in the Los Angeles area and visit many different stores. Quite frankly, most of your components are unfindable in drawers that have not been organized in a long time. And some parts (such as your 38kHz IR receiver module) are hung on the pegs in a different area for unknown reasons. Even your store personnel can't locate them. Sure, I want you to add more components and useful items (I'm a Parallax fan), but first & foremost, make restocking and organizing your existing components a top priority at each of your stores."
Linux Firefox wouldn't let me post either, but Windows would ... hmm ... anyway here is what I posted...
"Bring back all the items you once had that you have gotten rid of since the mid 80's to early 90's. Three top items won't do the trick, you need to bring back the visual essence that radio shack once had in order to get the DIY creative juices flowing. Comparing to what Radio Shack used to be would be analogous to painting with only 3 colors versus the hundreds of colors Radio Shack once had."
I remember when you could fix almost anything electronic with the stock they had, now they carry only two of each IC's, sockets, etc... not much to choose from anymore. I would kill to find some Ungar/Weller soldering iron tips localy. The standard tips they carry burn up in about 60-120 min of use and tinning don't help much.
Radio Shacks are in high rent places like malls so they get more profit off of cell phones than selling resistors. I think the DIY movement is big but I question whether it is big enough to keep all Radio Shacks afloat. Some of their stores are not big enough locally to compete with Mouser or Digikey. Because of their high rent, they might not be able to compete against prices I can get from overseas and post office shipping. They would have to make their profit from higher end components. If Radio Shack can compete, wouldn't some of these online stores be scared that people would be going to Radio Shack instead of them?
I think a lot of people made good points in the posts but I think they were looking for three products to add to their stores which means unless they adopt the DIY movement, I don't see a lot changing.
I agree. And for them to adopt the DIY movement, they would also have to hire people who know what they're doing. Which you know they won't do. Probably the only way they could get people to work there for the wages the owners would want to pay is to transform RS into something like a Starbucks for DIY geeks, a place to hang out and geek out with microcontrollers, running robots along the sidewalks, firing lightning bolts across the storefront windows from their megavolt Tesla coils... but that's just not going to happen at the Mall next to the Walmart, KFC and the Payless shoe palace. Some decades ago, when I was a kid, a dilapidated Starbucks for DIY geeks was exactly what my local RS looked and felt like. The place was a total mess of wires and open boxes of stuff I had never seen before. But it was one of the groovy-est places in town... if you were a geek.
http://www.rcgrabbag.com/archives/radio-shack-100-in-1-electronic-project-kit
Another link: http://www.thestrong.org/online-collections/nmop/1/45/110.1106
I had one. It ruined my life.
As did my chemistry set.
And my first 40X telescope.
And the public library.
And the local natural history museum.
And the...
Jim
If you are in there would you please speak with the web developers about making it possible for every one to post? I will not look at closed source code so I have no idea what the trouble is.
Yes, if you watch the little video of the sales lady, you will be told they are looking for the "top three products" we want added to their inventory to make our DIY projects easier. I would suggest adding the following to their shelves:
1. A Parallax catalog.
2. A Digikey catalog.
3. A Mouser catalog or, for the more scientifically inclined, a Carolina catalog.
The mere fact they are asking for only three products suggests they have no clue what the DIY/maker movement is all about. IMHO, the tools at RS are too expensive, so what else could they possibly offer the DIY community? The Home Depot model is the closest thing they could probably hope to adopt, wherein they could have a hacker's corner, demonstrating how to solder, how to design a simple printed circuit board, how to wire up a Boe-Bot, etc. But making money off such demos requires having a broad inventory that the consumer can pick up and walk out of the store with. Furthermore, such hacker's corners and whatnot don't fit into the slick sales culture and monolithic Mall Mentality. Much of the DIY movement is implicitly "sticking it to The Man", which is why many of the DIYers are so obsessed with Open Source everything: they are crazy-against the prepackaged corporationalism of everything, and Mall culture is the antithesis of that.
All I expect is that they know the stock/inventory. And that's OK.
RadioShack has gone back and forth, every 10 years or so, with the components in/out thing; what's old is new again.
Everything has been shoe-horned into those pull-out drawers - and I find myself putting things back where they belong. (Surprised??) "What're these doing over here?"
Bring back the pegboards and I'll have to set those right, too.
Nobody knows anything at Fry's either, if you can actually find anyone to interrogate.
[RS used to have a blister-pak of optoisolators, but it was a dog's breakfast; you'd have to jumble the pack to see what was there, no two packs the same.]
Without experiencing that kit, I'm sure I wouldn't be posting here at all or doing other wonderful things in my life.
The RS I go to sometimes is full of people who want to help.
I may ask where something is, but I generally avoid the clerks if possible except for check out time.
Things changed drastically when a hobby leather company, Tandy Corporation of Fort Worth, Texas bought out Radio Shack and decide that it could use it's locations and knowhow in the leather craft business to build a good nationwide network of hobby electronics stores.
