This affects temperature sensors/parts bought from un-official distributors like ebay or AliExpress, not digikey, farnel, etc. Perhaps I've been too lucky in my career and practiced EE for work, but who would you ever go to ebay instead of digikey?? <mind blown>
Digikey certainly has a premium, but their speciality is small numbers/cut tape/etc and they have a small order size which makes them ok for hobby work, and I've used them for small production runs when I didn't want to end up with a ton of excess materials.
Makes you wonder what other junk is out there, and what purchasing guy figured he'd save $10 and get it from ebay...?
Both Digikey and Mouser will charge me $20+ to ship anything (tried with a small capacitor). Farnell will let me put stuff in the shopping cart, then when I select "individual" as the customer type, tells me that they only ship to companies and redirects me to a "partner site" for individuals, which promptly fails to load (things like this have conditioned me to avoid official distributors). RS will gladly sell me 4000 of those capacitors.
For a hobbyist outside of the US, AliExpress is often the only realistic source aside from the local RadioShack equivalent which probably doesn't have what you need.
I hear you, and even in the US it is a problem in Hawaii and Alaska. I live in the former and just yesterday was look at a part that was 8oz total and the site added a $100 HI, AK surcharge on shipping!!! This is mostly a UPS problem as for many suppliers they give great 48 state rates but anything else is horrible.
Now I wouldn't mind this nearly as much if I could get the shipping rate upfront but it seems 80%+ of sites won't give you a real rate until you have almost completed check out which takes a lot of time. The funny thing is if they have a phone number you sometimes can get them to ship it more reasonably if their system has the flexibility to do that.
This is where ebay is a godsend as a lot of sellers will have the odd part around and work at having cheap shipping. But it is caveat emptor.
Somewhat unrelated, but how do you like living in Hawaii? I visited once and it was beautiful, but I'm not sure what it would be like living there long term.
A lot of the time, these struggles are invisible to those living in the US. It's similar with McMaster-Carr; typically an American hobbyist will ask why one would look anywhere else for hardware parts, not knowing that (at least for many years) they would only ship to corporate partners for orders outside the US.
Last time I made heavy use of Digikey was in Australia and it worked really well. I'd order on Thursday and it would arrive by ~Monday, which was pretty awesome. You're right shipping, I remember correctly, was $20-$30, but on $200 of parts it was a small cost.
But as I said, this was done in my professional life, so I didn't blink an eye at it. Hobby world I get is different, but also the cost is frustration as opposed to 1000s, 10,000s of badly built boards.
This is the situation https://raptorsupplies.com specializes in, Getting high quality parts at relatively small order sizes shipped easily overseas at reasonable prices
I am not sure what you suggest - I tried finding something random and trivial: a decent 100uf, 400v capacitor (needed for a switching power supply primary) - zero. z0107 (low powered triac, 600v, 0.8A) - nothing. bt134 (another popular triac) - nothing. BQ24735 (Battery charger control chip) - nothing. 2n7002 (N-ch mosfet)...
I can safely say the site is not usable for electronics. It returned valves, pipes,nuts - pretty much useless for anything in Europe, being non-metric.
Digikey has free shipping for any order over (I think) $50. If you're trying to buy an individual capacitor then of course they're going to ping you for the extra time taken to ship. No-one can make a profit sending a $0.20 part individually.
I've never had any trouble getting individual parts from RS either.
At least they're willing to ship to you. I can't order anything at all from these larger suppliers, most of them decided that my country does not exist (you can't find it in their lists). Of course, one can always order through an intermediary, with their 80$+ shipping.
You often just need to fill that form entry, and not have any sort of official company. Things like Self, or your name again will work just fine. I have a fake company name that one day I'll need to actually register, but in the mean time is used whenever someone is willing to take my money, but not provide service without a company name.
Pretty much not applicable, as "company" requires a valid registration number for the invoice. Selling to individuals in the EU, outside the member state the company has been registered, is somewhat problematic. Currently it does require VAT to be charged at the recipient's country - unless the total yearly revenue from the said member state is low enough (say 35k euro). I have heard there are some 'discussions' (some EU commission) to ease the process but for now that's just rumors.
Flip note: US companies selling to customers in the EU do require EU VAT number as well.
Overall living in the US and applying the same rules/advice to people not living there tends to be wrong.
I'd never expect to find these in official products from trusted brands, but off-brand crap? Oh yeah. DIY kits? Absolutely. The parts drawer at the makerspace? One hundred percent.
So much stuff on eBay is free shipping, that's huge when you only need a few dollars worth of stuff. If I could convince Digi-Key to lick a 55-cent stamp when I need ten of something, instead of charging me $7 for shipping, I'd have a lot fewer counterfeit parts around.
