Well, I was thinking about this other project, where it'd be convenient to have a bag-o-LEDs, like maybe 8 or 16 or so. (or 100, if you work at a joint that bought out the other company's entire inventory, but that's a whole nother story). So, I check Radio Shack:
Holy Crap! A Dollar Twenty-Nine, per EACH???????
I had been thinking, a bag for a dollar, or something.
Hey, Watson! Got a bag-o-cheap-LEDs that you want to have hauled away? :-)
Thanks! Rich
Yikes!
I've got some cheap LEDs. Toss me mail, maybe we can work something out. address is valid
Hello Rich,
Go to Digikey. Their 67-1098-ND (green) is $1.03, but for ten of them and not just one. 100 of them would be $9.23. They also have a red LED that is even cheaper, just under a Dollar for ten.
Regards, Joerg
MPJA still has the Bags o' LEDs at a couple of bucks for qty 100.
3 or 5 mm, in basic red, green, or yellow-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
Yes, Radio Shack component prices have always been a laughing stock for hobbyists. They often seem to charge far more for packaging and sales effort than for the components themselves.
Shop around, you may find surplus bags of many LEDs for a few bucks.
$7 for a Pocket LED Tester? (What's a pocket LED? It must be exotic.)
It's something that Digikey wants $38 for (although without the "blink" option; must be a heck of a blinker).
They're actually pretty handy gadgets. Yeah, it's something that could be built out of the typical junk laying around the workbench but it's nice to have one assembled in a handy box (for $7). Useful to identify the odd LED in a grab bag assortment that doesn't follow the usual lead length convention, or to check the colors of the ones with a clear body.
-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
Everyone knows it's a 9v battery with a current limiting resistor soldered to one of the terminals. After that, it's really easy to place the LED between the other side of the resistor and the other terminal. Let's you make sure the LED actually works, gives you an idea of its brightness (I can remember getting horrible yellow and orange thirty years ago), and let's you verify the polarity of the LED.
Michael
Not to mention the most important thing, to see how bright it is with various currents, and determining minimim current needed. Mine does that.
greg
Sales were killed by Internet surplus places, I'm guessing. They seem to be positioning themselves to sell to those folks who are trying to finish a project or breadboard something up, and don't want to wait for mail-order. That seems to include outrageous prices, but that is OK, since they need to stock the parts for a long time. The times I've been in there in the last few years, I generally need to dust off the parts. For me, the alternative is either Berkeley or Sunnyvale, which are both more than an hour, and don't have much better prices anyway.
-- Regards, Bob Monsen The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics. - Johannes Kepler
Last time I paid attention - could be a year or two ago - Rat Shack had a 20 LED assortment for $2.something. Catalog number 276-1622, price $2.49 in the 2002 catalog. This is an assortment of what I suspect to be surplus ones, sometimes with a few that appear to me to be rejects orange-red light from yellow body or other reasons for being dumped into the surplus market. I would advise to test before using, with voltage safe to use backwards in case the long lead is negative (I have seen that before, but I disclaim certainty of having had 276-1622 LEDs being ones that were like that). So far in my experience, these assortment packs always had red, amber-yellow, yellow-green and sometimes reddish orange and/or orange-red and never any GaN or InGaN types (such as blue or white). Also I have yet to see the 276-1622 have "ultrabright" LEDs, although I have sometimes seen some lower end first generation GaAlAsP reds with brightness of a couple hundred MCD at 20 mA.
I do agree about Rat Shack being lousy with components. I only buy there what I need same day. Otherwise I use mostly Digi-Key.
A few specific complains of mine about Rat Shack:
The TL084 op-amp: They had those for a good part of the 1980's. Then they discontinued it. I suspect the reason was sales excessively slow at the $3.49 (or whatever) price they charged. The LM349, which they still sold last time I checked, has the same pinout but has a "crossover distortion" in many to most audio applications. I think they could have been successful at selling TLO84's at $2.59.
The 4049: They discontinued that. I suspect here also they ran into excessively slow sales after charging an excessive price.
The HPR50 flashlight bulb/lamp: They used to sell the Real Thing made by Osram. Those were truly bightime kick-@$$ flashlight bulbs! A couple years ago I got some more, and they cost no less but were cheap Chinese imitations, about half of which had the bulb surface visibly darkened by only 1 hour of operation.
Their move to put components into drawers: Some Rat Shack stores don't have the full set of drawers, and no longer stock all components in their catalogs. One offending this way is near my day job and within 1 mile of two universities that have electrical engineering departments - GO FIGURE!!!
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
Rat Shack discontinued the TL084 before I first got Internet access in
1994, and then the surplus places did not have websites.I generally agree here. But if they sold TLO84's for $2.59 instead of $3.49, I think they could have made money doing so. The parts would move faster and not have had to sit in stock as long.
- Don Klipstein ( snipped-for-privacy@misty.com)
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