But the truth of it is that two things seemed to always conspire against Radio Shack.
1. Individual stores did not want to or never were able to carry a full line of electronics components as it was just too much inventory.
2. People that owned and ran stores seemed not to know much about electronics and were generally paid so low that they were uninspired to learn. Some stores even sold leather and leather working tools along side the electronics and seemed more interested in how to make a pair of sandals or a belt.
I suppose the guys in Fort Worth did manage to create something of a special relationship with Texas Instruments and they eventually did publish a few educational texts. But the overall sense I've have gotten from Tandy/Radio Shack is that they believe more in their abilities to cut cost and manage a nationwide franchise than they do in understanding how to introduce electronics to the public as a hobby.
As it is, they seem to go in and out of phases where they do make good money. They are always around for cheap, good batteries and cables that will adapt connections for all and everything. But expecting them to keep an orderly stock of components (which there is really very little profit in compared with the other items) seems to be perennially beyond what they might ever do.
Next time, you might ask them to help you make a wallet. You might get a clerk that really knows his stuff.
Honestly, Radio Shack has given lip service to the DIY community before... It would be nice to see them do more, but I'm having trouble seeing this as more than the same.
OBC
Back in the late 80s and most of the 90s I would be in there every weekend buying something. They had lots of good stuff then, like meters, radios, even power supplies, and lots of parts.
Posted up my comments. IMHO, this is a good move right now. The DIY movement is really picking up steam right now. Maybe they get it. As for hiring people who know something, I think that's just a matter of changing hiring criteria. Allow some "tinkering" time on the bench in the store, so long as customers are being served, and hiring the right kind of people would be no problem. Cheap too. Some work freedom is worth a lot of cash.
Right now, electronics in general, is very well suited to that kind of store. There are lots of modular pieces they could be selling. Very good time to position this way, IMHO.
Jaycar has some cool stuff at their online store.
Plus it's way cheaper to buy stuff from Jaycar and ship it all the way from
Australia.
I like the little blue translucent jiffy box enclosures.
Just 1.70 USD each if you get 10 of them. I like them
because you can see LEDs on your circuit board
inside and don't need to mount the LED through a
hole in the case. Shipping is amazingly reasonable.
You can also get these in clear plastic.
http://www.jaycar.us/productResults.asp?CATID=5&SUBCATID=343&keyform=CAT&SUBMIT.x=21&SUBMIT.y=8
The black plastic potting boxes are .50 USD each.
If I remember correctly shipping is about 6.00 USD for up to
50.00 USD purchase.
There is an ebay seller that has packets of 50
prototype circuit boards that are good for these
boxes. The 50 pak is just 8.00 USD delivered.
I know where all the bargains are :-)
EDIT:
I used to make cheap electronics projects by using
one of the black plastic potting boxes as a case. These
have no top cover so what I did was I mounted my switches,
pots, LEDs..etc through the case and then I would spray
a clear plastic sealant over my circuit board and stuff it
all into the potting box. Then I took this plastic powder stuff
I used to get at a hardware store for like 5.00 USD/ 10lbs
called FixAll. Just add a little water to make a nasty yellow
paste and pour the box full, then scrape it off smooth using
some sort of straight edge and clean up any smudges with
a paper towel. Once this dried I would spray the hardened
FixAll with cheap flat black spray paint. It made a pretty
decent project enclosure and it was protected from tampering. :-)
(me so frugal)
They had these little blue plastic electrical boxes for .27 at
the same hardware store. They were solid except for two flanges
at the ends that you could use to screw the box to a wall or something.
I would cut those off with a small hack saw and use them as a
potting box. But I could never find the right blue color spray
paint to match the color of the box so the fixall potting compound
always was very noticeable. The black boxes are better but then
the blue ones were even cheaper and locally available. these blue
boxes were about 1.25 inches deep.
I've seen a lot of disparaging remarks about the drawers, but I don't think there's anything inherently bad about them. I think they can fit a lot more products per square foot of floor space than they can by hanging stuff on the wall. Of course if everything was in the right bin it would be a lot better.
I'm happy that Radio Shack is at least giving lip service to the DIY movement, but I don't imagine they'll ever stop selling cell phones. Their employees would have to spend a whole lot of time selling resistors and switches to make as much money as they get selling one phone.
And so, it has all been rather 'hit or miss' with what a Radio Shack store might have on hand or who they think are their most valued customers. At the bottom of all this is that they started the franchise on the premises that 'Cheaper is better' and that 'Anyone can sell electronics'. Neither premise really appeals to dyed-in-wool electronics hobbyist.
If you haven't done so.. Post up your input regarding your favorite Parallax products you would like to see at RS.
http://blog.radioshack.com/post/2011/05/19/RadioShack-And-The-DIY-Community-You-Talked-Were-Listening.aspx
OBC
Found it buy the book section looking for BotMag.
I'll have to remember to look for that section the next time I visit my local Microcenter.
They have the same at the Microcenter store in Columbus, OH.
C.W.