I made my first purchase from Tayda Electronics, buying some general components like resistors and capacitors.  Apart from (and perhaps more than) cheap components, I was attacted by their low shipping overhead.  For this order totalling $13.68 of components, they charged me $2.03 for shipping/handling.

I ordered these on January 25th, a day after I sent my PCB order to OSH Park.  The components arrived on February 1st, two days before I got my PCBs back.  A mere 7 days to arrive from Thailand!

Here's the amazing part...  I think they stuff the envelope and apply the USPS postage label in Thailand, put my envelope together with other envelopes in a bigger box, ship the box to Colorado, and drop off the envelopes at a USPS in Colorado.  The USPS postage on my envelope was for $2.01, which means they charged me 2 cents for the envelope, the bubble wrap inside, the time to pack, and shipping from Thailand to Colorado!

I've always appreciated the wide availability of logic analyzers (2:1 student-to-instrument ratio) in the 6.111 Lab.  I also really liked that we used PALs, which I told my friends was God's gift to humanity.  What I had failed to realize until recently though was how useful it was that the "Nerd-kit" had a box of parts in the bottom, and that there was a parts supply counter next to the lab.  Just about every part I needed was in that box.  For special parts, I could walk to the parts counter and ask the Lab Tech for the special part.

Recently, as I tried to design circuits, the process would inevitably morph itself into a shopping exercise.  I'd be missing this or that IC, this or that resistor, this or that tool, etc. and end up shopping (which tires me out!) for parts instead of designing circuits.  If I find the part, I'd then have to order it and wait for it to arrive.  I'd usually try to order a few other parts I anticipate I'd need in the future in order to amortize shipping costs.  Not quite like software, where if you can find some Open Source (preferably public domain or Apache / BSD / MIT Licensed, and not GPL) code you need, you just download it and start using it almost immediately.  If you can't find such code, just fire up the IDE and start writing it yourself.

After spending a big chunk of time upfront shopping for parts and tools, I think my home mini-lab is now sufficiently stocked that I can focus on building circuits.  Next post should be about real circuits.

For readers' convenience, I've set up a page called PARTS SOURCES, with a link in the upper-right corner of this blog.  At the moment it's just a list of links, but I'll try to add some notes on each supplier over time.