parts sources

DJ Delorie wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@delorie.com:

but UPS will not get stolen by the USPS....

I had a Priority Mail package($80 worth of SDRAM) not arrive even though the tracking info said it was delivered. My mail goes to a mail kiosk where packages are put into one of several big locked bins and a key put in my personal letterbox. The Postmaster hinted I was trying to defraud the USPS when I complained after filing a claim that was denied.

USPS has also lost my monthly electric bill,causing me a $5 late fee.

snipped-for-privacy@zekfrivolous.com (GregS) wrote in news:h76kb0$g2$ snipped-for-privacy@usenet01.srv.cis.pitt.edu:

I just made my order with Newark;they had almost everything I needed,and it was all in stock. But they didn't add in the tax and shipping on the final page or confirmation.

Parts searching was time-consuming,a bit of a hassle.

Thanks to all who responded to my original post.

DJ Delorie wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@delorie.com:

they require a $25 minimum order.

No they dont. It used to be $35 but now theres no minumum and no service fees. Its just $8 shipping.Orders over $200 ship free.

I had a envelope with a check from a client returned as "No Such Address". I had the client send me the envelope (via FedEx) and I published the picture of the envelope in the local newspaper. I soon had a visit to my front door by my letter-carrier claiming she was on vacation... but it's never happened again ;-)

As for lost bills or payments, I'm down to only needing two postage stamps a month. Everything else is billed via E-mail, and paid via the web.

...Jim Thompson

Um, no? Order a 5 cent part, pay 5 cents plus postage. Last November I ordered a single $7.36 chip, paid $2.02 for postage - total $9.38. No minimum order, no extra fee.

Um, no? My last digikey order was $690 and I still paid $11.80 for UPS.

They have big bold letters "FREE SHIPPING on Orders of $200 CAD and greater."

Dont you see that when you place an Order. I think they even sent me an email about it.

The small print says.

"Free shipping is offered on all orders over $200 CAD*, with no additional charge for each backorder shipment. A shipping charge of $8.00 CAD will be billed on all orders less than $200 CAD*, with an additional $8.00 CAD charge for each back order shipment.

• If unique circumstances require deviation from this charge, customers will be contacted prior to shipping an order. Packages will be shipped via UPS."

Maybe you had "unique circumstances". Did your order include heavy oversize stuff? They should have contacted you though.

DJ Delorie wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@delorie.com:

Wow,thanks for updating me.it's been a while since I've ordered from them.

Ah, I see. I'm in the US so I don't get the Canadian deals.

US mail is what I use for Digikey a lot when it's not urgent. Like when bins need to be replenished.

How is your electric metering project coming? Did you find out who the heavy hitters are?

All the boards are installed, along with all the sensors. Preliminary calibration is done, but I need to check it against the electric meter more carefully - I think it's low by about 10%. The monitoring software calculates the RPM (well, sec/rot) of the disk in the meter for comparison.

I put an old copy of the monitor screen (without circuit names) at the bottom of that page so you can see what I'm up against. Basically, there's a few big hitters. It's hot so the central air, circuits 1.7 and 1.15, is high ($80/mo - but the estimate has fallen over the last two days, as it's been cooler), and the computers (2.2 and 2.7) are about $80/month, but those were *lower* than expected. There's a bunch of medium costs - well $20/mo, fridge $20/mo, and a few surprises - water bed $12/mo! A cheap insulating pad for that is probably a good investment.

Kitchen lights, the ones we replaced with 8 CFs, cost half as much as family room (4 incandescents) - but it's not beause they're CFs. The kitchen still uses *more* watts (some of the floods are still incandescent) but they're on *much* less often. So, the family room is a good target for CFs.

Likewise, I need to get the kids to put their radios on sleep timers, rather than leave them on all night. Turn the volume all the way down, they *still* draw 50 watts. All night. Sigh.

Electric dryer - $1/month, assuming the last 5 days are "normal".

Overall, I think I'm up against a large number of small problems, rather than a small number of large ones.

On a sunny day (30 Aug 2009 12:53:14 -0400) it happened DJ Delorie wrote in :

Cheap PIR motion sensors. No motion, nobody in a room, switch off all power there. But leave the fridge and freezer on :-)

Or maybe the meter is high ... ;-)

The central air is very reasonable. We only run it when it gets extreme or visitors come and then it can easily shoot to >$200 just for air. But $80 for the computers? Wow, that is high. Our total electric bill is more like $130/mo which includes pool pumps and such.

