The Radio Shack in Troy has two Ping modules in the new packaging hanging on a hook. That is all they have at the moment. Maybe by next week they will have the rest of the items.
Great, did the Search as Bomber suggested and there they were.
The XBEE Wireless Pack looked like good value as it contained two pro XBEE and the usb Adapter
marked up a bit but that is how it should be.
The serial LCD also priced within reason
BUT $40 for a QuickStart board bothers me.
Seems to big of a mark up. For $30 right now you can get it from Parallax with an FM radio chip
or $25 by itself.
Seems like $35 for it at RS would be more like it, figuring you pay shipping from Parallax and RS has to make a profit also
I stopped by one of the local Radio Shacks on the list. As I came in, the manager asked if he could help me, and I said I'd heard he was "one of the places getting the Parallax stuff". He led me over to that area. Sadly, all he had was two Pings in the new packaging, hanging directly over a shelf with two retail-boxed Arduino kits (not the black Sparkfun case, but something fairly nice-looking). He thought that the Arduino boxes were Parallax products*, and when I mentioned Stamps he said "Oh, we're sending those back" (obviously referring to the old clamshell-packaged "What's a Microcontroller?" kits they've always carried). I'm not surprised, I guess, that he didn't know much about the stuff, but I'd expected to see more than just two Pings.
* Perhaps because when I search for "Arduino" at the Radio Shack site, what comes up is the "What's a Microcontroller?" kit. :thumb:
It was pleasant to see a real area with electronic hobbyist stuff, though - Parallax, Arduino, and some Radio Shack-branded "labs" like this "Electronic Sensors Lab" that I'd never seen before:
I don't know if this has been brought up, but with radioshack carrying the Quickstart will this in any way affect the price buying directly through Parallax?
I don't know if this has been brought up, but with radioshack carrying the Quickstart will this in any way affect the price buying directly through Parallax?
CameronM
Hello!
Probably not. My problem is that the RS site is poor. Even the one Cisco faked up looks better. And so far, the ones I've checked either don't have anything, or worse do not even know what Parallax is. I imagine my next step will be to try two different stores.
I just cleaned out the 2 QuickStarts that our local RS had as well as a shiny new compas module, PIR sensor, and a PING))! The guy behind the counter seemed pretty jazzed that they were already moving those items as they had just recently showed up. My contribution
I just cleaned out the 2 QuickStarts that our local RS had as well as a shiny new compas module, PIR sensor, and a PING))! The guy behind the counter seemed pretty jazzed...
Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say "don't buy stuff, just to be buying stuff" from RS. But if you need something, and you can get it locally like this - then do it - It doesn't get any more convenient than that :-)
All that being said, I still say: "photomankc - you rock!"
-Matt
Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say "don't buy stuff, just to be buying stuff" from RS. But if you need something, and you can get it locally like this - then do it - It doesn't get any more convenient than that :-)
All that being said, I still say: "photomankc - you rock!"
-Matt
No danger of that Matt! I want to work on an I2C master/slave interface for stepper motors and sensors and it was all right there looking at me when I walked in so I ended up walking out with an armload of stuff. Very cool to walk in and grab a compass module right off the rack. I hope the venture pans out for both parties.
Very cool to walk in and grab a compass module right off the rack.
Yes, it is!
Plus, we have "top" people working on a series of "out of the box" Beginners Application Notes on the products being distributed through Radio Shack - when they're released that should throw a little gasoline on the DIY fire too :nerd:
So, when do we announce the "Secret Notes" Ken? Are we getting close? Hummmm?
-Matt
I visited the capitola store tonight to look at the refresh, they are charging a 20% premium across the board for all of the diy stuff, parallax, make, etc. This is a bad way to reintroduce themselves in the diy market, especially in a down economy. Surely they bought the parts with the traditional markup built into the retail price, they are shooting themselves in the foot. This means the make microcontroller kit that retails for $120 online is $149 in store. The xbee starter kit is $100, which is a steep price for an accessory that doesn't do anything by itself.
