How do they do the low pricing?

My price from Mouser for qty 1 of the atmega328P-PU (DIP) is $3.55 USD and I still have the USPS cost.

I am on the AliExpress deals email, so this morning over my 1st cup of coffee, this link materialized:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Best-pri … 64945.html

For those of you with children/grandchildren that want to learn about microcontrollers and electronics, grab a few of these boards. At this price, you could sponsor an entire private school inventory for the price of a 2-night hotel stay.

Ray

In the italian part of the Arduino forum there are people that says that this is possible only using defective parts. I have not the necessary knowledge to say if it can be true or not.

Based on nothing but conjecture, I suspect the parts may be cloned or recovered parts. The argument against them being defective is simply that most large fabs will destroy the faulty parts so they don’t end up in the supply chain. That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen of course.

Furthermore, good working parts have been known to walk out of large factories without ever ending up on the inventory, it only takes one smart alec to figure out how to evade security.

Overstocking by some failed venture can also lead to the marked place being (briefly) flooded with cheap parts too.

So i click on Ray’s link, and on the bottom of the page, it shows me an ESP-12E for $2.25, then I do a quick search, and find it even cheaper:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-vers … 6,201409_4

I wonder how much lower these things can go, both the uno and the esp…

victor_pv wrote:
<…>
I wonder how much lower these things can go, both the uno and the esp…

mrburnette wrote:victor_pv wrote:
<…>
I wonder how much lower these things can go, both the uno and the esp…

Just to drop back to the original subject.. (not that the later part is not as interesting).

Comparing the preshipping price to a single unit CPU price on mouser is not really very relevant.

An atmega328-au in 2,500 quantities is $1.61us even on mouser, and I would suggest quite a bit lower in direct channel.
Plus the shipping is additional profit, as they will definitely be paying way less than that on shipping (most shipping out of
china, if you do it right, ends up being subsidised..)
Of course they have to make a board, supply the rest of components, etc – but they seem able to.

However, people sniping at these things are IMHO missing the big picture..
If you look at the price differential available pretty much across the board for Chinese sourced items compared to often
the same item sourced locally you need to start asking yourself what that means for the local suppliers/middlemen..
Its not just electronics, there are many other items whos price differential is huge, even for physically exact matches
(ie: the local versions are almost certainly sourced in the same place). It isnt all defect goods..

Winds of change blowing?

Of course, even ignoring the pricing, its fantastic to be able to source such a massive range of items for electronics development.
Richness beyond a developers dreams?

Richness beyond a developers dreams?

Oh, no, not “dreams” but rather “time.” There is just not enough time to explore every interesting avenue!

Comparing the preshipping price to a single unit CPU price on mouser is not really very relevant.

The above, I take exception to… it is relevant to me and my play budget. For an electronics hobbyist, the 1x delivered price or perhaps the 10x delivered price is the number that we need to consider. I’m (presently) not building and shipping projects from my little basement lab (although I did make a lots of money while in college doing such things.) The point in the comparison (albeit somewhat apple vs orange) is that on one hand the Chinese product does include shipping while the Mouser product is the chip-cost non-shipping; therefore it becomes the “bird in the hand vs multiple birds in the bush” scenario. For a hobbyist, it is a fair comparison because if shows that the fully-assembled UNO clone in my mailbox is far cheaper than the purchase of one 328P-PU chip which is only one component of a boarduino. Were we to add the shipping cost Mouser would charge, we would have a much higher unit cost. But, that Mouser shipping cost is going to have to be distributed across multiple items because I never just buy one thing from Mouser… darn company has gotten lots of my money in the past

Ray

Arguably at $3.15 USD shipped, the blue pill board is both marginally cheaper than most Uno clones, and more capable, so gives more bang for your hobbyist buck.

For those who simply want to replicate an existing Arduino project they have found on the web, the $3.55 USD Uno or better still at $3.15 USD is certainly a winner, with Ray’s $2.58 find better still. Quality not withstanding, both of these boards are amazing value. Don’t expect either of them to have been tested beyond the “does it blink” level.

For the average hobbyist, this doesn’t matter I suspect. Our QA standards are pretty low Given my (our?) tendency to blow things up, and for some projects to languish in a drawer for many weeks (or even forever in some cases), I actually prefer in some ways to tinker on a $3 board rather than a shiny £25.00 GBP “Genuino” one from one of the local authorised resellers.

