How to: Get Free Electronic Parts for your Projects

[morris]

Don’t you hate it when you’re working on your next project and realize you’re short a resistor or capacitor? You have two choices: Buy online, pay for shipping, and wait a week or go to your local Radio Shack and pay ridiculous prices to acquire what you need. Forget that! Go to these companies, simply request free samples, and they’ll send you free parts – Sometimes even overnight.

Email us and let us know about your experiences as you request samples. If you’d like to add your company to the list, contact us.

Push Buttons & Switches:

• Bulgin – Free $20 stainless steel push buttons!
• Sorenson
• Apem
• NKK
• eSwitch

General Components:

• Digi-Key – They’ll send you one or two dirt cheap components, but don’t push it.
• Beganto

Free LED Samples:

• Bivar
• SunLED International and USA
• Sensitron
• Philip’s Lumileds
• DDPLED
• MarkTech
• Buy 100 LEDs for $7

Free IC and Microcontroller Samples:

• Atmel
• Maxim – Good experience with them, samples arrived in about a week.
• MillMax
• Freescale – Quality experience, arrived in a few days.
• Cirrus Logic
• STMicro

Project Boxes/Enclosures:

• PacTec
• Serpac

Free Semiconductor Samples:

• Texas Instruments – Great service – Samples took about 4 days to arrive.
• National – Absolutely fantastic – they ship your samples overnight!
• Analog Devices
• Microchip
• Zilog
• System General
• Supertex

Need more? Just head on over to GlobalSpec and type in the component you need. They’ll provide hundreds of companies which supply the part you’re looking for. Go to their website and contact them for free samples – Here’s a quick search I did for switches. If all else fails, no big deal, just head on over to Ebay, they have a ton of parts way cheaper than Radio Shack or Home Depot.

*Note:* We’ll be continuously updating this list so be sure to bookmark this page or subscribe to HacknMod so you don’t miss out!

 

[ⒶⓁⒾⒶⓈ]

Thank you sir..and subs

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

What kind of hardware projects are y'all working on?

 

[ⒶⓁⒾⒶⓈ]

What kind of hardware projects are y'all working on?

I didnt know anyone else around here tinkered ...im tryna build a pi based car stereo to put in my wifes SUV...the factory deck is inadequate but the system uses fiber optic MOST networking so just buying an alpine or Kenwood deck and sliding it in is NOT an option..its only upgrade option is dealer or i build something custom from the bottom up

I went to the junkyard and got another factory deck that ill use for the housing and power connector... and it should slide right in without any mods to the dashboard





something like

With GPS rear view cam,DVR,FM ,Bluetooth,SD card playback..

I picked up some rasperry pi zeros..GPS module,FM tuner..some TDA 2040s audio amp ...im now hunting for a 5x7 touchscreen

Figure it will take maybe a month between build and debug/testing

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

I'm not too familiar with doing things from scratch. I had to teach myself to (badly) solder when a couple of the capacitors blew on my TV about 4, 5 years ago. Then about 2 years ago a few more blew when I touched it while I had some static buildup on me. I was going to repeat the same process but a bunch of the smaller ones blew and Radio Shack didn't have them, and I wasn't about to buy 100 of them off the internet to replace 5 or 6.

I'm looking to pick up a Raspberry Pi in the next few weeks and see what I can do with it. As of now I don't have any ideas though. Maybe write some sort of client that will connect multiple Pis and do something with them. Dunno, I'm in it more for the programming rather than tinkering with hardware, but you never know.

 

[morris]

Any of you guys based in NYC?

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

My mom hooked it up with a Raspberry Pi for Christmas . My dumb ass doesn't have a USB keyboard laying around so I can't use it just yet. But now its time to put this thing to use and get better at some C++. I still don't have any ideas on what to do yet though...

 

[ⒶⓁⒾⒶⓈ]

My mom hooked it up with a Raspberry Pi for Christmas . My dumb ass doesn't have a USB keyboard laying around so I can't use it just yet. But now its time to put this thing to use and get better at some C++. I still don't have any ideas on what to do yet though...

Thats a good mother.....


I got mine all soldered,downloaded the OS,hooked up the touchscreen but im having some kind of driver issue with the touch screen...its actually kinda fun but the touch is off..i need to fix that.

I havent figured out the software modules yet for the GPS ,FM tuner and USB dvd player yet..i cant code for shyt so i have to find pre packaged ones

Then ill do a workup on how to fit it into the shell for the old car stereo

Ill drop pics of how its going with directions and links to the OS later

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

I'm glad I got the starter kit, otherwise I would have been a little lost.

I knew the thing was small but man, the thing is smaller than my phone. I pulled it out to get it all assembled and my dad is sat there looking like
Dad: The hell is that?
Me: It's a computer
Dad:
I get the board in the case and everything all done up (so easy a kid could do it)
Me:
Dad:


I had an idea to make an Amazon Echo clone that executes some basic commands. Make use of Google's Speech APIs: Speech API - Speech Recognition  |  Google Cloud Platform . It's certainly doable but you only get an hour of service free per month, so I could only do this as a proof of concept rather than something for the public. I may write the code for it anyway and just not put it to use.