Hi pedward -
That's a bummer, but I dont' think Parallax can control what a dealer sells our stuff for. Of course they get "margin" like any Dist. would, but they can opt to charge anything that they think they can get I guess. Of course that's just the free market in operation, isn't it? ;-)
I went to Fry's and saw higher prices here and there. The 40pin Prop was $12.95 and the USB proto board was $29.99. Other than gouging for the Prop, the other prices were competitive with online. I was really impressed with the Make branded stuff they had. They had a Plano tackle box with a bunch of parts for $100 at RS, and the Microcontroller kit was $149, but very impressive looking. Fry's sells your Prop education kit for $99 IIRC. I'd love to see Parallax add some breakout boards and more Make type kits.
I would really like to see you offer an Arduino compatible Prop board. The Arduino layout has matured enough to support extra I/O, so having an off the shelf plug compatible board would really leverage all of the shields out there. I'm only suggesting something like the C3 with an Arduino compatible layout.
Doh, I just saw that Makershed charges $149.95 for their ultimate mc kit, but you only see that price once you click on the product. In the main catalog it just says $120. Talk about a bad e-commerce system!
Martin Hodge makes the Propeller ASC (arduino shield compatible) I don't have one myself but have heard good things about it. I am going to order one soon.
I went to Fry's and saw higher prices here and there. The 40pin Prop was $12.95 and the USB proto board was $29.99. Other than gouging for the Prop, the other prices were competitive with online. I was really impressed with the Make branded stuff they had. They had a Plano tackle box with a bunch of parts for $100 at RS, and the Microcontroller kit was $149, but very impressive looking. Fry's sells your Prop education kit for $99 IIRC. I'd love to see Parallax add some breakout boards and more Make type kits.
I would really like to see you offer an Arduino compatible Prop board. The Arduino layout has matured enough to support extra I/O, so having an off the shelf plug compatible board would really leverage all of the shields out there. I'm only suggesting something like the C3 with an Arduino compatible layout.
I've referred to Frys here before. When you checked it out, and found the prop and the USB board, you may have noted the following 1) The USB board was the one put out by schmartboard. That layout does not appear to be the schmartest placement of pins that will ultimately be used in conjunction with a breadboard, and 2) you found the 40 pin DIP version of the prop, but not the LQFP-44 version to put on the BARE schmartboard they were selling. Kinda makes you wonder "WTF were the buyers thinking?"
Incidentally, the Schmartmodule sells for $23.00 populated with ONLY the prop chip on the Schmartboard site. No headers, no crystal, eeprom etc. $39.00 gets a fully populated serial version from the Parallax store. $49.00 for a GG-USB like I use or $25.00 for the quickstart board.
I do have one gripe (sort of) for all of the above. I wish the EEPROM was socketed for expansion and replacement when the current one fails from all the downloads....
Are you getting close to your one-millionth download already? I've still got a couple hundred thousand to go on mine.
-Phil
I am not that efficient at coding as some are, but nowhere close to the 10^6th download yet, but w/ chips getting more capacity and it being surface mount and all. More is better, I always want the most, best, latest,.........................
Also thought it was a lot fewer than that. Ooops, guess it is an RTFM moment for me on that part of it.
Also thought it was a lot fewer than that. Ooops, guess it is an RTFM moment for me on that part of it.
I was conditioned into this mind-set by products like the ARM Cortex family, which have an inconveniently low number of erase/write cycles - and since the FLASH is onboard, the entire uC is trash at that point. I really like the fact that the Prop executes out of SRAM.
I actually picked up a Boe-Bot kit from Microcenter a week ago. I was surprised to see my local MC had a lot of Parallax stuff in stock. I put in a pickup order for the PING sensor along with the mounting bracket earlier today. For the Boe-Bot, PING, and bracket, the pricing seemed to be right in line with the Parallax site (I have noticed that MC does have a tendency to severely mark-up some items). They definitely seem to carry more in-store than my local Radio Shack. For those who have a MC close, you can actually select a specific store and view the in-stock numbers for specific items. It seems to be pretty accurate; I actually picked up the last PING mounting bracket from the CO store. Within a few minutes, they removed the bracket product listing from their site.
