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0 pointstachyonbeam5y ago0 comments

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.

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exmadscientist5y ago

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.

Baeocystin5y ago

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.

duskwuff5y ago

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).

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