I noticed a big larger range of boards and IC’s on TauBao even than on AliExpress e.g. this F103RET6 board, which appears to be around $7 US
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 … t=0#detail
But from what I understand although you can pay for stuff with a credit card, I think the shipping needs to go via an agent ??
Has anyone looked into this as an option?
But from what I understand although you can pay for stuff with a credit card, I think the shipping needs to go via an agent ??
Has anyone looked into this as an option?
That’s interesting to know.
The thing I noticed about the one I posted is that it has an unidentified chip on the rear of the board, I suspect it is an EEROM, but might be flash ram. This picture is what alerted me to the mystery.
Unfortunately the http://www.vcc-gnd.com/ address on the silkscreen comes up as a dead link at the moment and using the http://www.vcc-gnd.taobao.com/ address and the subsequent search button doesn’t yield any further info.
I noticed the board silk screen had F103Rx written on it, so I presume somewhere they are making the blank PCB’s for R series (i.e R form factor), devices, and different companies are putting different IC’s on them.
Its a shame that the one you found only used the RB as its a “Medium density” device and doesn’t have the DAC’s or other funky features, plus its flash size etc is a lot smaller
PS. I have quite a few modules (not STM32 boards) with vcc-gnd written on them. I’m sure they used to be on TauBao but perhaps they have gone out of business
edit
Definitely lots of boards being made, but it would be hard to buy on unless you live in China.
I also noticed that on TauBao, the F103RET board was the same price as the F103VET board.
So unless you don’t want a lot of unused pins, the V series would be better value
I bought very few to just check it out, so the shipping expenses are leveling the prices with what I would get from aliexpress, but I only wanted to check it out.
I have not received the shipment yet, once it arrives I will post a review.
Just some preliminary information on how it works:
You use their webpage to enter the URL of any taobao item. You order the item thru them and gets shipped to them.
Then when they receive all that you ordered, that can be from different sellers, they make a shipment to you.
You pay all the shipping inside china, that is cheap, and to you, which is more expensive but a single one. They also charge a commission per item.
I will post links, quantities and cost they had to me.
If you need 10 boards of something that normally cost over 10 bucks in Aliexpress, you will save some money.
If you just need a board or two, it will cost you more.
For you are that outside China Mainland I recommend you to use Aliexpress than Taobao.
Definitely lots of boards being made, but it would be hard to buy on unless you live in China.
I also noticed that on TauBao, the F103RET board was the same price as the F103VET board.
So unless you don’t want a lot of unused pins, the V series would be better value
Right now I have searched the GC-supermarket ebay store, they have some VCC-GND.com VET and ZET boards, but without that nice price and features…
http://stores.ebay.at/G-C-Supermarket-H … 513&_pgn=2
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=42766018704
I only ordered 1 of that, price comes to about $10 plus shipping after adding their fees and the internal china shipping.
Still a pretty good value for a development board that includes loads of things, but would be much cheaper in quantities.
This one has the battery holder, 32khz crystal, EEPROM, SPI Flash (may not have the chip installed, but the description list a 2Mbit one), MicroSD slot, uart to USB converter, connector for NRF23, 2 buttons plus the reset button, all that for $6-7 before shipping.
I also ordered just a few of these:
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=44399907495
I like that they have an eeprom on board. They are about $4 before shipping to US. Again not a great deal for a very small quantity, but not more expensive than Aliexpress either.
And finally I ordered a few of these:
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=16236046404
About $3.5 before shipping to US. they look nice, have an ILI9163 for which we have a fast driver, and include an SDCard Slot, to put images, sounds or whatever else.
I plan on using this screens and the C8 boards in my lasertag project. Having the EEPROM is nice so I can program a different ID on each gun that I can change anytime without having to reprogram the sketch, or losing a setting if it is RAM. All settings to the EEPROM and can replace batteries whenever needed without having to reconfigure the gun. I can also save settings, scores or whatever else to sdcard.
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/ChilliTronix
STM32 Maple Mini: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ARM-Cortex-M3 … 1393351543
He may consider a special order.
Ray
I got one of those VET boards from eBay but the price ended up nearer £9 I think, by the time I had to add currency conversion from USD.
I suppose the ebay supplier may do it cheaper in batches of 10 but as they need to take their cut, its not going to be as cheap as TauBao.
I don’t have the schematic for the board, so I emailed the ebay supplier, but as yet they have not replied. Perhaps as its not a potential new sale they won’t reply.
All I was interested in, was how the SD is connected. I suspect its connected via SDIO rather than SPI, as the VET has support for SDIO ( but libmaple does not).
I found some example code to use the SDIO but it was using the STM HAL, so would need to be ported (assuming the code worked at all)
e.g.
STM32F103VET board $1.68 + $2.52 shipping to SpreeNow + SpreeNow charges
http://www.spreenow.com/taobao-agent/ta … 4180972495
But of course, I don’t know how much SpreeNow charges for external shipping and handling.
That looks a pretty useful board, and the price has to be a msitake if the board is per the first picture. 
surely that price is just for the bare board, unpopulated.
I did noticed that there was a picture on an unpopulated board in amongst all the other populated pictures.
So it could just be a con. i.e $1.68 for a blank board is not a particularly good price, but $1.68 for a populated board is also too good to be true, unless they vendor didn’t pay for them in the first place.
I did noticed that there was a picture on an unpopulated board in amongst all the other populated pictures.
So it could just be a con. i.e $1.68 for a blank board is not a particularly good price, but $1.68 for a populated board is also too good to be true, unless they vendor didn’t pay for them in the first place.
That looks a pretty useful board, and the price has to be a msitake if the board is per the first picture. surely that price is just for the bare board, unpopulated.
http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a23 … =12#detail
That can come pretty handy to use in final products.
– I buy mostly ic’s and dev boards that I can not get at the local market.
The main thing with buying on Taobao is making sure their rating is good – 3 numbers on the right with up down arrows (usually show between 4.0-5 for decent suppliers). These 3 numbers show user feedback on the suppliers Description, Service and Logistics. And the two numbers to the right of the price show reviews/feedback and number of sales – this is the main one you want to check, a dealer with a 0/0 here is obviously a crap shoot.
We always try to find a dealer with good feedback and obvious sales, but in a few cases with harder to find components we have gone with suppliers with no or few sales, but communicate with them first – many of them can write English, but not so many will understand or reply to questions properly in English.
If there are any boards in particular that look good and the community feels are worthwhile trying out – let me know, I don’t mind checking out the supplier and if they seem ok, buying one or two to test out – delivery costs me a $ or 2 at most usually and I get within 3-4 days max.