I went to radio shack to pick up some parts and they have like NOTHING now. And they wanted over $1.20 for a single 22uF cap (get real!). They are like pennies (at least as SMDs). Where is a good place to buy discrete components? (like ICs, caps, etc.)
That pretty much sums it up, but remember that Radioshack embeds the cost of shipping/handling and staffing into the price of their components. Online is the way to go but you have to buy a fair quantity to make it worth your while otherwise you'll be paying more than $1.20 for a single capacitor most likely. Jameco is my favorite and you can request first class which is much cheaper than UPS which is the standard and you'll probably get it sooner anyway.
The thing that irritates me the most about Radioshack is the relentless push of cellular phones and/or sattelite TV. You can go in everyday to the point these guys know you and they will still ask you everytime, and everytime I say NO.
Next time they ask you if would like to buy a cell phone make up some techno babble BS like the following:
Salesman: Would like to buy 3 cell phones and sattelite TV today?
Customer: No. But I do need a 950 nanometer, 38 kilohertz infrared detection module. I'm going to be pulse code modulating the output using a 32 level quantizer and would like your recommendation on an RC time constant for my envelope detection device, assuming of course an ideal bandpass reconstruction filter. The sampled output has to be greater than the Nyquist rate, and I can't afford to lose any spectral content less than three times the total transmission bandwidth. The final output is to be used as a reference input to a Langrangian robotic arm control system using a closed loop transfer function with a feedback path gain signal to noise ratio of 20 decibels, any suggestions?
Online surplus is your friend. Try searching for electronics surplus. My favorite in the US is electronics goldmine. Also, there may be local surplus places. Here in the SF bay area, there are several good ones within an hour drive of my house, not to mention Frys (which also has expensive shrink-wrapped stuff at 10x prices)
Oh, the other thing to understand when you are first getting into electronics is that chip mfgs will ship ICs and transistors in small numbers as 'samples' to almost anybody. This is more of a promotional thing for them than anything else. Not all manufacturers will do this unless you are really working on something that'll make them money.
The other thing to realize is that your house is full of junk which has this stuff in it. If you go to yard sales, you can pick up old non-working VCRs and TVs that have lots of goodies in them, if you are willing to desolder them from the boards. The older the better, because newer stuff uses surface mount components which are pretty much useless for hobby use.
As a final note, ebay has lots of offers of components in their electronics components section. Watch out for the shipping charges.
Surplus is not used material, it is material which never got used.
I have bought a lot of surplus over the years and it is usually components which were meant to be used in some production but never came to be used, so it was sold as surplus instead, often because the production company went bankrupt and was liquidated.
Sometimes surplus is sold by companies which also sell stuff from scrapped equipment.
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