These show up in "trusted" Chinese brands too. Whenever you see a teardown where the markings are ground off a chip with obvious, non-trade secret function (USB serial converter for instance), its most likely a counterfeit that needs to have its fake markings removed to get past first world customs inspectors.
I think this is about to change. The Chinese shipping will go up. A couple weeks ago, there was an article posted here about why shipping from China is so cheap, epacket[1]. Because of epacket, it was cheaper to ship from China than it was to ship to even within the same state for small packages.
A recent change allows the USPS to increase rates for epacket. It looks like the new rates will go up slowly, so shipping from China will still be cheaper for packages under 3 ounces for a few years.
This. I buy a decent amount of hobby electronics from eBay and AliExpress because yes it is cheaper. When I need quality, Mouser, DigiKey, and McMaster-Carr are there for me. But the minimum $7-9 shipping is the main reason is forego them. I’d gladly pay 2x for small electronic components (vs directly from China options) if shipping wasn’t a problem.
For any serious person trying to develop a little bit beyond hobby projects: Think about an hourly rate of $80/hour for yourself. If you have to spend an hour trying to fiddle with subpar shady parts, you've already paid for the shipping 8 times over.
Also, it is painful to wait for these packages from China. Digikey ships same day and its at your door step in the morning (I overnight it) and if you use $7, it is usually 2-3 days.
Plus, you're supporting legit businesses and not the shenzhen market.
I can understand total hobbyist who cannot afford $7 shipping often. But even then, you can bundle all your parts and order once.
Any engineer who earns a salary can afford $7 shipping. If you're a business, there is absolutely no excuse to penny pinch here. You're losing money by using unreliable parts, if not now, at some point in the future.
> But even then, you can bundle all your parts and order once.
I fall for this trap every. single. time.
_HOURS_ spent racking my brain to think of all the things I might need in different scenarios, so I can be absolutely, positively, 100% sure that I have everything in that one single order.
... and end up placing 2 to 3 more orders before the project is done.
> If you're a business, there is absolutely no excuse to penny pinch here.
Most of these sites offer free shipping to trade accounts with no MOQ as well.
But also you want that customer service as a business. Mouser once sent me a replacement camera at work (university) because they supplied one with the wrong interface. No doubt we have a big order book, but I've had similar experiences with RS as a hobbyist customer - ordered tools which are not up to scratch or slightly out of tolerance - "just keep it, we'll send a replacement".
> I can understand total hobbyist who cannot afford $7 shipping often. But even then, you can bundle all your parts and order once.
Or, like me, pretty much go "Meh, its counterfeits all the way down!" and frequently tack on a buck or twos worth of other "That's interesting looking, I might want one of those one day, I'll grab a few on this order" stuff when you're buying things you need for a current (hobby grade) project, so you've got a few boxes full of (hopefully sufficiently well enough labelled and documented" junk on-hand for the next random project idea... I bet I have a dozen or so "DS18b20"s here from that approach. I _think_ I could probably find then in under 10 minutes if I had an idea that needed one right now. Maybe... (Actually, I do have that idea. I want to put temp logging on a little LiPo battery that sits under a small solar panel to run an ESP32. I _think_ it's probably failing early because the whole thing gets too hot in the du5rect sunlight. Logging will confirm/deny that, and let me measure changes with insulation and/or fan cooling. Maybe I'll go hunt for one tonight...)
Because the cost of someone picking up a reel of 10000 resistors, from a warehouse that has to be rented heated/cooled etc etc doesn't scale down to that 1 resistor, even if the shipping cost might...
I know, it sucks! - I have seen many suppliers that cater for hobbyists around the world and will mail you a resistor in an envelope. But I'm sure that they don't make enough money to send you a certification and guarantee of authenticity with it, which is why real industrial users won't mind paying $50 for a handful of components because those guarantees are worth far more...
> Because the cost of someone picking up a reel of 10000 resistors, from a warehouse that has to be rented heated/cooled etc etc doesn't scale down to that 1 resistor
I understand that. But please charge me for what it costs. Don't let people with small orders pay the price for people with large orders. They already get discount for their order size!
Or if this is not possible at least call it an order-picking fee, don't lump it in the shipping costs.
Same. I read through this thinking "What, my team sensor on the data logger for my coffee grinder might be more than half a degree out? You know what? I totally don't care, and wouldn't have spent an extra 50 cents to get that much accuracy..."
