Tune in each month for a heads-up on
where to get all of your “robotics
resources” for the best prices!
Shopping the
Electronics General Store
The general store once formed the
cornerstone of every town in the
country. A single store provided just
about everything: food, clothing,
hardware, animal feed — you name
it, they had it, or could get it for
you. Today, the small town general
store has been all but supplanted by
large retailers such as WalMart and
Target, but the idea is the same:
the more the store offers within its
four walls, the more likely its
customers will stay there and do all
their shopping.
In the world of electronics,
Internet mail order has taken over the
role of the general store for resistors,
capacitors, integrated circuits, and
other parts for our robots. While no
Internet retailer stocks everything,
odds are you’ll find 80%+ of what
you need for your next project in the
catalog pages of a single electronics
retailer.
In this month’s Robotics
Resources, we’ll take a look at the
Internet electronics general store:
what’s out there, what you can expect
to find, and how to get the most out
of them.
Start Local, Then
Go Global
Before clicking on that mouse, it
pays to first check out any stores
local to you. Depending on where
you live, you may be just down the
road from the world’s best selection
of inexpensive electronic compo-
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nents. In that case, you can save
yourself the costs of shipping and get
what you want immediately. Check
the Yellow Pages under the main
Electronics heading.
Most of us, however, aren’t so
lucky. These days, RadioShack is about
all that’s left of the national chain
store for electronics, and of late, the
company has been closing stores and
revamping their product lineup as they
change their focus.
Fortunately, the Internet has
taken up the slack from the dearth of
the neighborhood electronics outlet.
It’s been and will continue to be
a tremendous boost to the art and
science of robot building. Through the
Internet, you can now search for and
find the most elusive part for your
robot. Just about all of the major
surplus and electronics mail order
companies provide an online electronic catalog. You can visit the retailer at
their website, and either browse their
offerings by category, or use a search
feature to quickly locate exactly what
you want.
And, with the help of Google,
Yahoo!, MSN, or other web search
engines, you can find items of interest
from among the millions of websites
throughout the world. Search engines
provide a list of possible matches to
your search query. You can then visit
the web pages to see if they offer what
you’re looking for.
And remember, there are many
auction websites like eBay for buying
and selling goodies, including pretty
elusive robot parts and kits. If your
design requires you to pull the guts out
of a certain toy that’s no longer
made, try finding a used one at a web
auction site. The price should be
reasonable as long as the toy is not a
collector’s item.
Consider that the Internet is world
wide, and that some of the sites you
find may not be located in your country. Though many Internet businesses
ship internationally, not all will do so,
or the shipping cost may be prohibitive.
Read the fine print of the website to
determine if the company will ship to
your country, and note any specific
payment requirements. If a check or
money order is accepted, the denomination of the check or money order
usually must be in the company’s
native currency.
Checking Out
the Wares
Most Internet retailers use shopping cart software running on their site
to allow customers to browse and
select items they wish to purchase. No
doubt you’ve used one such shopping
cart in the recent past so I won’t bore
you with the details — except to note
that shopping cart software varies
from site to site, and not every Internet
retailer has an easy-to-navigate store
front.
However, just because a retailer
has an under-average shopping cart
doesn’t mean you should avoid them.
Some general electronics vendors
