Your best advice on buying components?

[fredswed]

What's your best advice on buying components to your projects?

I've recently gotten started and built a couple of MYS nodes and other Arduino projects. The local electronics store (Radioshack-style) are happy to sell me much of what I need - ranging from Pro Minis and sensors to boxes and battery holders. But they charge 5-20 times more than Aliexpress and eBay. On the other hand, quality varies when ordering from China and delivery times are painful at best.

With the mindboggling number of sellers on eBay and Aliexpress, I often find myself spending too much time optimizing orders, trying to order from a minimal number of trustworthy suppliers. (I really prefer to have 2 and not 20 separate deliveries.)

On the other side of the spectrum there is Farnell, RS Components, Distrelec etc. They have slightly better prices than my local stores and unbeatable delivery times. But the sheer number of components they provide is often too much for me. (165 different rotary encoders to choose from at RS!)

How do you cope?
Do you have an online shopping strategy to relieve some of the pain?
Favourite suppliers?

My wishlist for a supplier include:

• Friendly prices (less than Aliexpress/eBay x 3)
• Reasonable shipping costs for small orders
• Delivery times within a week (I'm in the EU)
• Selection of the most common boards, sensors and other components.

Or is that too much to ask for?

[hek]

I think you've made a pretty good analysis of the current situation for all of us doing a little hobby electronics.

Here in Sweden the postal system has gone haywire the last couple of years due to the 400 000 small grey packages flowing in from China every day... the last few days they've been threatening in the press about adding some administrative fees on handling the goods (a ~€12/package handling fee for adding VAT/tax). This will probably stop some of the inflow and it also increases the need for local EU businesses to step up and handle the import and start selling the things at a fair price. People have gotten used to "china prices".

[Fabien]

You can try TME. Lot of componments, very good service and delivery in 2 days.

[NeverDie]

Try to have a lot of different projects going concurrently. That way you're less sensitive to ordering delays.

[executivul]

I tend to stock up on things. I prefer to buy 3 Arduino mega 2560 for $20 from ali and have a bad one than fry a $20 original. By the way I have more than 50 megas now, all good. A lot of 10 arrived malfunctioning, I made a video, got my money back, later I've found they all had a bad bootloader, reflashed and happy ever sice
Ebay is more cumbersome for me, the very long delays in postage can't extend the paypal/ebay protection, on ali you can. Ebay from Europe is an option for large, heavy, expensive items, I got my cnc, vacuum pump, soldering equipment and my laser from a German reseller, but shipping for smaller items from UK/DE to a country like Romania is many times more expensive than the item itself.
Tme&Farnell are both good options, low shipping charges, blazing fast, but they sell only original components, so an Atmega2560 is like $12, add a few dollars for a few resistor, oscillator, shipping...
To buy form ali I usually arrange the listings by order number, then filter by rating, then if the item is more than a dime I read the reviews to make sure they are real. (I left 5* after getting my money back a few times, afterall I haven't lost a dime but the waiting time). On ebay you sometimes get the "sold a bazzillion times" red flag, but you can't sort by nuber of orders, so you can't see the "sheep flock oppinion".

LE. Oh and I keep a spreadsheet of the orders I made so I can track the parcels untill they arrive. I buy in small quantities so I get the free shipping and free customs tax (under 10 Euro). For eg. Buying 30 Arduino megas can be more expensive than 5x 6pcs orders since many sellers on ali apply shipping taxes after a number of components, 1-4pcs free shipping, 5 pcs $1.71 shipping, 6 pcs $2.31 shipping !?! chinese algos involved Also chances of getting a bad lot are smaller. Divide and conquer!

[nagelc]

on Ebay, try restricting your search to your country. You might get lucky. I found an Ebay store, OddWires, in the US that imports some of the more common China parts and sells them for a slight markup. Once in a while he has a part that I am looking for and I can get it with in-country delivery times at only a slightly higher price.
Otherwise, I try to stick to suppliers the I have used before or are in the MySensors store. Digikey and Mouser when I am in a hurry.

[Tmaster]

i have an freeway open between china and my house manage by ebay
There are a lot of online shop like rs-online ,mouser etc but buy and arduino at 30€... if Chinese prices don't exist ,today i wasn't here commented that and i just bought all my electronic actuator already assembled from any brand like fibaro or any zwave brand.
I like eletronics but not so much for waste 10€ e 2 or 3 mosfets...
thanks to cheap prices i have an smart house that i understand how it works and i did it myself

[flopp]

Hi, any know how to order from outside Europe and send it to Sweden and not have to pay the extra fee?
AliExpress doesn’t seem to have a Europe warehouse.
Does DX.com have Europe warehouse?
Banggood?

[axillent]

@flopp In my understanding all this DIY shops are managing whemselves. So wharegousing strategy is up to concrete store.
From my experience I'm getting some parcels from EU, many from Latvia, some from Finland and some from others.

[axillent]

@fredswed I think to care too much about selecting source of items.

I also tried different ones including ebay, mouser, farnel, sparkfun etc. end up to use only (mostly) ali.
Spending time to analyse goods presented you will find that most sellers are providing same goods.
The only difference between them is price and quality of service.

Finally I refused to keep track on a particular sellers. Each time I need something I do search for best price and most sells and looking into ratings and customers feedback refuse worstest ones. Each such search requires just a few minutes to end up with purchase.

In practice using such approach in most cases you will purchase from a small set of sellers. But there is no need to depend on them. In case of mistake in selecting seller you will call for your money.

All this for DIY purpose. Time is not a critical issue.
If you are about doing some commersial staff it is always a different story

[bjacobse]

Well maybe offtopic but anyway, in the company were I work, we have HUGE problems with leadtime to get MLCC in 0805, 0603 padsize/housing, I'm unsure if this also goes for 0201. I think 01005 is the "new" padsize
The leadtime is about ½year and sometimes in limited quantities, seems either that those padsized having end of life (EOL), and we have several electronics products on the market that we need to purchase enough LMCC to manufacture so there is time enough to update PCB and get updated/new type typeapproval

Does any of you out there experience the sam?
LMCC if you wonder what it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_capacitor#Multi-layer_ceramic_capacitors_(MLCC)

[alowhum]

My best advice is to buy the Nano Wireless Expansion Boards. Makes it so much easier to create sensors and devices. No more soldering, no more power or faulty wire issues with the radio.

http://www.aliexpress.com/af/nano--wireless-board.html

[alexsh1]

@fredswed it depends. I have been using Aliexpress and eBay for many years, but they are (1) unreliable. Recently I ordered a i2c 0.96" OLED display from eBay which turned out to be SPI and the seller did not even know about it. It took another week of e-mail exchange and photos to prove my point (2) fake - all components I order now are coming only from digi-key, Farnell or allow.com. A few months ago I received a batch of fake atmega328p-au tqfp 32. It took me two-three evenings and a lot of soldering/dis-soldering and debugging work to figure it out. I have not even started taking about nrf24l01+. Now my time is valuable and I do not want to spend hours debugging a fake Chinese chip. (3) for small batches - say 5 resistors or caps - you may use a local supplier (they most likely would be on eBay). (4) you can also use a good chinese component suppliers like https://www.itead.cc/

[mfalkvidd]

@alexsh1 did you mean arrow instead of allow?

[NeverDie]

More recent news about fake atmega328p's: https://hackaday.com/2020/09/15/deep-sleep-problems-lead-to-forensic-investigation-of-troublesome-chip/

[Worldling]

I have been buying all the parts I need on amazon, though it takes around 2 weeks to arrive.