Kippering £25.00 hurts a lot more than smoking $3.15

victor_pv wrote:
I want to make a small AC/DC converter with MP156 or 157 to power the ESP, and the control and sense AC loads around the house.
Like 2 years ago, over the winter, a freezer was disconnected by someone and I only found out 4 or 5 days later.
If I had one of this things running on AC but with a small supercap or a battery, and when the AC is lost it sends me an email. Or to control loads with a TRIAC… they are becoming so extremely cheap… I am tempted to order 20x

Most hobbyists could save themselves another dollar and but this

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Freeship … 5,201409_2

And yet another 30 cents with this if they didn’t need the usb connector and had a ttl serial port.

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Pro-Mini … 5,201409_2

You compared the 1pc mouser price for a dip atmega328 although the board uses a tqfp which will be cheaper. And they wont be buying them in singles. To post that board in the uk costs more than the total cost delivered. The cost of postage in china must be peanuts

maybe they get paid for each item/packet/package shipped/posted?

stephen

mrburnette wrote:Richness beyond a developers dreams?

Oh, no, not “dreams” but rather “time.” There is just not enough time to explore every interesting avenue!

Comparing the preshipping price to a single unit CPU price on mouser is not really very relevant.

The above, I take exception to… it is relevant to me and my play budget. For an electronics hobbyist, the 1x delivered price or perhaps the 10x delivered price is the number that we need to consider. I’m (presently) not building and shipping projects from my little basement lab (although I did make a lots of money while in college doing such things.) The point in the comparison (albeit somewhat apple vs orange) is that on one hand the Chinese product does include shipping while the Mouser product is the chip-cost non-shipping; therefore it becomes the “bird in the hand vs multiple birds in the bush” scenario. For a hobbyist, it is a fair comparison because if shows that the fully-assembled UNO clone in my mailbox is far cheaper than the purchase of one 328P-PU chip which is only one component of a boarduino. Were we to add the shipping cost Mouser would charge, we would have a much higher unit cost. But, that Mouser shipping cost is going to have to be distributed across multiple items because I never just buy one thing from Mouser… darn company has gotten lots of my money in the past

Ray

mrburnette wrote:…

Or, you could consider the new LiFePO4 battery technology. I’m using one 3.2V cell and floating it across the DC-DC output which is set to 3.35V. Floating the battery across the Vcc like this keeps the cell near the 80% capacity charge. Far better than a supercap because the 600mAH rating is now 480mAH which will hold your remote ESP8266 for a few hours.
http://www.yesa.com.hk/pages.asp?id=19
2007101113592887292.jpg

victor_pv wrote:
Any good cheap source for lifepo4 batteries?

Ebay also does some reasonable deals on AAA LiFePO4 cells, but expect to pay a fair bit more than LiPo or NiMH cells of similar capacity.

For example …http://www.ebay.com/itm/6X-10440-200mAh … 4190043a4e (only 200mAh, but at least they are honest about it and don’t make wild claims like “AAA cells 2000 mAh”, which seems to be the norm with LiPo cells these days)

ahull wrote:Ebay also does some

So Ray, if I understand it right, you don’t use any kind of charging circuit, but just connect the battery in parallel with the load to the DC supply at 3.35V.
Any over discharge protection circuit?

schematic for the STM32F101C8t6 board can be had.. where?

victor_pv wrote:So Ray, if I understand it right, you don’t use any kind of charging circuit, but just connect the battery in parallel with the load to the DC supply at 3.35V.
Any over discharge protection circuit?

mega328 clones – (a) are they relevant here in the ARM forums? (b) Beware using China-clone USB/serial chips rather than FTDI’s chip whose Windows/Linux/Mac drivers actually work.

a) Yes, I use them for example as human interface controller (1.5EUR for a mini is cheaper than a bunch of logic chips) taking with the “main MCU” via I2c, so I have only 4 wires (VCC,GND,SDA and SCL) from the front panel to the main board.
b) I’ve no problem with the CH340/CH341 even under OSX or windows. FTDI clones are problematic for sure. (ethically and because of the “lock out” drivers)