I did have another idea to have something like a personal Dropbox/Github type deal. Get a few high capacity drives and run the Pi as a small server. Write a client for it and your PC and you can choose folders to sync. That one's a bit tougher to make happen though since I don't know exactly how to make the server part happen nor really how to accomplish the automatic sync portion. It would be legit to get this working and be able to create a small server farm though.

 

[newarkhiphop]

Subs

 

[morris]

Thats a good mother.....


I got mine all soldered,downloaded the OS,hooked up the touchscreen but im having some kind of driver issue with the touch screen...its actually kinda fun but the touch is off..i need to fix that.

I havent figured out the software modules yet for the GPS ,FM tuner and USB dvd player yet..i cant code for shyt so i have to find pre packaged ones

Then ill do a workup on how to fit it into the shell for the old car stereo

Ill drop pics of how its going with directions and links to the OS later

Raspberry Pi Downloads - Software for the Raspberry Pi

Is it any good? I have a dual boot laptop that I hardly ever use; has W7 & Linux, though I never did learn how to hack ....

I'm glad I got the starter kit, otherwise I would have been a little lost.

I knew the thing was small but man, the thing is smaller than my phone. I pulled it out to get it all assembled and my dad is sat there looking like
Dad: The hell is that?
Me: It's a computer
Dad:
I get the board in the case and everything all done up (so easy a kid could do it)
Me:
Dad:


I had an idea to make an Amazon Echo clone that executes some basic commands. Make use of Google's Speech APIs: Speech API - Speech Recognition | Google Cloud Platform . It's certainly doable but you only get an hour of service free per month, so I could only do this as a proof of concept rather than something for the public. I may write the code for it anyway and just not put it to use.

I did have another idea to have something like a personal Dropbox/Github type deal. Get a few high capacity drives and run the Pi as a small server. Write a client for it and your PC and you can choose folders to sync. That one's a bit tougher to make happen though since I don't know exactly how to make the server part happen nor really how to accomplish the automatic sync portion. It would be legit to get this working and be able to create a small server farm though.

Damn, if you and others are in NYC we should form a group that teaches and invests in ideas. Just a thought.

I've been to Meetups for Python and Linux but most people seem to be too self-absorbed.

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

Damn, if you and others are in NYC we should form a group that teaches and invests in ideas. Just a thought.

I've been to Meetups for Python and Linux but most people seem to be too self-absorbed.

Sorry, I'm in California. I'm not opposed to exchanging knowledge online though. I'm not at the expert level, but I think I'm useful for pointing people who are new to programming in the right direction. Sad to say, most people interested in the software side of tech are bad at socializing. I tried learning on my own back in high school but just couldn't grasp the subjects without a teacher. Once I started taking classes, things started to click. Furthermore, once I began doing projects that I was legitimately interested in then the learning became easier. Back in September I ended up doing my first start-to-finish full application outside of class.

On my Dropbox idea: I'm looking into using RPC and UDP to accomplish the goal. I stumbled on these links: Remote Procedure Calls and CS 417 Documents. Essentially what I'll be looking to accomplish is having the Pi sit somewhere connected to your local network with an external USB drive attached. It'll run the server application which listens for changes sent by the client application. The client application will monitor the folders you want to sync; when a file is added/changed/deleted it'll send a message to the server application and then they'll do some communication to do some file transfer. I actually don't think it'll be too difficult to do.

As much as I really want to do this with C#, I really have to branch out and get some more C/C++ under my belt. Amazon has some positions open that are really appealing, but they want C/C++ experience. I know I could likely still land a position and let my knowledge with Java and C# carry me, but I want to preempt that. Maybe I'll use a mix of the two; C++ for mostly everything, but use C# for the stuff that's too complicated to do from scratch in C++. Then maybe get a handle on Qt and make a GUI.

 

[ⒶⓁⒾⒶⓈ]

got my pics up @morris

The pi zero.after soldering the 40 pin connector...Its amazing this tiny thing is a full 1 ghz pc with USB and HDMI

attached to the monitor for first boot

Touch panel is off..like really off

the back of the zero..i wont use a zero for the final build tho...the B version has built in bluetoothand 4 usb connections.

Trying out the browser...the wifi drivers didnt load properly or i would have trolled yall from a pi

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

:wowhand2: that's cool.

 

[morris]

got my pics up @morris

The pi zero.after soldering the 40 pin connector...Its amazing this tiny thing is a full 1 ghz pc with USB and HDMI

attached to the monitor for first boot

Touch panel is off..like really off

the back of the zero..i wont use a zero for the final build tho...the B version has built in bluetoothand 4 usb connections.

Trying out the browser...the wifi drivers didnt load properly or i would have trolled yall from a pi

That looks way beyond my tech knowledge. I've been sitting on this 2-year-old Arduino basic electrical kit