If There were an assortment and they all work correctly at 5 volts, it would be very convenient. If you sold them by bags of 100 I would want these on hand.
The ones I have work fine. I tried a 5 volt red one on 3 volts, and it's a little brighter than the power LED on my (old) BK Precision 1651 power supply. I spent some time searching yesterday, but didn't find anything really. One place on Alibaba offering to custom make any type you wanted (color, voltage, etc.) in the 10 cent price range, but 3000 piece minimum. Only found one eBay auction for 5 volt. Quite a few for 12 volt though, as they seem to be popular for automotive use. That's not to say they're not available, just not at an acceptably low price. Avago (used to be part of HP) has plenty of different types, but their prices are ridiculous in lower quantities.
I guess they're just shipping stuff as is, with no QC to speak of. Cheaper to just refund/replace instead of checking before it ships. I wish I could ship stuff almost free, as they seem to be able to do.
Also get some of the very nice translucent plastic project boxes.
Small blue and white ones are available at low-cost if you buy
several at once. I like the clear ones since you can easily see
LEDs on your board even though it's in an enclosure. The last ones
I bought were from Jaycar and were like 1.25 USD each in small
quantity.
Xtals, nice and cheap from Thailand suppliers at about 0.07 each
Basic small signal transistors at like 0.02
Small caps and resistors at 0.01 or less.
Knobs for a 0.15, pots for 0.50, trimmers for 0.10
All the stuff you can get cheap if willing to buy 100 or so at a time
and wait 20 days for delivery. You could mark them up since you
can ship immediately and in small quantities.
I think someone could make real $ by setting up a shop that
creates CHEAP custom boards for people with all the really hard to
solder sm parts mounted. And offer custom plastic cases for
those who want to sell their projects. You would need to set
up a partnership with a Chinese board house and enclosure
factory.....it would be best to actually go there and deal in person.
I always thought Parallax should do this...it would particularly
suit the new Prop2 as it will be hard for some to solder.
Just send in your gerbers and get back a cheap board with
something scary like a BGA SOC already mounted to your boards :-)
The very best chips are almost all BGA and many who would
like to work with them are scared to attempt BGA or the cost
of a good BGA rework station scares them off.
The one time I tried to order from iteadstudio they took almost two months to deliver. I don't know why: another order from a friend took only a few weeks. In any case, I don't think I'll risk it for future orders.
After frying a 2GB micro SD card today I started shopping around and found it's starting to get hard to get them with the 4GB + cards pushing them out. (although I did find some at a decent price at Walmart). Maybe you could stock them.
After frying a 2GB micro SD card today I started shopping around and found it's starting to get hard to get them with the 4GB + cards pushing them out. (although I did find some at a decent price at Walmart). Maybe you could stock them.
Ironically, I started this little business with a stack of SD cards.
I just order a bunch of Samsung/Sandisk 1gb cards. They appear to be some of the best for this project. I'll load them up with files for the PMC project and put them on the site soon.
Comments
H.K. Stock has started to arrive. I've pushed items into mandatory testing before they go on the shelf.
It might interest folks to know I'm seeing a consistent 80% pass/fail ratio at this point.
Jeff
and simple break-out type boards for sm chips.
Have them made up at the incredibly cheap
http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=19_20&zenid=qa08tp07o8bn54mjpo155e5o16
Also get some of the very nice translucent plastic project boxes.
Small blue and white ones are available at low-cost if you buy
several at once. I like the clear ones since you can easily see
LEDs on your board even though it's in an enclosure. The last ones
I bought were from Jaycar and were like 1.25 USD each in small
quantity.
Xtals, nice and cheap from Thailand suppliers at about 0.07 each
Basic small signal transistors at like 0.02
Small caps and resistors at 0.01 or less.
Knobs for a 0.15, pots for 0.50, trimmers for 0.10
All the stuff you can get cheap if willing to buy 100 or so at a time
and wait 20 days for delivery. You could mark them up since you
can ship immediately and in small quantities.
I think someone could make real $ by setting up a shop that
creates CHEAP custom boards for people with all the really hard to
solder sm parts mounted. And offer custom plastic cases for
those who want to sell their projects. You would need to set
up a partnership with a Chinese board house and enclosure
factory.....it would be best to actually go there and deal in person.
I always thought Parallax should do this...it would particularly
suit the new Prop2 as it will be hard for some to solder.
Just send in your gerbers and get back a cheap board with
something scary like a BGA SOC already mounted to your boards :-)
The very best chips are almost all BGA and many who would
like to work with them are scared to attempt BGA or the cost
of a good BGA rework station scares them off.
The one time I tried to order from iteadstudio they took almost two months to deliver. I don't know why: another order from a friend took only a few weeks. In any case, I don't think I'll risk it for future orders.
Ironically, I started this little business with a stack of SD cards.
I just order a bunch of Samsung/Sandisk 1gb cards. They appear to be some of the best for this project. I'll load them up with files for the PMC project and put them on the site soon.
Jeff