Chinese Part Suppliers

[rjhodgefamily]

Has anyone ever used one of the China Part suppliers to get parts cheaper than Mouser or Digikey. I am thinking of using You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to get a lot of my parts for build a number of SSR4s this year. There prices are about 1/3 to 1/2 of what mouser shows for the BOM. Now that are not able to get me everything but even what they are able to get me should save me quite a bit.

Just curious if anyone had experience with them or another part supplier.

Thanks,
Richard

[JoeFromOzarks]

Hello Richard,

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”    ― Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics.   

"We learn by doing." -- Admiral James T. Kirk (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

It is, of course, your money and how you choose to part with it is solely your business.    But since you asked, let’s presume all but one part is good, up to specifications, and not a counterfeit.    That one part is keeping your project from functioning but alas, which part is it?   What is your time worth troubleshooting the project, inquiring on this forum and others and then risking damage to the PCB unsoldering this part, or that part troubleshooting the defective circuit…    Oh wait, what if two parts are non-functional, or three parts?

Once, I fell into the “oh boy, cheap parts!” chasm.  I spent hours (and days) testing this and testing that, to discover the main integrated circuit was functioning so far out of specification that it was embarrassing when the suggestions for help included “toss that Chinese junk and purchase from reputable sources.”    That’s exactly what I did.

Originally, RJ stressed how critically important it was to follow his lead, use his PCB’s, use his Mouser BOM’s and finally, to not modify the circuit in any form or fashion.   The result was perfectly functioning circuits so the enthusiast could spend his time building his display and sequencing the blinky and not cussing and swearing and losing enthusiasm because of broken circuits.     

It’s your money.  Again, what is your time worth?  On the other hand, look at the troubleshooting experience you’ll gain!!

joe

Has anyone ever used one of the China Part suppliers to get parts cheaper than Mouser or Digikey. I am thinking of using You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to get a lot of my parts for build a number of SSR4s this year. There prices are about 1/3 to 1/2 of what mouser shows for the BOM. Now that are not able to get me everything but even what they are able to get me should save me quite a bit.

Just curious if anyone had experience with them or another part supplier.

Thanks,
Richard

[rjhodgefamily]

Yeah that is sort of what I was afraid of. Not to mention pricing it all out came in at about 1/4 the total cost. Which while on paper looked really good, but like you said justifying my time tracking down broken parts. It just isn't worth it. It was just so much cheaper. I mean I think I was at $300 instead of right around $1000. But that is also why I didn't pull the trigger and figured I would see what other peoples experiences were.

I mean if I can learn from someone else's mistake I might as well. 

Thanks for the input.

[jnealand]

For $1000 I can buy 3 Falcon F16v3s and have $400 left to buy lights.  Those 3 controllers would support almost 50,000 pixels without using expansion boards (although a bunch of power injection).  And the boards are already built.  I am still using SSR3s and they work well, but I would not be buying or building anymore.  Just my opinion.

[JoeFromOzarks]

Please, what is an "SSR3?"   Thank you.


joe

For $1000 I can buy 3 Falcon F16v3s and have $400 left to buy lights.  Those 3 controllers would support almost 50,000 pixels without using expansion boards (although a bunch of power injection).  And the boards are already built.  I am still using SSR3s and they work well, but I would not be buying or building anymore.  Just my opinion.

[rjhodgefamily]

See I stick to the Lynx hardware because it just works. I need to do very little to get stuff up and running every year. And when we are talking 11 houses the Lynx stuff just works every time. So I will stick to it for a while longer. This coming year we are planning on adding a significant number of mini trees. So the SSR4s even though hard to come by seem to be an ideal solution. I'll probably just buy in bulk a lot of the stuff I normally use on a regular bases (i.e. resistors and capacitors) to reduce the per unit cost some.

I do have a couple of Falcons that I recently inherited that I am going to try and work into the show. We are just slow at converting to pixels. Single color lights are cheap and it is what people have on hand. As things get harder to find we will probably start adding more pixels each year. Heck I think we had 150,000+ lights this year. I don't think anyone really counted though.

Thanks for the advice though as to switching.

[jnealand]

Please, what is an "SSR3?"   Thank you.

Oops I was confused, thinking of SSC3.

[JoeFromOzarks]

Thank you!!   That was my first guess but I had to know for sure!!   

joe

Please, what is an "SSR3?"   Thank you.

Oops I was confused, thinking of SSC3.