I do have ethical qualms about supporting/funding "stolen IP", but then I've kinda got ethical qualms about the whole concept of IP anyway, and if you wanted to go hardline on IP compliance you'd probably have to avoid everything out of China (and everything that contains components out of China)... I wonder how often Apple get counterfeit components slipping through on Foxconn production lines, and how much effort they put into stopping it beyond extensive QA - which only ensures any counterfeits that make it through need to be close-enough to functionally equivalent to pass all the tests? The "test after" approach kinda pushes towards more IP infringement rather than less, since it's likely parts built from stolen designs would pass more often that parts reimplemented according to the spec?
Hmm, I was going to say that digikey has 3 or 4 dollar shipping, but I checked and it's $5 for a first class mail. Maybe they've changed it, or maybe it's COVID-related. I recall that they had a low price for shipping of a small maximum weight, which was good for little orders of just a few components. I generally just suck it up and place the order regardless of the shipping cost, it's not great to spend as much on shipping as you did on parts, but it's still cheaper than buying parts locally. Remember buying the assorted resistor packs at Radio Shack? Ugh.
I've got this soft spot in my heart for digikey, they've always shipped so quickly and called on the smallest issue and offered to help. When ever they call I always do that "why is someone from Minnesota calling me?" It's interesting how some vendors can build trust easily.
But $5 doesn't feel bad for shipping to get good parts quickly from a company I trust. But your point is taken. Sucks to put a $0.30 temp sesnor and pay $5 to ship it. =)
I pad my order by adding expendables, stuff I know I'll use a lot of. There's a certain kind of end-fed SMA pcb connector I use a lot of. Solder. Flux. Certain JST-type connectors.
I also keep a "gift list" for myself of things I've always meant to experiment with but haven't gotten around to ordering. I ended up playing with MSP430 controllers this way.
I've made a few orders over the past few months. The $5 is for less than 14 ounces (which is surprisingly heavy, I just had a big heatsink and a bunch of other components shipped in that weight); after that it's $9 for any of UPS/FedEx/USPS. I guess it's just USPS price inflation? I remember when stamps used to be 42 cents.
I wonder how do you organize parts? Do you keep your "possibly fake" parts strictly separated from the real parts? I already have trouble keeping resistors with the same value but different power rating separated.
I’ve read there’s some financial scheme that you get >100% kickbacks for untracked packets from China through Singapore to destinations. Certain mail containers are going at regular intervals carrying much as possible by volume, paid by governments as investments to build nations might, or something like that.
So sellers pay for shipping, which is cheap, then gets subsidy, then there’s delay between Buy Now and actual transfers and financing to compensate it, those supposedly all add up and turn profits.
Digi-Key on the other hand probably has employee pension plans and that would be as far they go in terms of global financial investment techniques, so...
I never expect random chips bought off AliExpress/eBay/Amazon/etc to work, much less be genuine. I do expect breakout modules and the like to work, though I don't expect them to contain genuine parts. (That implies I'd never source from these places when it's a critical function.)
I'm always surprised when people expect grey-market crud to perform just as well as top-dollar stuff....
I do electronics as a hobby. I sometimes buy chips from very dubious shops in China for fun. Some of these sources are sketchy even by Taobao/Aliexpress standards. Then I decap the chip by boiling the package in acid and inspect the die under a microscope. More than half of them are genuine. I get some nice surprises because even the chips that I expect to be absolutely fake can turn out to be genuine.
So far I've seen a ton of fake audio op-amps.
For discrete parts like transistors things are much simpler. Just build a simple test rig and test a few parameters. If they fall within the specs they're probably good enough. Of course it's not worth it to do this for jellybeans like 2N3904, but when some parts get obsoleted without a replacement (or they're too pricey) there isn't much else a lone hobbyist can do.
Not so with power transistors, you don't need a microscope to see that the dies found in off-brand power transistors are suspiciously small compared to equivalents from proper manufacturers.
they also may be refurbished ie unsoldered off a board. that happened to me a few years back for a bunch of soic op-amps I was having difficulty sourcing.. they worked ok though.
I've bought hundreds of electronic parts on eBay and rarely had issues. I discovered LED strips were a thing by shopping on eBay, years ago, much before they were trendy, I was buying them at one fifth the cost American retailers were charging. Bought Arduino clones for a quarter the price of the "real" thing when I was a broke student. ATMega MCUs for a dollar a piece, free shipping. They worked perfectly fine. Could not have afforded them without eBay.
I'm Canadian, and last I checked, the shipping costs to get parts from places like digikey was just ridiculous.
I didn't say they don't work, just that I don't expect them to work. The prices are such that you can, and should, buy three items from three different vendors and cross your fingers that one works.
