We will be listing the cheapest suppliers we can find of commonly-used parts for #Shrimps, experiments and projects below. In the meantime, why not visit the recipe page, which provides the component list and cheapest suppliers for the #Shrimp on its own.
Generally speaking, when hunting for cheapest sourcing we rely on…
- Tayda Electronics – unbelievably cheap for individual electronic components such as resistors, caps, transistors, photodiodes, some ICs. Not so good for servos, arcade buttons or other macro components.
- eBay – selecting the Worldwide sellers option if cost is key, and if shipping delays are acceptable
- Aliexpress – good for volume orders or urgent orders, although often searching for ’10x’ on eBay can get cheaper prices using post instead of DHL
- Collective buying – don’t underestimate the power of 3 or 4 schools collectively buying 500 or 1000 of some macro item. That can hugely transform the cost of supply.
Wow, thanks a lot for providing me a link toTayda Electronics. Dirt-cheap basic components… cannot be beaten as a lot of them cost 0.01 USD! I ordered something like 3200 components for a 100 #Shrimps workshop (all you need for a barebone shrimp plus 12 white LEDS for a first Larson Scanner). I will post some pictures when a workshop will be held down here in good old Luxembourg.
If you’re building a Larson Scanner and want a secondary function, you might benefit from the Persistence of Vision resources at http://shrimping.it/shrimp/project/pov/ This design only uses 8 LEDs but can be expanded to handle as many lights as you wish.
You can use the logic at http://shrimping.it/shrimp/project/pov/font/ to extract the appropriate data from any pixel-based font, with some examples in the 7-10 pixel range shown at http://shrimping.it/shrimp/project/pov/font/png/ and the Arduino code generated from them at http://shrimping.it/shrimp/project/pov/font/fonts.h
@ admin: Thanks a lot for this ressource… I will try your POV code for sure!