Comments
Search for "Parallax" and view your results!
The XBEE Wireless Pack looked like good value as it contained two pro XBEE and the usb Adapter
marked up a bit but that is how it should be.
The serial LCD also priced within reason
BUT $40 for a QuickStart board bothers me.
Seems to big of a mark up. For $30 right now you can get it from Parallax with an FM radio chip
or $25 by itself.
Seems like $35 for it at RS would be more like it, figuring you pay shipping from Parallax and RS has to make a profit also
Tom
Just my thoughts
* Perhaps because when I search for "Arduino" at the Radio Shack site, what comes up is the "What's a Microcontroller?" kit. :thumb:
It was pleasant to see a real area with electronic hobbyist stuff, though - Parallax, Arduino, and some Radio Shack-branded "labs" like this "Electronic Sensors Lab" that I'd never seen before:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3811029&filterName=Category
CameronM
Hello!
Probably not. My problem is that the RS site is poor. Even the one Cisco faked up looks better. And so far, the ones I've checked either don't have anything, or worse do not even know what Parallax is. I imagine my next step will be to try two different stores.
Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say "don't buy stuff, just to be buying stuff" from RS. But if you need something, and you can get it locally like this - then do it - It doesn't get any more convenient than that :-)
All that being said, I still say: "photomankc - you rock!"
-Matt
No danger of that Matt! I want to work on an I2C master/slave interface for stepper motors and sensors and it was all right there looking at me when I walked in so I ended up walking out with an armload of stuff. Very cool to walk in and grab a compass module right off the rack. I hope the venture pans out for both parties.
Plus, we have "top" people working on a series of "out of the box" Beginners Application Notes on the products being distributed through Radio Shack - when they're released that should throw a little gasoline on the DIY fire too :nerd:
So, when do we announce the "Secret Notes" Ken? Are we getting close? Hummmm?
-Matt
That's a bummer, but I dont' think Parallax can control what a dealer sells our stuff for. Of course they get "margin" like any Dist. would, but they can opt to charge anything that they think they can get I guess. Of course that's just the free market in operation, isn't it? ;-)
-Matt
I would really like to see you offer an Arduino compatible Prop board. The Arduino layout has matured enough to support extra I/O, so having an off the shelf plug compatible board would really leverage all of the shields out there. I'm only suggesting something like the C3 with an Arduino compatible layout.
Martin Hodge makes the Propeller ASC (arduino shield compatible) I don't have one myself but have heard good things about it. I am going to order one soon.
Ron
I've referred to Frys here before. When you checked it out, and found the prop and the USB board, you may have noted the following 1) The USB board was the one put out by schmartboard. That layout does not appear to be the schmartest placement of pins that will ultimately be used in conjunction with a breadboard, and 2) you found the 40 pin DIP version of the prop, but not the LQFP-44 version to put on the BARE schmartboard they were selling. Kinda makes you wonder "WTF were the buyers thinking?"
Incidentally, the Schmartmodule sells for $23.00 populated with ONLY the prop chip on the Schmartboard site. No headers, no crystal, eeprom etc. $39.00 gets a fully populated serial version from the Parallax store. $49.00 for a GG-USB like I use or $25.00 for the quickstart board.
I do have one gripe (sort of) for all of the above. I wish the EEPROM was socketed for expansion and replacement when the current one fails from all the downloads....
Frank
-Phil
I am not that efficient at coding as some are, but nowhere close to the 10^6th download yet, but w/ chips getting more capacity and it being surface mount and all. More is better, I always want the most, best, latest,.........................
Also thought it was a lot fewer than that. Ooops, guess it is an RTFM moment for me on that part of it.
Thx
Frank
I was conditioned into this mind-set by products like the ARM Cortex family, which have an inconveniently low number of erase/write cycles - and since the FLASH is onboard, the entire uC is trash at that point. I really like the fact that the Prop executes out of SRAM.