In professional engineering, where time is money, Digi-Key or Mouser is always more efficient, if they've got what you need. For personal stuff, where the value of your time is ~zero, the opposite can be true.
99%+ of my hobbyist electronics bits n' bobs are ali express/banggood specials, and they have all worked fine, from arduino clones to sensors and ESP8266's.
If I were working on something more important that dinking around for fun, sure, I might care a bit more about what's actually on the board. But as it is, the clones are more than adequate for my needs, particularly at their price point.
In the case of the ESP8266, the parts were available through channels like eBay and AliExpress long before they showed up through any of the typical electronics distributors. Same thing goes for other first-in-China parts like the GD32 series (STM32 clone) and WCH340 series (USB/serial).
You might not buy em from eBay/Alibaba - but the guy your contract manufacturer goes to might end up getting them from the same source as the eBay/Alibaba vendors do - either knowingly or unwittingly.
We ended up with 3 spools of counterfeit WS2812Bs that had cheapskated out on some data line capacitors on the die. Totally fucked the emitted RF noise levels compared to the same thing build with genuine ones, and intermittently flaked out when trying to run high speed data updates long-ish distance - the lights 6-7m and 40-50 leds from the controller weren't reliable...
Manufacturer and their supplier were very good at fixing things for us once the problem was discovered and attributed to bad components, but it was a very stressful lead to the xmas supply chain back then. (Then the entire company fell apart for different reasons, but the stress and expense of that incident was quite likely a strong contributor to those the triggering of those company-ending reasons... :shrug:)
I've often bought parts from aliexpress because they're available for <$2 with shipping, and can be somewhat vetted easily with an example arduino sketch that comes with the library. (IMO, the goal in designing a board for your problem is getting someone to clone it and sell it for cheaper than you could hope to build it. Ideally, better too)
Sparkfun and adafruit deserve commendation here, as their designs are open enough to even have low effort clones work reasonably well. (I'd buy a legit version if I was doing something professional, but prototyping for the sake of research is a different story)
I'm a special case though, since deliveries from the local AVNET subsidiary to my employer are often comped due to volume/location.
I’m sure these things have made it into a lot of those Arduino beginner kits and stuff like that. It really makes me mad because the various incompatibilities with the datasheet might frustrate a beginner or mislead them to think they are doing something wrong.
The DS18B20 clones are very popularly assembled into a waterproofed probe with a cable and metal cap. It's a very useful item which as far as I know is difficult to obtain from one of the official distributors (and would cost significantly more than the eBay specials).
You can buy those metal sensor sheaths separately. Search for something like "rtd sheath metal" e.g. ebay #162885663706. $2-3 for a set of 5.
Then you pot the sensor with something thermally conductive and waterproof - waterproof potting compound is cheap (e.g. "RS PRO White Epoxy Potting Compound"). Finally heatshrink the outside.
You will never beat China prices, but this is one of those parts that's relatively easy to make yourself and shouldn't cost a fortune. The most expensive stuff is the epoxy, but it will last for a while.
Purely on performance, does it matter? If it doesn't matter if you're off by a degree or two, then the cheap versions will be OK. If you need the guarantee of a genuine sensor, or a different cable length, or whatever, it'll cost about $20 for five.
I understood that joke to mean, "Maxim components are so expensive that the grey market is about the only place the layman can afford them in more than 1-off prototype quantities."
At least that was my experience 8 or so years ago when I made the mistake of purchasing a lot of 100 MAX7219 off eBay for $100 shipped from China...$1/ea was such a tempting deal to a younger, more naive self when these chips were selling for upwards of $7/ea from ECIA-authorized distributors at the time.
No... there was a time when Maxim parts weren't really available through the major distributors. They had one of the most generous sample programs, but apart from that they seemingly wanted to draw you into some heavyweight direct sales process based around millions of parts per year. As the things I was designing were mostly aiming for quantities in the thousands, it made me not even bother considering their parts.
Around 10-15 years ago. Perhaps our different experiences were due to types of parts we wanted. Eventually I just avoided looking anywhere besides Digikey because the others' parametric searches were so terrible.
(Of course these days Digikey hassles customers by pointlessly firewalling arbitrary netblocks, so maybe the convenience tides are changing)
Digikey got it's opening when the mainline distributors decided that didn't want to deal with piddly little orders and imposed $250 minimums. Digikey swiped a bunch of their customers.
Now days ordering off Digikey is easy. But the cost of shipping is murder unless you want to wait a week plus for ground. Same time if you know what you want places like Allied will ship small orders for not much. And Jameco Electronics if they have it you can will call from their warehouse in Belmont.