Unless you have a big chandelier it'll be a drop in the bucket. I'd take a look at the computers. Maybe at least some power settings can be optimized.

Aha, there would be an opportunity for a family chat. Show them the data, let them come up with solutions. It can't be that much of a sacrifice to run an alarm clock and then push the power button. Or take it out of their allowance :-)

That sounds nearly impossible. Those things easily draw a couple of kilowatts for a half hour.

Now I don't know about the computers. Stuff like the septic just has to be there, can't do much about it. Maybe eat less beans and hot salsa ...

Didn't you say back then that you guys also have a well pump? That would be worth investigating. >1700kWh/month is really a lot for a family. I'd have to look but we are well under 1000kWh and as an analog guy I must run lots of boat anchor style lab equipment. The pool pumps alone should be above 200kWh/month.

He must be running a Babbage engine. :-)

Ed

Since the power company bills according to the meter, by definition the meter is "right" :-)

I used a 60 watt bulb as a reference so I'm assuming my calibration is off.

That's for six computers running 24/7. Three are for delorie.com so they have to stay on. The others are for my job, so they're on most of the day anyway, the few hours I don't use them isn't worth the inconvenience of restarting them all.

The work computers are high-performance, which is a big load. My main work machine is 200W when idle! Yes, I have the cpu speed slow down when it can. I might upgrade some of the older servers to greener models, though, once I have reliable data.

Ours averages about $300/mo, hence this project ;-)

The only catch would be if I forgot to put in the x6 scale factor (to compensate for the coil type and 240v), but that's still only $6/mo. I'll have to check it. It is a brand new dryer, though.

Well: $13/mo. Most of that is probably because we water the lawn automatically, but I don't want the lawn to die either. The well pump is 480 feet down, which means more power draw too. About 2kw if the data is right.

But of course all these numbers are based on the assumption that all the circuit sensors are configured and calibrated correctly.

Naw, I run three or four Dell rack servers, a desktop of two, a Powerware 3.5 KVA UPS, and a bunch of other stuff, so I spend about the same--I'm sure that the OP's $80 is reasonable for some of us!

I'd double-check that with a good meter. Bulbs have large tolerances.

Can't you use a web hosting service? Mine costs around $85/year and offers oodles of space that I'll never fill in my whole life. Hey, it's even running on a Linux host :-)

This includes the domain name fees and I couldn't even pay the electricity for the difference.

Try hibernate. Works very well with my three, starts them within ten seconds, you are right back into all your open documents from yesterday night and the power drops down to next to nothing (the same as "off").

Computers should be able to do that with Linux I guess (mine are all XP). At least when I have Ubuntu open in a VM and push the off button at night whatever apps I had open in Ubuntu come back the next morning as if I had never turned it off.

After all, if you make your kids turn off their stereo at night dad has to lead with a shining example :-)

Out here they also sell them with propane but that stuff has become almost prohibitively expensive.

Wow, $13 for a well that deep is really low in cost. Sure it's right?

Current transformers have a fixed turns ratio, they usually don't lie. Of course all this assumes that the ADC circuitry and SW handles spikes correctly.

Unfortunately, my clamp-on ammeter has a 10:1 range of what it thinks the "right" current is. I.e., it doesn't work. I think the sensor is OK, but the ammeter in my meter is broken. I'm going to use the power company's meter as the "good meter" to avoid having to buy another meter.

Call me paranoid, but I don't want someone else owning my data. Plus, those servers interact with my work machines and the rest of the house as well (for example, my wife's PC is diskless, so if the file server were elsewhere, her computer would stop working).

My file server has 3 Tb of disk space, and is mostly full. It will hold up to 14 Tb with today's disks.

I'll try, but I have to figure out what I'm going to do about all the housekeeping that runs at night - backups, source updates, builds, etc. The idea is to have everything updated and ready for the next day's work.

We were going to go propane, but the tradeoffs just barely pushed it back to electric.

Um, *no* I'm not sure, but the well doesn't run that often. Plus, the water level is only 11 feet down, which reduces power use.

I'm using ADE7753 chips, which claim to be "revenue grade" - these are the same chips they use in digital house meters. However, the value it reports depends on the current transformer, load resistors, AC voltage reference, voltage divider network, and clock speed. There's a bunch of hard-to-understand math in the specs, but even they end up telling you to calibrate it against a known source.