The fundamental problem with counterfeits is that they aren't held to any published spec, so comparing your experience to mine isn't really meaningful...other than being not genuine, you can't generalize anything about counterfeits.
It was so long ago, I had to dig up notes.
On the performance side, the counterfeits I received couldn't be clocked anywhere near the 10 MHz limit specified by a genuine MAX7219; one package pin that should be tied to GND was floating internally (contributing to poor thermal performance); but the real showstopper was that intensity control didn't work for shit.
My records reflect nigelectronics on eBay as the counterfeit seller. This is the address I was instructed to return the counterfeits to when I called them out on it for a refund (I eventually got the refund, but threw these counterfeits in the trash where they belong):
Cheng Kwok Hang
15F, BLK 1, Aldrich Garden, 2 Oi Lai Street, Shau Kei Wan, Hong Kong
On the business side, I effectively wasted 10 days lead time in a tight pipeline just waiting for this garbage to arrive + more time/frustration isolating why the chips were failing initial tests; swallowed ~$700 out of pocket + expedited shipping for a single BOM line item to purchase genuine replacements from an authorized distributor; and looked like a complete hobbyist amateur to a collaborator in NYC (who was working on the mechanical side) as I had to explain why my stupid decisions meant he'll have to wait another 2 weeks before receiving the pre-production prototypes I had promised (which meant his clients ultimately had to bear that burden). Then there was all the manual rework which I didn't even keep track of.
This was my first semi-pro side gig out of college, and juggling all the unexpected curve balls with a fulltime day job was quite stressful.
Lots of hobbiests will buy things off ebay, Amazon, or Alibaba. It is extremely common and if you go into forums it is even encouraged. I'm not saying you should go to those places, but that lots of people do.
We've spoiled ourselves with CCP subsidy. It wasn't like that about 20 years ago.
You'd pay a pretty penny for things and support local/national businesses. Now, you're funneling fuel into the dragon's mouth. For what? A hobby project? Just spend the $7 shipping and get it from Digikey.
I presume you’re in NZ: You also live in the Southern Hemisphere, way south. YMMV. I presume ordering literally anything besides AliExpress/eBay us expensive in New Zealand.
So I ordered a ds18b20 sensor last year from ebay. paid AUD $1.88 for it (including shipping).
Digikey looks to be $7 plus $20 shipping (and I'm not certain if those are USD or AUD)
As someone who doesn't do this for work - I've never seen/heard of digikey or farnel before. Maybe if I was ordering enough to hit the $60 free shipping limit - but I don't think I've spent that on electrical bits in the last year.
In Oz, you could try Element14 (which is Farnell rebranded). $50 for free shipping, or $15 under. The DS18B20's are about $7 on there too, so that's the correct AUD price.
RS is also a good place to buy decent mechanical bits and pieces (bearings, drill bits, etc) if you don't want to play the lottery on Amazon. They even do their own 3D printing filament which I've had some good results with.
If you need small quantities (like one-of), you should look at sample requests. This is still alive and well - almost all the big manufacturers still honour them. I've gotten some $40 RTD digitising chips from Analog, micro-coax cables from Samtec and lots of random bits over the years. You may need a non-generic email address, but that's easy to sort.
> who would you ever go to ebay instead of digikey
In addition to the shipping price for DigiKey which means batching up stuff is essential, one reason I buy stuff on AliExpress is that there are tons of ready-made breakout modules for easier prototyping.
Adafruit and SpakFun do make some, but there are quite a lot of interesting modules you cannot get from those sources.
I live in Russia. Some time ago it was possible to buy from these distributors (and pay additional $20 - $50 for shipping). Nowadays they ship only to companies, not domestic addresses, so it is not only cost-prohibitive for cheap orders, but outright impossible for a hobbyist or individual person.
Hah, first company I worked for involved the development of embedded systems and the boss wasn't shy about buying parts from AliExpress (thankfully most of it was still DigiKey). Some stuff had a significant cost difference: Official Omron rotary encoders vs copies, for example.
Of course they usually worked about 70% as well as the real thing.
This affects many suppliers where they see a cheaper source for their component and go for it.
You may be subject to it if you send your designs and BOMs to a PCB house who also source and populate the components, then you're at the mercy of their procurement process
It does seem like the headline is misleading, as surely the unit-weighted average authenticity of these parts leans towards 1.0. Surely nobody would buy these by the 1000's from unofficial channels?
Digikey certainly has a premium, but their speciality is small numbers/cut tape/etc and they have a small order size which makes them ok for hobby work, and I've used them for small production runs when I didn't want to end up with a ton of excess materials.
Makes you wonder what other junk is out there, and what purchasing guy figured he'd save $10 and get it from ebay...?